[3] This white savior is often portrayed as a man who is out of place within his own society, until he assumes the burden of racial leadership to rescue non-white minorities and foreigners from their suffering.
Examples of this genre include films like Glory (1989), Dangerous Minds (1995), Amistad (1997), Finding Forrester (2000), The Last Samurai (2003), Half Nelson (2006), Freedom Writers (2007), Gran Torino (2008), Avatar (2009), The Blind Side (2009), The Help (2011).
[5]The films of the blaxploitation genre of the 1970s reflected discontent over the social and racial inequality of non-white people in the United States and functioned as counterbalance to the trope of the white savior.
When asked by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. why he decided to make King Schultz the Christ figure, Tarantino claimed he was simply drawing on the tropes of the western.
Sidney Poitier stars as a Black teacher who accepts a teaching position in an inner city school where the class consists of troubled, delinquent, white British youth.
[12] The white savior's principled opposition to chattel slavery and to Jim Crow laws makes him advocate for the humanity of slaves and defender of the rights of Black people unable to independently stand within an institutionally racist society, in films such as To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), Conrack (1974), and Amistad (1997).