"I'm not a performance artist here."

Whenever a white person creates a work that is ironic and profound they have to say they aren't trying to be an artist, they are just going for laughs.

I love the site. I have to say, I've worked hard to not be a walking stereotype, and apparently failed. Nailed me to a tee.

rb

"SWPL" is really funny and kind of painful to a lot of us white folks, but I think it also performs a valuable service; it inspires its readers to think hard about our relationship with the consumer culture, and how much of our supposedly "original" attitudes have been fed to us by people who want to sell us fancy identity branding.

There's another one -- "thinking hard about the consumer culture". FUCK!

The reason why I enjoy SWPL so much is because for the first time someone is shining a spotlight on all the peculiar aspects of white culture (strong emphasis on peculiar...adult kickball anyone?). As a white person, it's an incredibly uncomfortable position to be in! Yet at the same time it's also something I think white people tend to do to other cultures all the time. We whites (esp. we educated upper middle class whites) love to make assessments of the "others." e.g. Latinos do this. Asians are like that. African-Americans act like this. Finally, finally, the weird habits of white people are on display in all its strange glory. We are in the crucible now. We are the "others." It's awkward but I think it's refreshing at the same. I'm not sure if this was the intent of the site, but this is what I gathered from it after reading it for several months now. My hope is that SWPL's ultimate result is a society that is less likely to put people in boxes based on race and skin color.

To me, there's no greater sin than creating something-- anything-- that has a built-in defense system, that renders itself immune to criticism. Because he identifies any kind of mindset that might criticize what he's doing as White, he escapes criticism. Oh, you don't like my blog? That's cause you're white. I don't mind cutting racial humor, personally. But I do mind ineffectual racial humor. This blog isn't particularly biting or smart or intelligent, but its author knows it doesn't have to be-- it has America's incredible anxiety about race to give it edge.

Here's the hidden truth, folks. This site isn't anti-white racist. It's anti-non-white racist. What he parodies isn't white culture, it's affluent culture. Everything that is a product of financial security and recent upward mobility is defined as White. Who likes wine and Priuses and yoga? Not white people-- rich people. Like many conceptions of the non-white, he pretends that his critiques valorize non-white people, when really it just excludes them. Because the affluent, the educated, and the discriminating is defined as white, it permanently excludes black people, Hispanic people, Asian people, etc., from being affluent, educated, or discriminating. Similar to the idea that an educated or refined black person lacks authenticity, it pretends to celebrate the non-white when it really curses them to a stereotype of non-whiteness that is uneducated, poor, and tacky.

That would be bad enough on its own. But he takes it to another level of hypocrisy, because he lambastes white people for wanting minorities to remain poor. But he himself has defined the affluent as a function of whiteness. Non-white people function only as bludgeons to use against his stereotype of whiteness. His blog commits one of the greatest acts of intellectual violence against a group of people you can imagine: it treats non-white people as a object, a faceless, personality-less Other who exists only for the purpose of proving what a brilliant and enlightened person the author is. It is functionally identical to saying "Some of my best friends are black."

And hear I thought saying "I love black people" was stupid and offensive....

LOVED IT!

I like to laugh. Salon needs more humorous articles like this. All this political talk just gets way too serious.

Does being a regular Salon reader make you whiter?

"Things white people like" is hysterical, but it's really about class, not race. Upper middle class urban Asians and African- Americans should have no problem recognizing themselves. We talk about ethnicity and race a lot in our culture but class remains a taboo subject because it goes against the myth that "anyone can make it America." I have found that class-ism is a form of discrimination that is common among "white people" of all races.

...that deals more directly with class issues...

http://www.stuffebplike.com/

Actually, I found SWPL through this one, I think...

I didn't make it past that line. I suppose he is trying to be funny, but it's not working. Probably because the attempted jokes are obvious. All of his alleged self-deprecation is actually just several chapters torn out of the Republicans' "How to accuse someone of being a liberal elitist" playbook.

One of the truly ridiculous things about white, upper-middle-class liberals is their idea that they should be embarrassed about making good choices instead of being like everyone else. The picture of vanity! Why not focus on the people who are actually going out of their way to make the world suck instead of on people who are going out of their way to keep it nice for everyone? There are good reasons for riding a bike, buying organic veggies, and having a steel water bottle. Most poor people I know would make those choices if they could.

(FTR, I never liked those redneck jokes either.)

I'm college educated, middle class, liberal and white the last time I checked, but 90% of these things don't pertain to me. I guess I should make a better effort to live up to the sterotype.

You my friend are the ENLIGHTENED ONE!

To be so original, to be so cool that you're not part of a sub-culture that can be joked about, is the ULTIMATE!

You are what we so-called advanced white people really want to be; cool yet unenfluenced by shallow pop culture and not caring what anyone else thinks about it.

Please share "The Secret" with us.