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Q: How many white males does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: One.
Anything you can do, he can do better. He can do anything better than you. Oh yes he can, especially if you happen to be of Asian, Pacific Islander, Indian, African, Aboriginal or Native American descent. It doesn't matter that you have spent your entire life living in the densest African jungle, being taught how to survive there since you were old enough to stand up — the moment Mighty Whitey arrives in your town (most likely as a prisoner of war, an orphan or a lost traveler), you might as well hang up your blowpipe and take up crochet because his European (and therefore superior) genetics have pretty much made you redundant.
A common trope in 18th and 19th century adventure fiction, when vast swathes of the world were being explored and properly documented by Europeans for the first time, Mighty Whitey is a displaced white European, usually of noble descent, who ends up living with native tribespeople and not only learns their ways but also becomes their greatest warrior/leader/representative. Extra points if he woos The Chiefs Daughter along the way. Of course this might squick the original audiences, cepending upon how non-white the chief's daughter looked.
Sometimes the foreign societies are shown to be realistic, three-dimensional and actually rather pleasant places to live. Indeed, sometimes the native peoples are shown to be better in some way than European society and the white man begins to despise his old home. But this doesn't diminish the inherent racism in the concept of a white guy being naturally superior to his racially different counterparts and the tone is generally that they are as good as they can be (which is not the same as being as good as a white man can be).
This original version is a Discredited Trope, but in modern-day fiction — particularly in Hollywood movies — Mighty Whitey pops up, not as the product of a white supremacist viewpoint, but the result of creative types trying to appeal to as broad a cross-section of society as possible in order to get their cash back. And since the majority of major Hollywood stars are white Americans (despite the fact that only a small minority of their audiences are Americans at all, let alone white Americans), it's almost inevitable that the all-singing, all-dancing hero is also going to be registering low on the melanin count.
Another cause of modern appearances of this trope is as a backlash to the Positive Discrimination phenomenon. When a writer who happens to be a white male gets tired of being an Acceptable Target, he sometimes writes his hero as a response. Unfortunately, this is often assumed to be the product of some other emotional response.
Of course, said writers might also just be doing the respectable thing, and be writing what they know. Perhaps not in the 'I'm a badass Adventurer Archaeologist' sense, but the 'I'm used to the cultural norms of my race/gender, and would be terrified of offending people with incorrect cultures cues' sense. See Jive Turkey as well.
Remakes of shows/movies with the original trope often subvert this; for instance, making the Mighty Whitey into a dunce, and their Ethnic Scrappy sidekick into a smart, street-savvy Bad Ass. Sometimes this goes a little too far. This trope can also occur as an unintended side effect of writers trying to show the equality of all races and cultures — in a tone-deaf and more than potentially offensive kind of way. As Chris Rock has said, "Sometimes the white guy really is the best guy for the job..."
Non-American media, such as anime, can exhibit versions of this trope tailored to their home audiences. But Not Too Foreign is often used as a way to set up this version of Mighty Whitey.
Compare Jungle Princess, Noble Savage, Only One, Cargo Cult, Me Love You Long Time and Instant Expert. Contrast Positive Discrimination, Token White. See also Humans Are Special.
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Original Version Examples
- Iron Fist was raised from childhood in mystical city of K'un-L'un to take the title and powers of Marvel's ultimate martial artist.
- This was once played straight, but has since been retconned into a partial subversion. The current Iron Fist, as noted above, was at least RAISED in K'un-L'un, but otherwise fits the trope to a tee; the previous holder of the title, is actually from Western culture- and even though he Knows Kung Fu, his life is an utter mess. The current Fist's father, going further than that, chickened out and failed to become the Iron Fist entirely.
- That was justifiable, though, since the candidate for the Iron Fist has to kill a dragon with his bare hands.
- The Phantom, a generational line of more than twenty white males who protect the African jungle, including tribes of native Africans.
- Somewhat Justified. His whole idea is that he is the ghost who walks. And his costume shows his face, so people can see he's white. If the face was suddenly black, people might figure out whats going on.
- The Legion of Super-Heroes, set in 30th Century earth, for decades managed to have blue-skinned members, orange-skinned members, and green-skinned members, but no blacks or Asians. They were still almost entirely Northern European body-types right into the 1980s. When they decided to have a martial arts expert join the Legion—in 1966, before it was fashionable—they got Val Armorr, Karate Kid raised on an earth colony, allegedly of mixed human genetics, but with features and curly red-brown hair that suggested Irish ancestry, if anything.
- There was a (probably unintentionally) funny bit in the issue which examined Val's origin, where he's absolutely SHOCKED to discover that he's not actually entirely Japanese. Despite his appearance being as white as possible without making him blond, and his name being decidedly non-Japanese.
- Inverted in the early-'80s comic Arak: Son of Thunder, in which a Native American crosses the Atlantic to become the greatest swordsman in Scandinavia.
- Recycled INSPACE in the Adam Strange comics, which used a concept nearly identical to the John Carter Of Mars books. On Earth, Adam is just an archaeologist, but he uses his jetpack to make himself the hero of the space planet Rann. Popular comic author Alan Moore later subverted this by having the Rannians still treat Adam with contempt because they have superior intellects.
- B'wana Beast, originally appearing in the DCU's Showcase #66 (1967), is called "the White God of Kilimanjaro". During Grant Morrison's run on Animal Man (1989), he passes the title to a (black) successor, who rechristens the character "Freedom Beast".
- In the Marvel comics GI Joe series, Snake-Eyes, though a blond blue-eyed white guy born and raised in America, proves to be a better ninja than his closest friend, a Japanese man trained from birth (though said friend admits that when he moved to the US his skills got a little rusty). Not entirely justified, but Storm Shadow is much better at range, and Snake-Eyes is presented as pretty much the most Bad Ass guy on the planet before the two of them even met. (Not much is revealed about his early life, but he was already considered spooky by other Army Rangers in Vietnam.) For what it's worth, Larry Hama claimed two things: basing him very lightly on a real sergeant who was a friend of his, and making him a Self Insert (Hama is Japanese-American; it was sort of a way of proving that a Japanese-American is just as worthy of exploring his heritage as a Japanese citizen born in Japan) God Mode Sue, possibly subverting the trope.
