This study examined the altruistic motivations of nine white, female preservice teachers who spent one semester tutoring English Language Learners (ELLs) of Mexican origin. Data were collected via classroom observations and discussions about their teaching aspirations, the children they tutored, and their own racial identity. Results indicated that although the participants were devoted to children and education, generous with their time, and struggling to share their honest feelings, the deficit thinking that was entangled with their own whiteness pervaded all aspects of their contact with, beliefs about, and expectations for the ELLs of color they tutored. The students they tutored were disadvantaged by the influences of whiteness on their tutors. The paper argues that whiteness is an amalgamation of classism, deficit thinking, and racism that privileges the dominant white group and disadvantages everyone else. The whiteness that affected the study participants continuously worked to draw their attention away from the children's academic needs, instead centering their efforts on usurping the authority of parents, modeling abstract social behaviors, and trying to "save" the children from families and lives they completely misunderstood. (Contains 92 references.) (SM)