I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but Stuff White People Like made me uncomfortable from the start. Of course, I immediately recognized the class and race bias involved. I mean, white people like graduate school? They like modern furniture? They like gentrification? Oh, you mean they like things that most people of color can’t afford because there is a correlation between race and income. Yeah, racism is funny. Still, wasn’t this supposed to be parody? Doesn’t irony suggest a certain critical politic? Then why the discomfort on my part? I’m not sure if Adam Sternbergh’s article in The New Republic quite captures the source of my unease, but his insights at least validates it:
But if this blog is such a piquant satire of white liberal cultural mores and hypocrisies, then why do so many white people like Stuff White People Like? I imagine the most common reaction among its readers is summed up by one rhapsodic commenter: “Oh, lord, it only hurts because it’s true!” And that’s the problem. The reason the phrase “it’s funny because it’s true” has become a shorthand for things that are neither (a) funny nor (b) particularly true is because humor is rarely truly satirical when its targets also make up the bulk of its audience. Or, if it is, the audience doesn’t tend to find it funny. Think Colbert skewering Bush at the White House press corps dinner. I don’t remember Dick Cheney slapping his knee and shouting “Oh lord it only hurts because it’s true!” Instead, with this brand of comedy, the goal is to comfort, rather than challenge or disturb, the audience.
Ultimately, he concludes that what white people really like is “pretending to poke fun at themselves while actually being allowed to feel superior.” Perhaps that’s it. What bothers me the most is that this blog is not ironic (irony is a complex and fragile thing) but rather smug and somewhat mean-spirited toward those non-white Others that it purportedly addresses (who else would need advice on how to address a white person?) and simultaneously utter disregards them. The humor in this blog is completely apolitical, and so utterly complicit in a structure that systematically oppresses the poor, women, people of color, gay men and lesbians, immigrants and innumerable Others while congratulating the normative elite on how progressive and open-minded they are as they sit in the midst of the spoils of exploitation.
So, for the record, let me say that this white person doesn’t like that the privileges he enjoys come at the expense of subjugating Others.
Echoing what Majora Carter discusses on a local level, a report released today by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature highlights the reality that it is the world’s poorest and most socially marginalized who are already suffering the greatest impact of global warming. It also suggests that the solutions coming from the developed world don’t adequately taking this into account:
“There is a trend to try to find solutions through technological interventions and high-investment solutions, which is tricky because that won’t always work for poor countries,” said Gonzalo Oviedo, author of a powerful report on the effect of climate change on poor people in the developing world, released this week by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. “What we are saying is that in many poor countries there is a high level of vulnerability, and that needs other kinds of solutions.”
Read the whole report here.
Filed under: Ideas, Social Justice | Tags: class, environment, race, TED, urban design
I get the feeling that I will be posting a lot of TED talks here on interpellate. As such, it is entirely appropriate that I get the ball rolling with Majora Carter’s talk about her fight against “environmental racism.” This incredible woman reminds me to be the person I want to be.
Update: Perhaps I won’t be posting as many TED talks as I thought. Until I can figure out how to successfully embed their videos, you can check out Majora Carter’s inspiring talk here.