- Take the Snake Eyes and Iron Fist examples above, swap out "martial arts" for "mystic arts," and you have Doctor Strange. A wealthy, spoiled, arrogant Dr Jerk travels from Manhattan to the Far East for purely selfish reasons (a car accident injured his hands, he wants a cure so he can go back to being a surgeon), meets The Ancient One, and within a matter of years he has surpassed all other students in The Ancient One's temple to become the next Sorcerer Supreme. In both the comic and animated adaptation, the second-best student is consumed with jealousy and becomes Baron Mordo.
- To be fair, this is magic. Half the power comes through training, the other half comes through the power in your blood or soul. Then's there's Brother Voodoo...
- Both parodied and played straight in the comic book Charisma Man, produced for English-speaking expatriates in Japan. The title character was a dorky Canadian unsuccessful with women in his own country - until he arrives in Japan where he instantly becomes suave and supercool, admired by all the locals and able to pick up any girl he wants. His mortal enemy is "Western Woman", the only one aware of what a loser he really is.
- Batman is a rich white guy who is the master of every martial art in the whole world!
- To be fair, Batman's Gary-Stu-ism is downplayed on two levels - one, Nightwing (Dick Grayson) is a better martial artist than Batman, and Robin (Tim Drake) is a better detective; and two - Batman is
crazy prepared batshit fucking insane when it comes to "the mission."
- It was the Adam West Batman that appended the "bat" to "shit insane".
- In the Marvel Universe, Daniel Lyons was chosen by a "Black Feet" (sic) Indian chief (not specifically tied to the real-life Blackfoot tribe) to be a champion of justice, after besting 100 challengers by outrunning a deer, outswimming a salmon upstream, hitting the bullseye while blindfolded and then catching arrows that were fired at him, and then wrestling a bear, finally winning by breaking its neck with his bare hands. He was given a long bow into which he carved a notch whenever he performed a good deed. When he had attained 100 notches, would be judged worthy of having taken the mantle of the Black Marvel.
- The Indiana Jones franchise plays merry hell with this trope, playing it straight (Belloq and the Hovitos), inverting it (bumbling Marcus Brody, given extra comedy by Indy's describing him as the ultimate Mighty Whitey, immediately cutting to his being hideously out of his depth in Darkest Africa), and subverted, inverted and played straight at various times with Indy himself. As the movies are inspired by the tone of old adventure serials, this may well have been intentional.
- Deconstructed in Apocalypse Now, in which Colonel Kurtz becomes the leader of a native tribe, but in doing so goes absolutely bonkers. This subversion originates in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, where a white trader had made himself god to an African tribe before losing his marbles.
- Any and all of those films where the Ninja master adopts a white kid and comes to love him better and consider him a better ninja than his own sons.
- The movie Beverly Hills Ninja pokes fun at this version of the trope. It features a tribe of ninjas adopting an orphan Caucasian boy whom they think will be their clan's long-prophesized "Great White Hope." Unfortunately for them, the boy grows up to be a clumsy, uncoordinated adult (played by Chris Farley) and the only way he can save the day is with the secret assistance of the ninja tribe's top-rated Japanese member.
- In The Proposition, Arthur Burns is essentially the evil version of this. He lives up in the hills, and the Aborigines are terrified of him and think he's a werewolf.
- Avoided to a degree in Forbidden Kingdom. While it's true that Jason does become a kung fu master in a short period, and is able to beat large numbers of Jade Soldiers, he is weaker than any of the other named characters.
- He was mostly added to appeal to white audiences anyways. It's a shame that Hollywood needs to do this sort of thing, and the only Asian lead role in Hollywood involves getting comedically yelled at by a black cop.
- It's also a shame that producers are so dumb they would think that movies need white people to appeal to white audiences. This troper is white as paper and really was annoyed by Jason because if it were any other race it'd be called tokenism or something to that variety.
- Averted by Mick "Crocodile" Dundee, a white Australian bush expert who was raised by Aborigines. As such, he knows a lot of mystic secrets and survival tricks that serve him well in the bush, and to a lesser extent in New York. He is baffled by modern plumbing, though, at least feigns not understanding some of the Aborigines' methods (he still goes to visit, but more often lives in town). Certainly he's not shown to be better than any Aboriginal character at a particular wilderness task; his main advantage in the bush over people who might be chasing them is that he has an entire tribe of equally-skilled friends who'll do him an easy favor such as watching bound captives if he needs them to.
- In The Kingdom, Chris Cooper's character tells a bunch of Saudi Arabian oilworkers, rather patronizingly, they need a pump to remove a large pool of water. In the desert nation of Saudi Arabia whose economy is built on crude oil they needed an American to tell them they needed a pump?
- This is an exaggeration of a problem which is, unfortunately, Truth In Television. The Saudi economy depends heavily on foreign experts who keep the oil flowing and the infrastructure running. Oil makes the country rich enough to hire the experts without requiring a large educated workforce, so the ruling families have no incentive to spend time and effort to train their own people up to the point where they can run things for themselves.
- Captain Jack Sparrow is briefly made the chief of a primitive island tribe in one of the Pirates Of The Caribbean movies. He thinks this trope is what's happening... until he realises they want to eat him. (Later, they appear to have made a dog their chief.)
- Although each mummy they've encountered has had its own particular native guardians/jailkeepers who have been watching over it for centuries, only the Anglo-American O'Connell family of the recent Mummy movies can actually destroy said mummies, even if the guardians are the ones who have made the means for doing so.
- True in the old-school Mummy movies, as well.
