Misreadings: Why I Like “Stuff White People Like”
Because of a tendency to shoot my mouth off without thinking, I have stayed away from writing on Stuff White People Like, the wildly popular blog written by comedian Christian Lander. There has been a lot written on the topic from a variety of perspectives so I expected that everything that could be said on the topic already had. But there was an interesting piece written by Adam Sternbergh [via] a couple of days ago that, rather than singing its praises or calling it racist, criticised the site as a sort of vapid and weak satire. And, going back to look at the blog, Sternbergh certainly has a point. He suggests that that when a ‘white yuppie’ reads about white people liking coffee and Toyota Priuses, s/he slaps his knee, saying ‘it’s funny because it’s true’, and then moves on. The site works by having white people “[pretend] to poke fun at themselves while actually being allowed to feel superior”. To Sternbergh, SWPL comforts, rather than challenges its audience and as a result, actually pats people on the back for their behaviour instead of questioning them or forcing them to question themselves. Ergo… weak sauce.
While I agree with some of Sternbergh’s arguments, my response would be that there is still an interesting something going on in a couple of potential misreadings by the blog’s audience that is, besides being funny, actually good satire. First, as soon as the blog hit, you just knew that there would be a slew of comments that said something along the lines of “this wouldn’t be funny if it were about Black or Asian people” – and , sure enough, the site is littered with them. One response to such a criticism might be that the blog works because there is no real threat behind it. It is difficult to imagine the sudden disenfranchisement of thousands of white people because of a blog full of stereotypes, or even that that a white person might suddenly feel unwelcome in a store or bar because someone there has read the blog. What SWPL lays bare is white privilege: that the reason that it’s ‘okay’ to make fun of ‘white people’ is because of their dominant position in society, one that is not being challenged any time soon. Of course, there are a slew of necessary disclaimers to that statement involving class and sex among other things, but there’s also something quite true about it as well.
Another fun (mis)reading may be that Sternbergh’s inverse response – that the blog is kinda’ dumb because there’s no real critique in it – might actually obscure the fact that the blog is doing something challenging: it actually names whiteness as something other than a norm – that it instead, like all identities, is a thing constructed and performed. Furthermore, it introduces the idea of a ‘normative’ whiteness that one can or cannot adhere to, which injects the idea of power into the mix. All white people are ‘white’ but, as so often also happens to minorities, a particular version of ‘whiteness’ is conceived of and positioned as normal. In a sense, the blog does not describe whiteness but an ideal of it, the vague sense amongst white progressives that, ‘if only all white people were ironic hipsters like us’, the world would be a better place. Think about the Southern accent as a marker of backwardness or the liberal dismissal of conservatives as religious kooks and you get an idea of what I mean.
And Gregory Rodriguez’s LA Times op-ed on the blog hit onto something when he argued that “Lander is doing to whites what scores of journalists and politicians do to non-white minorities every day, “essentializing” complex identities — that is, stripping away all variety and reducing them to their presumed authentic essences”. But where Rodriguez goes wrong in his suggestion that SWPL is effective because now ‘everyone is a minority’. Statistically in some cities (like Lander’s hometown Toronto), sure. But we are long way from arguing that a particular cultural perspective isn’t still privileged in the public space. So while Sternbergh makes a valid critique, what I believe he misses is that the misreading of the blog by its intended, white yuppie audience, in addition to making me chuckle, is actually pretty smart satire. You have a bunch of yuppies patting themselves on the back from a position of comfort while not recognising it’s the very position that is part of the problem i.e. that the prioritisation of white, liberal values as normal is a form of ethnocentrism with very real material effects, a concept itself central to the blog’s otherwise shaky satire. And that possible misreading – at the sort of obliviousness at the core of the knee-slapping – is why I like Stuff White People Like. (And yes, I am fully aware that I like it because it makes me feel superior – why exactly do you think I’m a grad student… 
)
Pretty well argued, but still a controversial claim if only because it is unsettling for society, which has fallen into a racism-doesnt-exist-anymore stupor.
However, SWPL may actually be a comforting sign towards fighting the idea that any racial, ethnic, or social group should be on top. By satirising Whites, SWPL brings them down to everyone else’s level. This is a derivative of Landor’s point, which I think is successful because population majority does not necessitate supremacy. You see this everyday because while living in Western city X, many don’t feel aware of difference anymore.
I love SWPL, and I was wondering if you’d ever write about it… I haven’t read all the entries, but what I have read was dead on, at least for me. I think you’re right that it wouldn’t apply to all white people though… but I have to say, I’m glad to see stereotypes for people other than minorities. Some of them actually kind of make me feel embarrassed, but most of them I think are just plain funny. Especially the grad school one.
I have a personal interest in SWPL and read lots of reviews of this site. Yours is the best analysis I have read to date. There is a niggle to SWPL that you have identified. The word misread is bang on and I love how you have articulated that very group who “get it” don’t really get that the joke is on them.
What I don’t like about that site is how it’s another example of how the only way whites will ever think about whiteness is if someone makes the topic humorous. Why are whites afraid of a serious conversation about their own racial membership?
@Macon D: Well, what I think I was getting at was that the humour is a tactic of evasion – that SWPL works so well because it ultimately reinforces white privilege. Can you imagine any other ‘group’ that would feel so completely un-threatened by a site like this? That’s why I was saying that the reason I like the site is because its target audience – the ‘open-minded’ progressive white person – is precisely the person who ‘doesn’t get it’.
You’re right, but you’ve exposed a bit of a problem. If the site works for the reasons you list, then you also have to wonder why it’s not working. As a graduate student, you’re probably thinking about the dialogical apparatus operating on the site. You’re right when you cite the “this is me, h’yuk” knee-slapping of the unseen “white person.” But if white privilege is the real force behind this blog, then can we start talking about the anonymity and pan-postcolonialism of the Web? I’m thinking that white people can’t exist in a medium that, by its nature, hides its user’s colour. I think if we look hard enough we’ll find that the Internet can’t support dialogue, can’t support satire. Everything must be literal; no tonal inflections, no points for form. It’s all about content. And I’m convinced that Internet “satire” like SWPL is absolutely about delivering a message to a well-defined audience. Just looking at the comments, you’ll find that people go there to argue over representations.
Thanks for the comment.
What I was trying to get at is not that the site ‘works’; rather, that its failure to actually ‘make fun of white people’ makes it useful as a social document of white privilege.
And I think I’d disagree about no satire on the internet – it works in relation to context in much the same way that language has. Language has always effaced its author – how does the internet change that? (No, seriously, that wasn’t rhetorical – if you have any thoughts on that, I’d be interested to hear them).
I’d also be wary about talking of anonymity leading to some sort of colour-neutral internet. It seems that for that to work to, the internet, and by extension language, would have to somehow ideologically neutral – that the internet wouldn’t be dominated by liberal-humanist, capitalist, democratic conceptions of self/subject/society etc. I think I’d argue that it’s a sort of pan-colonialism rather than attaching post- to things.
But I’d definitely agree with your assertion that satire often targets a specific, well-defined audience, and on the ‘net that often seems to work in relation to strict hierarchies. I dunno’ if lately I’ve just been reading Fimoculous too much, but it seems like New York media types seem to exist at the very top of chain. So, speaking of colonialism…
Thanks again for the interesting, thoughtful comment.