disturbing the comfortable

[sophiaserpentia]

Stuff White People Like

Oh, this new blog ruffles the feathers in all kinds of ways. It's brilliant. The comments on each post are proof that it's working. Yes, the criticism that this really mainly applies to yuppies is true, but since they are dominating a lot of the urban cultural dialogue it's still funny and informative to observe the squirming.

Recycling is a part of a larger theme of stuff white people like: saving the earth without having to do that much.

Recycling is fantastic! You can still buy all the stuff you like (bottled water, beer, wine, organic iced tea, and cans of all varieties) and then when you’re done you just put it in a DIFFERENT bin than where you would throw your other garbage. And boom! Environment saved! Everyone feels great, it’s so easy!

... If you are in a situation where a white person produces an empty bottle, watch their actions. They will first say “where’s the recycling?” If you say “we don’t recycle,” prepare for some awkwardness. They will make a move to throw the bottle away, they will hesitate, and then ultimately throw the bottle away. But after they return look in their eyes. All they can see is the bottle lasting forever in a landfill, trapping small animals. It will eat at them for days.

Comments

*snickers*

[azaz-al.livejournal.com]

"It is a poorly guarded secret that, deep down, white people believe if given money and education that all poor people would be EXACTLY like them. In fact, the only reason that poor people make the choices they do is because they have not been given the means to make the right choices and care about the right things."

Re: *snickers*

[azaz-al.livejournal.com]

It really is a kind of interestingly funny breakdown of white culture. Ever notice how no one talks about "white culture"? People will talk about Asian culture or black culture, but white culture is just... normal. And white kids will tell you "we don't have a culture." Well yeah, you do. If you don't know what it is, maybe you should read that blog to find out. :P

And of course not every white person fits every stereotype in there - just like every black person doesn't fit every black stereotype. But at least half of the things I browsed through are things I've done. I was amused.

Maybe they should add an entry for "white people like to think they are the exception" :P

Re: *snickers*

[kumbunny.livejournal.com]

I have heard white-fellas say "We are not a race".

That's when you know that horse blinders should be on the stockmarket.

Re: *snickers*

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

Heh, i wonder how long it will be before there's an entry for "linking to this blog" as another thing white people do to avoid feeling guilty while changing nothing.

Re: *snickers*

[azaz-al.livejournal.com]

Or the assumption that white people are the ones who ought to be changing things, deciding what needs to be changed, and... oh wait I think that was covered in "non profit organizations".

Re: *snickers*

[sable-twilight.livejournal.com]

Maybe they should add an entry for "white people like to think they are the exception"

or say that they are portion of some other race...

Re: *snickers*

[deifire]

*snerk* This reminds me of the all-white academic seminar on white privilege in which it was determined by general consensus that I was the only person in the entire room who had a culture. (Apparently, blue collar, rural and southern is just enough of a shade off "normal" that white college students can actually see it. Seminar conclusion: Okay, so embarrassing and occassional identifiable "ethnic" varieties of white culture exist--and some people are Jewish--but the rest of "us" don't have one. Are we lacking something?)

Of course, I've since grown into the type of person who can't go out to buy beer for the Daytona 500 without coming home with stout brewed with love and fair trade organic coffee by the local microbrewery...

Re: *snickers*

[stacymckenna.livejournal.com]

Starting with Post #1 I found myself thinking:
"But I hate coffee...
I still serve on the church council of the religion I was raised in...
I don't enjoy film festivals or most "arty" films...
I don't play team sports, but I guess I like assisting in non-sports areas...
Farmer's markets are a pain in the kiester, I'd rather grow my own...
I never pay for organic...
I often wonder sadly at my lack of social racial diversity...
I like Barrack's approach to problem solving regardless of color...
I often insist in staying inside out of the heat...
I've never even seen a Wes Anderson film on purpose (though I did see Bottle Rocket in college during our new releases class)..."

Yup, prime candidate for the "like to think they are the exception" category.