- In O'Connell's defense, the first scene in the 1999 film demonstrated he was personally one of the baddest-assed military men in Egypt (if not Africa) at the time. The uncultured cowboys also in the film implied his aptitudes were probably not tied to race or nationality.
- Admittedly they also seem to actually cause the Mummies to start doing stuff. The Guardians seem big on not letting the evil get released in the first place.
- If they'd simply listened to the natives in the first place instead of shrugging everything off as superstition, they wouldn't have had to deal with mummies at all. So yeah, they stop the mummies, but it's the least they could do. Clean up your own mess and all that.
- Also worth nothing that the Egyptologist was more along the lines of "don't messs with that" towards the boook, and Evie chose to not listen to him... In fact after she read from the book, he screamed "No!"
- In The Quest, Jean-Claude van Damme plays a street criminal who is shanghaied and sold into slavery to a Thai boxing camp. Without any past training as a fighter, within two years he is one of their top-ranked members, despite the native boxers having trained from early childhood. And this just from watching the classes on the beach...
- Push is set in Hong Kong, but all the protagonists are from America, and so are the main antagonists. In fact, all the Chinese people are either extras, or Triad gang members. Makes one wonder why they set in Hong Kong instead of say, New York.
- In the new Avatar movie, the entire main cast is white. Includes the guy playing as Sokka declaring all he needs is a pony tail and a tan. This despite the entire show being Asian inspired. Yay Hollywood.
- The entire main cast is no longer all white with Dev Patel playing Zuko as well as the actors for Admiral Zhao and Iroh. That said, the movie seems to have a more Indian influence to it.
- Which only enforces this trope with the saving of the world from the evil dark-skinned nation up the the Mighty White children.
- It only enforces the trope if you take it at face value, as at least two of those "darkies" play a pivotal role in saving the world.
- No, it enforces the trope because out of the entire group of nations, the Fire Nation was by far the most Chinese-inspired in architecture, dress and skin tone. They're the palest ethnicity on the entire show — basically they were Han Chinese, and now they're South Asian\Islander.
- How is that enforcing the trope again? This Troper could've sworn the trope was named Mighty Whitey, not Mighty South Islander...y. This Troper also thought that the Fire Nation had a distinct Japanese vibe. Must have to do with the top knots and being on big archipelago.
- This is about the MOVIE, not the TV series, and in the MOVIE, the world is saved from the dark-skinned menace by a group of white kids.
- We'd kind of have to see what the plotline is in the movie—in the series Zuko was not himself a threat to the world, simply an adverary to the Avatar. But really, as wrong as the whole enterprise is, it's not uite an example of the trope, since it's about white people beating non-whites at their own game.
- Thinking about it logically, this trope might be justified. The Fire Nation, in the Avatar's world, straddles the equator, with the farthest north and south regions still well within the tropics. Also notice that quite a few characters from the Earth Kingdom are darker than the Water Tribe and Air Nomads. Air Nomads lived in the high temperate zones, and the Water Tribes are found at the poles. Of course they're going to be pale. It's not a question of racism, it's a question of geography.
- By this logic, the original source material was not "thinking logically." See the graphic on this page
 , which pretty clearly shows how the browner heroes turned white and the paler villain turned brown with the live action casting.
- Whiteys are mightier than others, but American Whiteys are mightier than the mightiers: in The League of Extraordinary Gentleman an ordinary American can succeed where extraordinary Europeans fail.
- Dances With Wolves. Just Dances With Wolves.
- Lawrence in Lawrence Of Arabia.
- Truth In Television; Lawrence actually did lead the Arabs to great victories. Of course, a big part of the reason he did so well was because he could talk to his British commanders and get support in the form of money, machine guns, armored cars, and explosives... things that the Arab rebels were notably short on.
- Idiocracy. In a Dystopian world of uneducated Mexicans (along with other various stereotyped ethnics), lower class white people, women as prostitutes, no gays and a saucy Latina sidekick; One middle-class heterosexual white male finally takes his role as a leader and tries to guide them through this crisis.
- Dick Lestrange, son of the original couple in Henry Stacpoole's 1903 novel The Blue Lagoon. He appears in the sequel, The Garden of God and the followup novel The Gates of Morning. He can best be described as an intelligent, likeable and very easygoing Surfer Dude. Katafa, something between a Jungle Princess and a Broken Bird, washes up on the shore and causes trouble. She isn't really a Kanaka, but a Spanish girl who was Raised By Natives. To ensure the plotline, she's been cursed as an untouchable. After sundry how-likely-is-that events, Dick and Katafa fall in love. Katafa becomes touchably soft and takes him home with her, where he is immediately hailed as King, the old King having died in Katafa's absence. More to the point, laid-back ol'Dick immediately accepts, as a matter of course! (Having earlier picked up a Royal Mac Guffin probably helped with this decision.) Stacpoole (usually fairly nonracist) clearly implies that in their present predicament, the natives need a white couple to save them.
- Lord Greystoke, AKA Tarzan, was shown in the original books to be far better suited to life in the African wilds than any of the black natives. The original books explicitly said that his European noble ancestry (and not being raised by apes) is what allowed him to shine. Eugenics was a popular topic at the time.
- According to Tarzan Alive by Philip Jose Farmer, Tarzan actually belonged to a group of interrelated genetic supermen descended from seven couples who were exposed to a radioactive meteorite that landed in 1795. Members of this family include Sherlock Holmes and Doc Savage. One fan website even adds a line of African-Americans to this group.
- Farmer's story is basically very well-written fanfiction. Word Of God has it that Tarzan is superior specifically because he is white and noble.
- Eugenics was a particular hobby horse - maybe even an obsession - with Edgar Rice Burroughs. In the Amtor series, Carson Napier is specifically told that his "bad blood" constitutes a "menace to the continued existence of human life on Amtor."
- That was the very best — and most progressive — science of his day.
