stuff white people like ...

Stuff white people like, the blog, is mildly amusing and fairly dumb. As a white person, I found it to be a kind of fun exercise in silliness and making fun of one's own group. And, like just about everybody, I like the pictures of puppies.

Gary Dauphin at The Root has posted a rather long screed on why he doesn't like Stuff White People Like.

To which I'd say: Lighten up. I don't think the guy behind Stuff White People Like meant it as any power manifesto on the special privileges of a ruling class.

I agree that most of the categories are too broad to apply to anybody except EVERYBODY, like "dinner parties" and "graduate school" ... but it seems this blogger is just trying to make fun of the goofiness of his group ... for the sake of fun. I don't resent the guy getting a book contract. Stupider stuff has been published and FAR stupider stuff is on the Internet.

Maybe I am wrong and just haven't read SWPL thoroughly enough ... it doesn't seem to be worth the time ... but comedians far better than this blogger have made entire careers on stuff black people like ... Chris Rock, for example ... and stuff rednecks like, and stuff women like, and stuff gay citizens like.

As long as the comedians are members of the group they are making fun of, everybody seems to think it is OK, and funny. The humor lies in the generalities themselves ... for example, Chris Rock's bit on Mama gets the respect but Daddy's paying the bills. All Daddy gets is the big piece of chicken. Well, certainly not in every black family. Daddy might be having sushi, and Mama might be paying the bills. But nobody believes Chris Rock is speaking for all black citizens. The familiarity for black citizens of what he is talking about is what is so funny and so real.

One could argue that White People's blogger, Christian Lander (how white a name is that?), isn't funny, or is smug and a poseur, as Dauphin argues, but it strains the point to say he's arguing for some kind of racial or classist supremacy. And he's really no more a hustler and opportunist than people far more talented than he -- like 1st class satirists Rock and Dave Chappelle. Problem is, this guy Lander only goes skin deep (forgive the pun), while Rock and Chappelle are chroniclers of their time.

I, like Dauphin, look forward to a grey society ... when white no longer is a synonym for middle class- nerd-with-no-soul and black is no longer a synonym for disadvantaged-youth-with-a-rap-sheet, in the broad and stereotpyical view of many shallow thinkers and uninformed people in the country.

Stuff White People Like or something like it (hopefully better) might on some level serve to remind us all what we have in common.