There is a popular book that is available in about every bookstore in the malls in Albany currently, and it is called Stuff White People Like: A Definitive Guide to the Unique Tastes of Millions and it is written by Christian Lander. Numbers one and two, respectively are "coffee," and "religions their parents don't belong to." As we discussed in the previous class, it can be easy to forget about blinder we might have on in reference to our privileged position. I am white, and it is both embarrassing and hilarious to look at white USers as a category in this light. Thinking about white privilege is not always and easy thing to do, as the cultural imperialism in this location and temporal context has constructed whites as the norm and everyone else as deviant. Peggy McIntosh offers some perspective on the issue, pointing to 50 ways whites are privileged in the United States currently. A copy of this article can be found here.
Faranak Miraftab explains what she encountered when she went to study in Mexico, that women, who had their own stereotypical notions of what it meant to be and Iranian woman, asked her if she could belly dance (599). My significant other was a Peace Corps volunteer in Benin. Recently, I met a family from Benin who he has been in contact with. Said family consists of two young girls (6 and 8 years old), two high-school aged boys and a mother and father. The girls, because they are the youngest, have the best English-speaking skills, so during our visit I spent most of my time chatting with them. The questions they asked me could have come directly out of the first book I mention, and while I was amused at what they think white people are like, it markedly reminds me of Miraftab's article. As we discussed in class, it is dangerous to assume how complex interactions of individuals will form or play out based solely on their global location.
photo taken from:
http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://jerkmag.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/stuffwhitepeoplelike.jpg&imgrefurl=http://jerkmag.wordpress.com/2009/12/13/stuff-white-people-like-a-jerky-sunday/&usg=__jzvt2TlW_Quu9E-CfECX4Oq8vc0=&h=861&w=570&sz=63&hl=en&start=0&zoom=1&tbnid=_S3BP0uXXkUowM:&tbnh=171&tbnw=113&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dstuff%2Bwhite%2Bpeople%2Blike%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26safe%3Doff%26sa%3DN%26biw%3D1126%26bih%3D502%26tbs%3Disch:1&um=1&itbs=1&iact=hc&vpx=258&vpy=91&dur=364&hovh=276&hovw=183&tx=101&ty=143&ei=RHOSTMCvGYT58AbJnZivBQ&oei=RHOSTMCvGYT58AbJnZivBQ&esq=1&page=1&ndsp=11&ved=1t:429,r:1,s:0
on 9/16/2010
The book, you may know, is actually based on the eponymous blog: http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/
ReplyDeleteThe concept is ingenious - in a parody of the way we have sociologically/athropologically studied marginalized communities as distinct cultures with strange, studiable practices, SWPL turns this past literature on its head. Instead, whites are studied anthropologically as a cultural group. The studier now becomes the studied. The objectifier is made the object. The 'neutral observer' is now the specimen.
What's especially interesting is how middle-class status is associated with the list of practices on SWPL. Low-income or working-class whites would probably not find much in the SWPL blog that is identifiable as practices they enjoy, while middle or upper class people of color might read the blog and thing "dang, I like that, too!" Because "white" as a racial category is associated with "moneyed," we intepret the default racial category of white with the default class category of middle-class. (You could also say the list is heteronormative, too). This is a further challenge to how studies of people of color tend to correlate people of color 'cultures' with low-income status.
All in all, a very fascinating blog.