- Burroughs took special care to create environments where he could justify racism and classism by claiming that his white upper-class protagonist was superior for some reason unrelated to being white. However, it's very difficult to suspend disbelief when reading Burroughs because his plots are so unrealistic that they don't pass the sniff test unless the reader desperately wants them to, which is easier for the reader who will glibly accept the natural superiority of upper-class white men.
- In fairness, most other white guys are portayed quite hopeless in the jungle. Or evil. Or both. This gets really weird in some of the later books, in which the following occurs regularly: White Guy comes to jungle. White Guy gets hopelessly lost. White Guy stumbles on lost European civilization hiding in the jungle, kicks ungodly amounts of ass among them. In short, White Guy's only Mighty Whitey to other white guys.
- It seems with a close reading of some Burroughs novels that while Burroughs did believe some people to be genetically superior to others he did not link this to race. Lost Continent, for instance portrays a superior black upper class who seem on par with whites alongside a more stereotypical black lower class.
- Half-Justified in the Disney version and the following TV series. Tarzan is shown to be on the same level as the local African village's greatest warrior
- Recycled INSPACE in the John Carter Of Mars books by Edgar Rice Burroughs. These featured an Earthman who, due to Mars's lower gravity, had super-strength compared to the humanoid inhabitants of Mars. To modern eyes, this appears to subvert expectations of Puny Earthlings who might-or-might-not be special. However, the Puny Earthlings trope had not yet evolved at the time the books were written.
- Attempted subversion later in the series, when (blonde) White Martians are introduced. And they're jerks. It seems to try to change the message to "red martians and some exceptions".
- The long-running pulp serial The Destroyer is predicated on a prophecy that a white man will become the greatest master of the phlebotinum-laden Korean martial art of Sinanju. Main character Remo Williams is not just the prophesied white Sinanju master, he's also the incarnation of the Hindu god Shiva, making him implicitly better than the funny-colored people of two subcontinents.
- Arguably subverted in the book and the Made For TV Movie, where Remo's Korean mentor, Chiun, is not only superior in skill but also a raving racist who considers everyone who's not Korean an unsophisticated degenerate.
- Of course he's played by Joel Grey, a white guy just playing a Korean.
- Besides, the movie shows the very beginning of their relationship, so it's kind of natural that Chiun is still the superior. Remo has not really learned that much yet.
- Even later on in the book series. Chiun always remains the superior source of Sinanju. Remo always remains the student, but still appears supernaturally skilled compared to the louts he is sent to 'destroy'.
- So... is he superior because he's white, or is he superior because he's being trained by the Master of Sinanju, who is himself superior?
- Chiun is shown as far smarter and more skilled than Remo. It is just said that when Chiun dies and Remo becomes Master he will be the best ever. Of course, Remo "cheats" in being the incarnation of a god, without that, he has some natural talent but is not too bright. Remo himself is continually amazed at Chiun and says a number of times Chiun is the best.
- Used straight in anything by Karl May. His main character (a card-carrying self-insertion, and blatant Marty Stu) manages to become blood brother and best friend to the greatest chief of a Native American tribe in the Winnetou series, and does very similar things to every culture of the Middle East in the Kara ben Nemsi books.
- Used by Conan the Barbarian, who beat up plenty of black people. The excuse Robert E. Howard gave was that Conan was a tribesman from the very cold and vicious north which made him so strong in the first place. This is of course utter tripe, as people from cold and "vicious" areas are no stronger or smarter than anyone else.
- Howard was fairly explicit in his white supremacy. The "Conan is strong because he grew up in the snow" origin is taken directly from the early 20th century theory that Europeans evolved as more intelligent, wiser beings due to the harsh Scandinavian climate they evolved in. (In reality, humans didn't arrive in Scandinavia until well after the rest of Europe was fully colonized, and whites probably first arose somewhere in the Middle East.) Plus, he referenced "Aryans" repeatedly in his non-Conan stories.
- It could also be that Conan is partly based on the Vikings, who were better warriors than most other Europeans at the time. Of course, both the Vikings and the Europeans they fought were "white".
- In Howard's western short stories cowboy morals like never hurt a woman (even if she set you up to die) are equated with the pride of a white man. They're not inherent to whites or men but the definitive good distinctions a white/man shames his groups by not having. One character gets drunks and kills his black host for not getting more tequila. The author sides against him as the deceased's wife curses the murderer and he's a spook-haunted coward 'til death. Motivations and instincts like an obsessive hatred are oft-attributed to characters race. Injuns are the devil.
- A few things that are failing to be mentioned are 1) Conan didn't just grow up in the north, but of the fictional land of Cimmeria, whose cliffs are seemingly unscaleable and whose entire landscape is awash in shadows due to a high density of woods, among other things. Cimmerians in general are considered to be hardier folk than most due to their braving of such a harsh landscape, Conan being no exception. 2) Conan did fight against blacks, but also had plenty of clashes with fairer skinned tribes too.
- So... he's not only Mighty Whitey, but he's so white that he can play Mighty Whitey to other white people?
- The (Other) White People has a very different meaning in the context of R.E. Howard.
- Once it's no longer a matter of the only white person in the story defeating all the non-white people, once the protagonist starts defeating people who share his skin tone, Mighty Whitey becomes Badass.
- While I cannot defend Howard of not being a racist, he was not a racist in the modern sense, as every white American was racist in the way he was back 80 years ago. He admired strength and wisdom in all people, but he was partial to his own kind, so Conan the Cimmerian has a Gaelic name, and Cimmeria is supposed to be ancient Scotland. The reason the Mediterranean doesn't appear in his description of Hyboria is that in his time it was thought to be a plain (where Aquilonia, for one, was placed) in the ice-age. And he had strong characters that were black women. The way Conan has been twisted by later writers should not be shown as evidence against him. He wrote for meagre money from the magazines, so he had to make his protagonist Mighty Whitey to get published. Bran Mak Morn stories are a good example of his kinship with minority peoples, doomed to fade away (as was the popular thought and scientific concensus then). In his stories The Picts are an earlier race of people that receded to caves and hills, actually not unlike the Sidhe of Celtic legend. Bran Mak Morn stories are about their last king, or the spirit of their last king.
