great white hope

great white hope

Someone or something expected to succeed or on whom/which certain hopes are based. Many have come to regard the presidential candidate as a great white hope for a new era of social reform and economic prosperity. The new video game console is widely seen as the foundering company's last great white hope.
See also: great, hope, white
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.

great white hope

Something or someone that is expected to succeed. For example, Mark is the great white hope of the international division. This expression dates from the early 1900s, when heavyweight boxing champion Jack Johnson, who was black, seemed invincible and the term was used for any white opponent who might defeat him. It gained currency as the title of a Broadway play and later (1970) a film. By then it had been transferred to anyone of whom much was expected.
See also: great, hope, white
The American Heritage® Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer.
See also:
  • give (a) preference to (someone or something)
  • for the sake of
  • for the sake of (someone or something)
  • for the sake of somebody/something
  • have regard to (something)
  • have regard to something
  • perceive
  • perceive (someone or something) as (something)
  • perceive as
  • take (something) lightly
References in periodicals archive
Jordan 7 Champion (1949) 6 The Champ (1931) 4 Body and Soul (1947) 3 Somebody Up There Likes 3 Me (1956) Ali (2001) 2 The Great White Hope (1970) 2
Levy; poetry, Of Being Numerous by George Oppen; drama, The Great White Hope by Howard Sackler.
A search began for a "Great White Hope" to defeat Johnson.
CLEVELAND AND AKRON, OHIO: Posthumous pardons aren't high on most presidential agendas, but two Ohio theatres are hoping that President Barack Obama will take another look at the case of Jack Johnson, the African-American boxing champion convicted in 1913 for dating a white woman, whose story inspired Howard Sackler's Pulitzer-winning 1967 play The Great White Hope. Cleveland's Karamu House will stage a revival, Feb.
Maureen Dowd, who combines acerbic wit and deep insight in her columns for The New York Times , in her excitement about Scott Brown, the Republican Party's new Great White Hope, wresting late Ted Kennedy's US Senate seat from Massachusetts, compares him to a double waffle with bacon.
Tyson Fury was the latest up and coming great white hope who had his arm raised at the end of the contest, but the winner in every mind, apart from the referee's, was an accomplished journeyman fighter called John McDer mott.
STILIYAN Petrov arrived at Villa as a Great White Hope and Martin O'Neill believes he is now delivering a heavyweight punch on a regular basis.
India and China were recently hailed as the great white hope for car manufacturers, with fast growing, increasingly wealthy populations seemingly offering a panacea for falling demand in the car-saturated West.
GREAT WHITE HOPE: Marco Pierre flies the flag for British fare, including hare
Cooney was considered the great white hope and a lot of racial tension was drummed up before the fight.
Newcastle's racing programme and general finances had declined at the time of its purchase by Northern Racing in 1994, and Williamson was recruited by the late Sir Stanley Clarke as the chairman's "last great white hope" to turn around its fortunes.
"This horse could develop into one who could give Mr Nicholls' great white hope (Kauto Star) a scare up the Cheltenham hill."
But there was no joy for Britain's great white hope Jenson Button.
The cause of all these words, all this passion, was not a political crisis or a natural catastrophe--it was a prizefight, the 1910 contest between Jack Johnson, the first Black heavyweight champion, and Jim Jeffries, who had been singled out as "the Great White Hope of the Western World." But this was obviously more, and less, than a prizefight.
By 1910, the public sent out a cry for a "great white hope" Jim Jeffries came out of retirement with the hopes of returning the title back to the white people.