Check it out: http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.wordpress.com
Hilarious, insightful, and definitely worth checking out! Of course, it is also a study abroad approach to cultural differences: watch out for this, notice that, enjoy it! laugh.
While it therefore provides the ammo to deeply examine the intrusion of power and oppression in daily life (in a real and down-to-earth way), it stops short…a great pity.
Doing so also has the effect of reducing class differences to racial ones, which is well, dumb. Oh well. At least it keeps to specifics. If nothing else a great primer for life in the race politics of corporate America.
Love, db
April 8, 2008 at 5:05 pm
David,
I also love SWPL, but I am growing increasingly disenchanted with it. Where’s NASCAR? Where’s chewing tobacco? That blog, while clever, ultimately is “Stuff Liberal Urban Rich White People Like.”
I think you’re totally right that it reduces class to race. By equating all whites with yuppies, it silences the majority of the white working class, which doesn’t have any of these cultural traits (Of course, attaching culture to class is problematic, but watch me do it here anyway.)
SWPL is a good starting point, using humor as an excellent critique, but is ultimately as class-blind as the next hip anti-racist project.
April 15, 2008 at 9:03 pm
This site is great and all, but I feel like the posts aren’t actually that… funny. Like sometimes he’s just taking some obvious ideas and transcribing them in his guide-to-white-people style. It’s good humor, but I think it works just because the uneasy combination of liberal ideas and urban affluence in white culture is an untapped comedy goldmine. And by goldmine, I mean that I just read that the dude behind it got about a million bucks for a book deal already.
Also, remember Black People Love Us? They were first, man.
April 30, 2008 at 3:55 am
Hey David, have you seen this? I’ve only looked over a couple posts, but maybe you’ll find it more productive…
http://stuffwhitepeopledo.blogspot.com/