- Oddly enough sometimes subverted in his Solomon Kane short stories, as the Mighty Whitey protagonist is often utterly baffled by magic, or unfamiliar environment, but can always rely on his Magical Negro ally to save the day - the said Magical Negro keeps acting like the very image of racist stereotype, but it's quickly made clear that he's using Obfuscating Stupidity in order to avoid appearing too threatening to Puritan Kane while practicing his Black Magic.
- Kylie Chan's Dark Heavens trilogy in which a young, white Australian nanny (one of the worst Mary Sue characters in commercially published fiction) with no previous training develops superhuman martial-arts skills and magic qi powers in just a few months, beats up demons and generally proves herself superior to Chinese GODS, never mind mere mortals.
- On the American frontier, from colonial times up to end of the frontier around 1900, a number of men of European and African descent joined Indian tribes and became proficient in the wilderness. The literature of the time treated most of them as morally degenerate "renegades." However, when someone thought to use them as heroes, they were marvels of stalking and tracking skill. The foremost example is Natty Bumpo, hero of James Fenimore Cooper's The Leatherstocking Tales, the most famous of which is The Last Of The Mohicans
- In Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World, Lord Roxton becomes the best hunter in the native village he visits. There is some justification, as he was already a big game hunter, but the A&E miniseries, to be on the safe side, portrayed him as good enough to win the respect of the natives, but by no means the best. They also omitted Zambo.
- Subverted in another portion of the book. At first it seems like the Challgenger Expedition member are the only ones who can defeat the ape people who have been menacing the local Native American tribes. However, it turns out that the Native Americans could have won without them, the expedition members were just a Magic Feather.
- H. Rider Haggard's King Solomon's Mines gives a surprisingly early aversion of this trope. The three English explorers find themselves caught up in an African civil war, and all of them do fairly well in battle, but only one of them (who is actually half-Danish) does anywhere near as well as the African chief. That one gets to kill the bad guy, but only because the chief isn't allowed to do it himself for ceremonial reasons.
- H. Rider Haggard's She features an immortal white queen, "She Who Must Be Obeyed", who rules over a primitive tribe of Africans and has magical powers due to her ancient wisdom. She is of Egyptian origin, and the book implies that white people made up the oldest civilizations.
- Both used and subverted in Elizabeth Peters' Amelia Peabody mysteries. Amelia and her husband, son, daughter-in-law, and grandchildren are all white, and regarded with awe, admiration, and dread by the Egyptians they work with, but one of the causes they champion is equal rights for Egyptians, and they cultivate some impressive Egyptian sidekicks (though none in their own league). In The Last Camel Died at Noon, Amelia and family visit a Lost World, where Amelia is irritated to discover that the heroic native prince believes in the Mighty Whitey trope.
- Terry Pratchett's Jingo mentions this trope when some of the (overtly racist) Ankh-Morporkian generals refer to Klatchians as the finest soldiers in the world—provided they're led by white officers. (Jingo is an extended Lawrence of Arabia reference, So Yeah.)
- Then subverts it hard by making it clear that the Klatchian generals are far better at tactics and strategy than the Ankh-Morpork generals.
- Olaf Stapledon's Odd John both subverts and plays this straight. Roughly half of the super-intelligent mutants are of East Asian descent and there seems to be no racial discrimination between them. However, the protagonist and de facto leader is still a white man of mixed European ancestry.
- Subverted in the HG Wells story The Country of the Blind, where the outsider assumes his ability to see will automatically make him the ruler of a primitive blind tribe. But the blind villagers have adapted perfectly to their environment, and fail to see why they should do anything the newcomer says when their own ways make more sense.
- Present to a limited degree in The Sky People, the first of the Lords Of Creation series. Justified not only by Venus' lower gravity, but by the fact that the only Earthlings who make the cut to go to other planets are literally the best, brightest and strongest that Earth has to offer. Also contains Cynthia, who is perhaps the first Black example of this trope.
Modern Version Examples
- Lelouch vi Britania of Code Geass, a white man leading a war to drive out evil white men from Japan.
- It's subverted, though, in that one of the evil white men's top soldiers (as of halfway through season 2, ranked as one of the best Pilots in the Empire), who often singlehandedly screws up Lelouch's plans with his combat prowess, is Japanese. Also subverted in that, while Lelouch is a brilliant strategist, his piloting ability is mediocre and he's physically a weakling.
- There's also a black, female example of Britannian nobility in the role of Viletta Nu, giving the impression that the Britannian version of racism is distinct from the Real World doctrines, at least to a degree.
- Black? She had WHITE hair and no recognizably African features. Viletta wasn't black, she was just sort of... ambiguously brown.
- Odds are she's Indian.
- Dangerous Minds has ex-Marine and sassy white girl Michelle Pfeiffer inspiring a class room full of angry minoriteens to learn.
- Based on a true story, though I'm sure the Hollywood treatment given to said true story isn't reflective of reality in many ways.
- A recent example is the Tom Cruise drama The Last Samurai, in which Cruise arrives in a Japanese village, becomes a celebrated samurai warrior, wins the heart of a beautiful Japanese maiden and is, of course, the only village male to survive a brutal purge at the film's climax.
- To make it worse, she isn't actually a maiden. She's the wife of the samurai warrior he killed! To be fair, the film portrays Western society as being corrupt, shallow, materialistic and completely taking its war heroes for granted, which is why Col. Algren defects. His sense of honor, though different to the honor of the Japanese, is what makes the samurai accept him. Thankfully he doesn't travel totally into Wallbanger territory and become the leader. In essence, he becomes a Mighty Whitey by trading white ways for those of the non-whites.
