This is partly a shameless ploy to boost my blog traffic, since the two-month-old wordpress site Stuff White People Like is one of the hottest sites on the internet, beating out even the seemingly invincible second place-holder LoLcats with over 3.5 million hits since January 18.
This site deserves it’s popularity, though. It is one of the funniest, cheekiest, and incisively critical portrayals of hipsters, yuppies, bobos, and anyone else that fits into the middle to upper-middle class 22-40 year-old, liberal, and educated demographic. Some of my favorite entries include today’s #75: Threatening to Move to Canada, #69: Mos Def, #62: Knowing What’s Best For Poor People, #61: Bicycles, #40: Apple Products, #37: Renovations, #17: Hating Their Parents, and of course, #7: Diversity (only as it relates to restaurants).
Many people in the comments, and some that I’ve shown the site to myself is that this stuff only applies to one specific white demographic. Well, yeah. That’s the point though. Alot of the stuff highlighted in these posts is all about white people doing things to escape their whiteness, and so recurrent themes are white-guilt, finding ways to be/affiliate with a cultural minority, reclaiming moral high-ground, saving the environment, and so forth. This very attempt to escape whiteness through consumer preference is itself exactly what has come to define whiteness in America today. Hipsters may choose differently than suburbanites from the available identities on the market, but it’s still the same game. Except now you get to feel morally superior about doing what you already like to do!
Thank you for adding the “middle to upper-middle class, 22-40 years old . . . ” I think that’s critical. It’s a specific, though not necessarily unique, way of responding to the reality of race and privilege in our country. This demographic (our demographic) has some degree of insight into the history of racism (classism, sexism, heterosexism, etc.)–enough insight to feel guilty, but not yet enough to be constructive. We try to flee from our guilt by trying to prove ourselves worthy, or “not like those racist folk,” rather than acknowledging that we are all part of a radically broken system (hmm . . . sound a little like works and grace? maybe a stretch, but I don’t think so . . . ). Only by acknowledging that brokenness, and our part in it, can we move forward.
Perhaps what frustrates me most is that by trying to deny our own whiteness, to flee from our own privilege (by doing things we are only able to do because of said privilege), we actually compound the very problem we’re seeking to distance ourselves from. Denying our own whiteness does nothing more than assuage our own guilt. It undermines potential constructive responses to racism by shifting the emphasis from the societal to individual level of analysis. You can’t combat a social construction if you think of it in merely individualist terms. Thus, when people of color try over and over again to draw attention to the reality of racism in our country, the response they receive from white people is, “I’m not racist. I have black friends.” Are we really that foolish? I don’t think so. I think it has much more to do with our guilt and fear than it does with foolishness.
I think you’re right to point out that this is connected to a culture of consumption. Furthermore, I think that in and of itself is a function of privilege. Only those with privilege, those that define cultural significance and meaning can truly consume identities. I think that this needs more expounding, but I’m tired and not very coherent . . .
“White Like Me” by Tim Wise is a great exploration of one man’s coming to terms with his own whiteness. It’s in the house library if you’re ever interested . . .
that is an awesome blog. some of it is right on, some of it is just down right hilarious.
Well put! Regime change starts at home, and that means us. Just like the “hating their parents” post points out, white people always want to lay the blame for things elsewhere. I read a sweet passage from Eagleton the other day, where he basically said, “conservatives believe the monsters are ‘out there’; liberals believe there are no monsters; real radicals, though, recognize that it is we ourselves who are the monsters.”
I like that you bring up the works/grace dialectic. It seems like our demographic is plagued by this overburdening need to construct our identity by carefully plotting out how all the stuff we do informs our image. And of course, it’s capitalism that puts these demands on us, since these identities are being constructed by buying stuff. I think as Christians we are in a good place to witness to our demographic that identity is a gift, not something we need to earn.
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They have been added to my blogroll. Absolutely hilarious!
Here’s a funny knockoff:
http://stuffwhiteparentslike.com