Re: *snickers*

[azaz-al.livejournal.com]

Hee hee :)

Of course a larger point to be made in all of this is that of course such racial stereotyping is bound to be inaccurate when taken to cases. It is maybe more to the point that white people don't think of themselves, typically, as a "race" - they think of themselves as the norm, and being labeled as a race with a culture - just as white people typically do to every non-white person - makes them really uncomfortable. It's a tiny taste of what we do to others.

Re: *snickers*

[stacymckenna.livejournal.com]

Yup. I actually started labeling myself as Swedish (despite being born a Mc) when I started recognizing distinct cultural distinctions between myself and non-Scandanavian whites around me. I was so stereotypically Swedish-American that it would have been ridiculous not to. But that's a hugely different thing than having outsiders note a trait and then jump to "you must do these other things, too".

Re: *snickers*

[stacymckenna.livejournal.com]

hahahahaha!!!

I'm an engineer, who used to work for an Oil Company. According to item #47 I've officially "los[t] white person status (and can only be regained by working at a non-profit)".

That explains everything... ;)

This is probably best heard in the Ralph Wiggum voice.

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

It's funny because it hurts my sense of entitlement.

Re: This is probably best heard in the Ralph Wiggum voice.

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

I can totally hear that.

[revulo.livejournal.com]

That just makes me think of the Penn&Teller BS episode on recycling. lol

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

I think the writing there is a good kind of mirroring for some of our assumptions in this culture.

[novapsyche.livejournal.com]

Oh god, I shouldn't be laughing the way I am right now. I'm going to end up in some race-determined land of eternal torment, I just know it.

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

Hey, I had tears streaming down my face from a couple of those - I say laugh away.

[sable-twilight.livejournal.com]

I've noticed that so many people feel they need to emphasize that it's about "yuppies" or "upper-middle class culture" or that they are in some way or another a person of color...

[idealforcolors.livejournal.com]

But it IS. We can argue about specifically what subsection we're talking about, how it's defined economically or geographically or politically, but it's still a subsection. I'm certainly not saying there's no such thing as "white culture," but that site's picked a very specific liberal guilt-ridden slice of it to generalize as the whole. And I belong to that subsection. My rural, conservative, all-white hometown does not - most people reading it from there would be laughing at "them," not "us."

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

I think this focus is by design. Urban white liberals are probably, truth be told, better equipped to examine their... our... own privilege than other white people. But they've... no, we've... also established an elaborate set of self-blinding strategies that get us close to this self-examination but yet still avoiding the hardest yet most necessary parts of it.

[idealforcolors.livejournal.com]

I think the problem with it is it does apply so specifically to yuppies/urban liberals/whatever you want to call them in particular...so if you're a white person who isn't urban or liberal or yuppie then you get to go, "Haha, I don't buy into this helping the earth or society bullshit! I'm a cool enlightened minority!" Which isn't a great reaction, either. If it were a bit less politically slanted, it would be better as satire.

[dorisp.livejournal.com]

Reading that makes me feel bad about myself! :(

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

Don't feel bad. The real purpose of this blog is, as i see it, to show white people, who otherwise would never really see what it feels like, what it is like to be racially stereotyped. And yeah, it sucks and there is a very not-pleasant vibe about this blog. But anyone who reads it and sees themselves in half of this, and doesn't see a reflection in the other half, can take away this insight.

[lightvortex.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's the way I felt about it (I spent way too much time reading that site!) Some of the stereotypes apply to me but not others. I guess that would be true for most white people. It'll be good to keep it in mind if I go and start stereotyping blacks/Hispanics/Asian or any other group.

And I loved the long treatise (comment 46) about how the blog author must be Asian because it fits in with Asian stereotypes but not black or Hispanic ones.

[zensandy.livejournal.com]

I started laughing, and then I realized, "Hey, wait a minute...I like Mos Def..."

And then I laughed some more.

