Stuff White People Do

I was looking through NPR which is, as clearly said in their About NPR section:

"NPR (National Public Radio) is an internationally acclaimed producer and distributor of noncommercial news, talk, and entertainment programming."

Reading through I found this interesting article under Race and it goes as follows:

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Race
'Stuff White People Like' Hits a Nerve


Mac computer, bicyclist, recycling bin, sushi.

Favorite things? Above, #40, #61, #64 and #42 on Christian Lander's list of "Stuff White People Like." iStockPhoto; Getty Images

Talk of the Nation, February 26, 2008 · What do expensive sandwiches, co-ed sports, public radio and recycling have in common? According to blogger Christian Lander, they all fall under the category of "Stuff White People Like."

Just over a month old, the controversial and provocative blog has almost 4 million hits. Lander says he started the blog as pure satire and was surprised to see it take off as quickly as it did.

Critics charge that the list is racist, stereotypical, and conflates race with economic status. But Lander maintains that the blog is in the spirit of good, provocative fun: "Irony" is #50 on the list, "Having Black Friends" is #14, and Lander — who says almost everything he does is listed — plans to add "Self-Importance" soon."

You can read the LA Times for a different opinion: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-rodriguez25feb25,0,1952462.column
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As I skimmed through the website I could not help but laugh. I understood that it is all fun and satirical but in one interesting manner, I understood the origins of such conclusions.

For example: #73 Gentrification

(http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.wordpress.com/2008/02/22/73-gentrification/).

It reads as follows:

In general, white people love situations where they can’t lose. While this does account for the majority of their situations, perhaps the safest bet a white person can make is to buy a house in an up-and-coming neighborhood.

White people like to live in these neighborhoods because they get credibility and respect from other white people for living in a more “authentic” neighborhood where they are exposed to “true culture” every day. So whenever their friends mention their home in the suburbs or richer urban area, these people can say “oh, it’s so boring out there, so fake. In our neighborhood, things are just more real.” This superiority is important as white people jockey for position in their circle of friends.

They are like a modern day Lewis and Clark, except instead of searching for the ocean, they are searching for old properties to renovate.

In a few years, if more white people start moving in, these initial trailblazers will sell their property for triple what they paid and move into an ultramodern home.

Credibility or money, they can’t lose!

When one of these white people tell you where they live, you should say “whoa, it’s pretty rough down there. I don’t think I could live there.” This will make them feel even better about their credibility and status as neighborhood pioneers.
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Not to say that this is true but this is what my aunt has been telling me for the past 4 years when speaking about my neighborhood, thus this is not such an alien idea to me.

http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.wordpress.com/full-list-of-stuff-white-people-like/

Prof. G's Whiteness as Social Construct Slide Show

I know this exercise in creating a white museum (see previous post) has been difficult, uncomfortable and a bit baffling for many of you. As I reflect on how it is going, I am realizing that my presentation of it (as a professor who is not white) and the way I set you up (not as well as I would have liked in hindsight) was filled with troubling concerns. It looks like I am trying to entrap you into racist ideas and thinking. This much be disconcerting so early in the semester for many of you.

I promised this class would be a safe space to learn and grow in. I want you to be ready, willing and able to embrace and be empowered by ANY communication by the end of this course. Perhaps I've failed at bit at preparing you just yet. In any case, this is an important exercise that will set us up our conversations not about whiteness but about the nature of culture found in Chapter 3.

Yes, we need a definition of whiteness to complete this exercise though there are perhaps many we can come up with. That's the art of exploring the unknown, i.e., learning. To get to the unknown, we must empty ourselves of all we already know. Then discovering new things becomes available rather than replicating the past as if that's learning (sharing what you already think is known or true--that's just the first step). Additionally, we also need to define CULTURE to get at the heart of what this course in cultural anthropology is about and how it will become useful for you in the future. I gave you one definition--the learned ways of thinking, feeling, believing and behaving and now you've read about the value of working with a key cultural consultant (formerly called "informants" but the term evoked spying on your own culture/community).

So, I invite you to check out my emic slide show, my virtual white museum. I invite you and your group to create your own emic collaboration on whiteness as a slide show. That way we'll have 6 slide shows from the body of the class to compare. What different stories of whiteness can we tell or will the be the same? You game?? You can tell it from ANY perspective, from ANY point of view, from how far we come, what is no longer, from the view of minorities or from people considered white but view themselves as a particular ethnicity, or from religions, from sports, or from eye color and shape. Anything that tells a story about what we already know about whiteness. A local view of whiteness. We will explore and distinguish the difference between emic and etic in class. Prof. G