- Pathfinder has an 11-year-old Viking boy raised by Native Americans and becoming their greatest warrior. This is somewhat justified however, as it's established that Vikings are better warriors than the Native Americans (although a lot of that is due to their metal weapons.) The boy is the best because he learns to combine the savage combat skills he learned as a child, with the patience and cunning ambush skills he picked up as a teenager.
- Big Trouble In Little China arguably subverts this by presenting a big, brawling, two-fisted white guy who thinks he's the hero, but who often gets his ass handed to him in the battle against the Big Bad. The real hero of the movie, of course, is Jack Burton's competent, martial-arts savvy, Chinese-American "sidekick," Wang Chi.
- The Last Of The Mohicans is an excellent example of Mighty Whitey in traditional American literature and, hence, in classic movies. Imitations and similar characters appear in Westerns. The worst of them, in this editor's opinion, was White Comanche in which a white rancher and the most fearsome of Comanche warriors are twins, both played by . . . wait for it . . . William Shatner, complete with pale, hairless torso, round, well-fed face and stagy Captain Kirk style emoting.
- If we're talking the Daniel Day-Lewis movie, though, this troper thinks it's averted. Nathaniel's greatest ability - his incredible marksmanship - isn't particular to Native Americans, and he's not demonstrated to be better than his brother and father at general wilderness survival. And at the end of the movie Chingachgook is shown to be the greatest of the heroes and the titular character.
- To their credit, most of the better Western movies and series avoid this trope. If a white mountain man/scout/tracker of phenomenal wilderness skill and wisdom appears, he is usually (and admittedly) no better than or slightly less skilled than the Indians he tracks. He most often serves as a Gandalf or Cassandra to the soldiers or white civilians he works for.
- Subverted in Dances With Wolves. Both the soldier who becomes Dances and the woman called Stands With A Fist were not immediately geniuses at the Native American way of life. Indeed, their early cluelessness was a source of amusement.
- The cast of Dragonball Evolution live action film are all Asian. Except for, suspiciously, main character and hero Goku.
- Granted, Goku isn't really Japanese; he's not even human, being an alien from another planet. It's still odd that a popular Japanese hero is being portrayed by a white actor, but them's the breaks when you're making a movie to appeal mostly to Westerners...
- That's like saying Superman isn't white, since he is technically an alien. If Superman were played by an Asian actor there'd be riots.
- Dean Cain is part Japanese.
- I've heard rumors that some people were quite upset at his casting when it was first announced, considering him to be nowhere near an All-American Farm Boy.
- Not only is Goku being played by a white guy, so are Bulma and Piccolo. Mukokuseki makes the whole point moot anyway.
- This isn't odd, considering that manga characters tend to look white to Westerners due to lacking markedness.
- This is a common cultural misconception of non-Japanese viewers watching Japanese animes; because white is the default setting for Western characters and racial markers like hair/skin color and eye shape are used to denote other races/ethnicies in Western cartoons, Japanese characters who lack those markers are viewed by Westerners as white. Japanese audiences see those characters as Japanese and no additional physical markers are necessary unless they are portraying an outside racial group or emphasizing emotional/personality traits.
- The Live Action Adaptation of Fist of the North Star suffered from this as well. Julia, Bat and Lynn are all played by Asian actors (Isako Washio, Dante Basco, and Nalona Herron), while martial art hero Kenshiro and his Rival Turned Evil Shin are played by Caucasians (Gary Daniels and Costas Mandylor). Even Old Master Ryuken was not spared of this, being played by Malcolm McDowell of all people.
- Farewell to the King: American GI Learoyd escapes the Japanese, flees into the Borneo jungle, winds up with a headhunter tribe there, slays their best warrior in a duel, and becomes their king.
- Played with in Woody Allen's film Bananas, in which Woody Allen gets mixed up with a revolution in a fictional Latin American country. Of course, since he's Woody Allen, he isn't exactly competent, but when the revolution succeeds and the Great Leader immediately goes crazy, his underlings get rid of him and force Woody Allen to become the new dictator because Woody Allen is an "educated American."
- Generally averted, though it tries to make itself known several times, in The Ghost and the Darkness, the movie about a pair of lions terrorizing an African railway town.
- The protagonist, Patterson, is played by Val Kilmer, who is blond and blue-eyed. Patterson is an engineer, but he's a ''military' engineer, so it's not too much of a stretch when he lies in wait and kills a maneating lioness, though much is made of his doing it in one shot.
- However, Mahina, the foreman working under Patterson, notes almost offhandedly that he's killed a lion too. Asked how many shots it took him, he says, "I used my hands." Patterson also, in letters to his wife, praises Mahina as an amazing worker (the actor is in excellent shape for the film). This seems to be a version of The Worf Effect, though, as Mahina is promptly dragged off by one of a pair of man-eating male lions.
- Later, the American hunter Remington shows up with a group of Maasai hunters in tow. Notably, the Maasai end up thinking the lions are evil spirits, and neither Remington nor Patterson believe so. However, after killing one of the lions, the three white men in the movie (including Samuel, Patterson's effective sidekick) get drunk, and Remington is killed as well.
- If it's justifiable anywhere it's in this movie only because the events were actually based on a true story.
- Peekay in The Power Of One, who acquires a cult of personality with the black prisoners at Barberton Prison when he is still just a small kid - because of his multilingualism, boxing prowess and the sophistication of the smuggling system he helps to set up for the prisoners, they start to see him as some kind of saviour. Slightly subverted in that said cult of personality is mainly due to how prisoner Geel Piet keeps talking up & promoting him with the other prisoners, but the fact that the prisoners buy into it is a case of Mighty Whitey.
- Also kinda subverted in the sequel Tandia where Peekay, now an adult, is embarrassed by his status and actually does something useful for South Africa's black population with his career as a civil-rights-advocating trial lawyer.
