Comments on: stuff white people like

By: Michael

Michael — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 23:35:48 +0000

Thanks, Cooper. I’ll check it out.

I would like to point out that a blog can’t be “lame” because a blog has no arms or legs, so it can’t have no use of them â€” by which I mean that lame is used to connote differently abledness, and I would prefer if commenters on my blog didn’t bring in ablelist language when they comment.

Thanks for the link, though.

By: Cooper

Cooper — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 22:11:54 +0000

I think the blog is a little bit lame. This one is more spot on:

http://stuffwhiteparentslike.com

By: Michael

Michael — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 21:34:52 +0000

Charlie,

I think your last paragraph gets at my ultimate point. Whiteness (and middle and upper socioeconomic classes, which the authors of SWPL intertwine into whiteness) are built on certain modes of domination, among them economic, racial, environmental. Sites likes SWPL are very humorous, and I think it’s always fine and dandy to laugh at ourselves. But where does this humor put us? Are we moving toward change? Or is SWPL just a conservative, postmodern ironic laugh at middle class [white] folk that leads most readers in a sense of complacency: continuing their rebellion in public while falling in line in private (as Slavoj Zizek has defined cynicism).

I won’t agree with your call for punishment, but something does need to be restored. Verbal askance won’t do much, I believe. Instead, we need a radical shift in the ways we view ourselves and our raced and classed lives.

By: charlie

charlie — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 21:20:11 +0000

I just ran into the site on directions from a friend. It is the funniest site I’ve seen in recent weeks. I found none of the posts to be offensive in the least. I had/have no ideas about who posts the messages, so I can’t say anything to that aspect. I can tell you a few of us were trying to think of a good message about SWPL to post. That is how I viewed the site. The jokes on me. I get it, and can laugh about it. I never did Study Abroad, but man I would have liked it I’m sure.

I’ve worked in rural MS, and if you think only black folks are poverty stricken you’re wrong. SWPL is more about class than race-understood. It isn’t supposed to be the grand design of what “we” like. It’s a joke, and some of the best ones are when “you” are the punchline.

10$ sandwichs?!?! Idiots! the lot of em. They (me) need to punished if only verbally and askance.

By: Danielle

Danielle — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 15:28:16 +0000

I’m actually disgusted by how self-absorbed most white people are regarding this blog. It is a joke and it’s an obvious observation that all white people are not alike. I think the responses to the blog are actually more telling than the blog. I’m surprised at the sheer numbers of white folks that try to split hairs about how “different” they are from other white people. Please get over yourselves and stop taking yourselves so seriously! Is this perhaps a universal characteristic of whiteness? Thinking you are more important, than in fact, you actually are?

By: dawn

dawn — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 01:54:57 +0000

I subscribe to the feed – not because I find it humorous. I don’t. I find it interesting because so many others do seem to find some relationship to the things he writes about. It is really about class. I am a white woman, but I have *very* little in common with the things he writes about. The recycling was one of the few things that I found to be on par with my experiences EXCEPT that my family has been recycling since I was a young child (and perhaps before then).

I don’t think it’s about race (even though that’s what he claims). It is definitely about demographics that focus more on class and location.