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

Yeah. And hey, i thought the White Stripes, Bjork, and Massive Attack were all cool at some point in *my* life too.

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

Guilty!

[evergrey.livejournal.com]

Oh noes, I am TEH EVIL PRIVELIDGED WHITE PERSON!!!! Quick, hide the children!

[el-christador.livejournal.com]

That's an awesome blog! It's telling me that if I actually worry about the plight of marginalized underclasses, I'm being a jerk, and they actually like being poor and marginalized. I haven't felt this positive about the state of North American society since Titanic told me it's a nonstop party being poor and being rich is awful and miserable and an unendurable living hell. So no need to start being concerned.

[evergrey.livejournal.com]

PS I'm poor and disabled, but I do not need as much help as other people who are poor and disabled, because I am white and therefore privileged, as the gods shit money from the sky at me, people in restaurant give me free food, busses make special, extra gentle, to my door trips for me, and faeries spin silken clothing for me! WOO HOO!!!!

[el-christador.livejournal.com]

I think some of the entries are also more US-specific. (Although I do see some entries making reference to specifically Canadian things.) For example, the race landscape is totally different in Canada than in the US; we have nothing corresponding to the US black population (blacks in Canada are AFAIK typically immigrants from Africa or the Caribbean), nor US immigrant Latino populations. Major non-white ethnic groups in Canada are east Indian, Asian (especially Chinese), and North American native. And then the race and class interaction issues are completely different, since Indians and Asians are (AFAIK) not really perceived as having particular barriers to entering the middle class or professional class, i.e. they're not perpetual-underclass minorities, whereas with natives, it is something much more like a perpetual underclass excluded from the middle class mainstream. So things such as "having a black friend" don't really apply in the same way in Canada because it just wouldn't have the same significance, and because there are much fewer blacks and they don't form a distinct culture the way American blacks do, but are just another among many small ethnic minorities. And "having an Asian friend" or "having an Indian friend" wouldn't be anything like equivalents either.

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

The whole point is that stereotyping is inaccurate. This is a demonstration thereof without warning you in advance that it's a demonstration thereof.

[el-christador.livejournal.com]

In The Blank Slate, Pinker talks about research on stereotyping and says it was found that stereotypes do tend to be correct statements about average properties of groups. That is, they represent "mean field" theories, in physics terms. Of course, that means they don't apply to every member of the group, so in that sense they're inaccurate, because they miss the variation within the group i.e. that not every member of the group exhibits the average properties of the group.

[el-christador.livejournal.com]

Oh, important to note that exceptions to the above are malicious stereotypes or those arrived at without contact with the group being stereotyped, which do not tend to be valid assessments of average group properties.

WRT the blog, I figured that the point of them was that they contain a grain of truth when speaking about white hipsters, and for all I know possibly white hipsters in the US do sometimes go around self-consciously having black friends. But in the Canadian context there's nothing to satirize there, in the absence of the black-white divide (due to the black half being missing), so it's more baffling than irritating. But if your point is that these are things that don't apply to all white people, then I guess that still works.

[stacymckenna.livejournal.com]

As an adult, I started seeing my "white culture" in the terms of hearing my non-Scandanavian heritage pastor discuss the foibles of the largely-Scandanavian descent congregation she was serving (I'm 1/4 Swede). I saw my self/family in everything she said. It was all done lovingly, and sometimes jokingly, but she also pointed to the potentially self-damaging trends of martyrdom and silence in my cultural background - especially when living in a society where other people don't share the unspoken assumptions about obligation/responsibility. It's an eye-opening experience realizing that other people from only the most slightly different backgrounds often have VERY different perspectives on how the world should work, what's good/bad, right/wrong.

It's also eye-opening to see how differently things are interpreted when using ostensibly the same language - what is an obvious cry for help in the stoic Scandanavian background I find familiar, for others is only a mild request for assistance. If such apparently similar populations have such huge gaps in understanding/communication, what are the differences between very obviously different backgrounds like?