- Shows up in Lost Horizon, which is notably progressive for featuring a modern Mighty Whitey in the 1930s, when the old-fashioned version was still in vogue. When a plane full of white passengers finds themselves in Shangri-La, the mostly Chinese and Tibetan monks there prove themselves to be wise, intelligent, competent, and well-rounded characters to boot. However, the very white Conway turns out to be better at the monking business than the best of the Tibetans, and it turns out that the founder and leader of the monastery is a European who arrived in the 15th century. Yep, an Asian who practices spirituality his whole life can find some inner peace, but not as much as a white guy who picked it up a couple weeks ago. Shows up even more blatantly in the movie version.
- Subverted in Heroes; when Hiro goes back in time and meets the great Japanese hero Takezo Kensei, he discovers that Kensei's actually a white man. He then goes on to discover that Kensei is not nearly the patron of bravery and honor that myth has made him into, and finds himself trying to hammer Kensei into the role that history has made for him. Kensei eventually undergoes a Face Heel Turn and it is Hiro who ends up inspiring the Takezo Kensei legend.
- Subverted in Stargate SG-1. In one episode, Colonel Mitchell had his own Last Samurai moment: after being captured by the Sodan tribe ("the best Jaffa warriors ever", who also happen to be dark-skinned humans in appearance), he's taught their fighting style prior to a ritualistic one-on-one deathmatch. Mitchell rapidly learns their fighting style, and even uses it in later episodes to easily dispatch Jaffa Mooks. However, both his teacher and Teal's (who in addition to being non-human, also happens to have dark skin) still effortlessly pwn him, on multiple occasions.
- In that episode's climactic battle, Mitchell would have been killed except that he stole an idea from the Star Trek The Original Series episode "Amok Time"—-I'm shocked, shocked, to see a Stargate series steal so....
- 1984 TV series The Master: Lee Van Cleef plays a man who stayed in Japan after WW 2 to learn the ways of the ninja, and became the head of a ninja clan. He abandoned it to search the US for his daughter. Naturally the ninja clan thought his abandoning them was dishonorable, and sent his best student after him to exact revenge.
- This troper owns a high-school level French geography textbook written in the 1930s. Every part about the French colonial empire is based on this trope. They even put a photo of a French adult standing aside a 11-12 year old African girl in order to show how "physically superior" the white French were supposed to be.
- This one has read a high school-level Swedish biology book published in 1950 containing a picture of a pygmy man climbing a tree with the caption "Man-like ape species".
- Appallingly, this was quite common: I recall reading bits of a 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica that talked about the "11[?] races of Man", and their obvious strengths and weaknesses. Eugenics was very popular among all stripes except the Christian fundamentalists (and not all of them) and the Marxists
- Häckel listed 12 races.
- The Catholics initially debated whether or not Indians had souls, making this one Older Than Steam.
- Although the British and Spanish certainly did not treat the native Americans as human, efforts at converting them was immediately ordered by the Catholic Church upon the discovery of the new world. This troper has difficulty believing such a claim unsourced.
- Margaret Sanger wanted to make contraception available to for the sake of eugenic arguments, much to her shame.
- Given how stressed subsistence cultures can become, especially if a bunch of white guys are hacking down their forest, I wouldn't be in the least bit surprised if many Europeans benefiting from mechanised agriculture were larger and in some ways stronger than the indigene; this is a very different matter. The essence of this trope is that Whitey beats the natives at their own game; it doesn't matter how large or strong or educated you are if you don't have the sense to sing The Beer Song long enough for the native brew not to kill you.
- There is something of an example in Japan and Korea following the Second World War and Korean War. American soldiers stationed there who started learning local unarmed fighting methods would often end up as superior combatants in competition, in a shorter period of time, compared to local people based primarily on the fact they tended to be physically larger and stronger due to nutrition. The axiom is (forgive sexism, I'm just quoting): A good big man will beat a good small man every time.
- Against that the painfully racist The New Student's Reference Work argues that Europe needed technology (in the form of the machine gun) before it could kill the locals effectively enough to nick their land. It views this then-recent advance as a good thing.
- Plains Indians were taller than whites even at the nadir, but that's for genetic reasons.
- In the non-fiction book Soldier by Anthony Herbert, Herbert tries to get his American soldiers in Vietnam to overcome their fear of the nighttime Viet Cong by explaining to them that the American diet has much more Vitamin A for night vision. Since he was including the black soldiers, not exactly Mighty Whitey but Mighty American.
- Played straight by Gonzalo Guerrero, spanish cast-away from an earlier expedition than Hernan Cortes, guy adapted to his circumstances and ascended socially among the mayans, he ended marrying a cacique daughter and went native to the extend he refused to join the spanish conquistadors that came later (understandable as while he was a the better position posible among this group of mayans he probably was a no-one among the Spanish), and even ended dying defending his new culture. Subverted by all his other fellow cast-aways as most get killed, and in the case of Geronimo de Aguilar who ended as slave and didn't doubt for a second to join Cortes expedition that came later (the same Gonzalo refused) becoming a valuable translator.
- In The Descent of Man, Charles Darwin outlined the inherent superiority of the white race. "The civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world." Oops.
- Actually, Darwin did not at all wish for this to happen. He believed, as most people did, that other races of humans were different, and weaker, varieties. What he meant, though now we know that this is false, was that the "civilized races" would just reproduce more often, not actually kill the minorities. Darwin was actually anti-slavery and anti-colonialist, and an adamant supporter of freedom, dignity, and equality for minorities. Oops.
- Darwin's clearly predicting what he thinks will happen, regardless of what he thinks should happen. After all, he's not exactly wrong. When "civilized" cultures meet "primitive" ones, the latter usually suffer...
- And, aside from anything, "civilised races" can be taken to refer to many non-European peoples, such as the Chinese or Arabs, and so it's questionable to assume that the assertion made constitues an example of this trope.
- Inverted in so many ways with Azrael from gaijinsmash.net, a blog named for a perceived benefit of being a foreigner in Japan. As mighty as his smash can be, he's still a black man living among near homogeneous ethnicity, where most media examples of his own race are embarrassing caricatures, he still struggles to compete in his chosen field (writing), and though he loves the culture he's also settled into an informed critique of it through exposure.
- Are you white? Go visit China. They'll love you. For some reason or other, American and European tourists in China are a big hit for the locals. Expect to get your picture taken by some random person.
- Rock from the Soul Calibur series fits the trope in that he's a powerful warrior who started out as an English boy marooned in the New World. It's mainly his sheer size that accounts for much of his fighting prowess.
- And he is by no means one of the greatest characters in the game. In this tropers experience of SC 3, he was the easiest opponent to beat.
- He was so strong that Astaroth himself was designed after him. Naturally, learning this was not a pleasant experience for him and spent most of SC 3 trying to kill him.
- Sub-Zero in the Mortal Kombat series is a white man (offically half Asian but you wouldn't know it by looking at him) that was born and raised in Minnesota. He moved to China with his father after his parents divorced when he was a teenager, and became leader of the Lin Kuei; he even moved the ancient tribe to America after they were discovered, instead of just relocating somewhere in China.
- He was portrayed by an Asian actor in his ending in Mortal Kombat II though, but he was masked for the rest of the game.
- Subverted in Jade Empire, with Sir Roderick Ponce von Fontlebottom the Magnificent Bastard. "Mighty Whitey" is his mantra, and he's a card-carrying supremacist through and through...but if your Asian hero can out-debate him, actually fighting him isn't that hard.
- Providing the fight doesn't glitch up, at least.
- The reward for fighting him is his Tactical Manual, a treatise on the art of warfare which gives you a bonus to your fighting ability. By teaching you what not to do.
- Or his gun, one of the best weapons in the game once upgraded.
- In Turok (2008 game), General Roland Kane is such a master of the ancient warrior ways of the American Indians that he ends up teaching them to Turok, a Native American marine. Justified in that it makes sense that someone who had actually studied the historical customs of Native Americans would know more about them than someone who simply happened to be of Native American descent. Turok also ultimately proves to be a superior warrior to Kane when he defeats him in a knife fight, after Kane turns out to be an evil Broken Pedestal.
Non-White Examples
- Domon Kasshu in G Gundam
- Hell, pick just about any Real Robot Humongous Mecha series you can think of. The Super Robot Wars series really tends to point it out: For so many supposedly international organizations, there sure are a hell of a lot of Japanese people compared to any other ethnicity.
- Because Tokyo Is The Center Of The Universe, naturally. Although you could make the case that Amuro Ray of Mobile Suit Gundam is actually But Not Too Foreign...
- Super Robot Wars is making a habit of making the "better" Original Generation pilots be German as well. Sanger Zonvolt and Elzam come to mind. Fridge Brilliance can also elevate Elzam's brother Raidese to this level as well.
- Not to mention Latooni (... well, Latun, as a proper romanization of the way her name is written), who is one of the best pilots in the game (can easily compete with Raidiese for 'ace of the younger generation') - she's Russian. Or at least her name is, since her backstory makes it rather hard to figure out her ethnicity and nationality...
- Often subverted and ridiculed in Nangoku Shounen Papuwakun, a series in which Shintarou, the Number One most competent warrior in the Ganma army, is marooned on an island in the southern seas. Although Shintarou often tries to introduce elements of his own culture, it usually either goes terribly wrong or is revealed to have already existed in some way on the island. Shintarou, throughout the story, is also relegated to the role of housekeeper for Papuwa, the only other human on the island at his arrival, who is a young boy...and much stronger than Shintarou.
- In a rather odd example, Osamu Tezuka's Phoenix: Sun is about a Korean soldier who flees to Japan after his kingdom is deafeated by the Tang Dynasty forces & eventually becomes a feudal lord & a major player in the historical Jinshin War. In a bit of a subversion, he is also invited to join a tribe of Noble Savage Shinto wolf-spirits (because his face was cut off by the Chinese & replaced with a wolf's), but declines because he feels he'd be a burden to them, having no supernatural powers of his own.
- A manga version of the old Romance Of The Three Kingdoms story, Destiny Of An Emperor (which was also made into a Dragon Quest knockoff RPG for the NES, which bizarrely enough managed to cross the Pacific), posits that historical warlord Lu Bu was in fact a blond European who had taken a Chinese name, thus explaining his historically-documented freakish height and strength. Hilariously, when applied to Lu Bu of all people it becomes a brutal subversion of the trope, as Lu Bu was a lecher, a murderer, and betrayed everyone he ever met. He died alone and utterly ruined.
- The Thirteenth Warrior features something of a reversal: the cultured Arab diplomat Ahmad Ibn Fadlan leaves his country with some Vikings to go north. The Vikings don't expect him to be very useful, but he learns their language, fights alongside them, and amazes them with his literacy, though he does not surpass the Vikings in any of the skills they teach him. In fact, the Viking's treat him a bit like a child, calling him "Little Brother." He is ultimately a secondary figure in the big picture behind their leader Buliwyf. The story, taken from Michael Crichton's book Eaters Of The Dead, is very loosely based on the accounts of the real Ahmad Ibn Fadlan, spiced up with a nonmagical retelling of Beowulf.
- Rudyard Kipling's Mowgli, a native of India Raised By Wolves, is implied to be superior to the vast majority of Indians because his upbringing under "The Law of the Jungle" gives him a set of moral values that are closer to Europeans. This is particularly noticeable in "In The Rukh", the first Mowgli story to be written although chronologically the last.
- At Play In The Fields Of The Lord is about a halfbreed Cheyenne who organizes Amazonian peoples. Not really sure if it counts as nonwhite (since that's what the other half was), but still...
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