In the coming post-racial future, where the subaltern is not only just speaking but also running for President, will it be okay to mock and satirize stereotypical "white culture"? Stuff White People Like seems to thinks so. And whoever its authors are, they're doing it in a way that takes the early 2000s sensation Black People Love Us to its natural evolution: biting, devastating blog form. From #26, Manhattan:
White people like New York because it has artists, restaurants, a subway, history, diversity, plays, and other white people. It literally has everything white people need to thrive!
From #19, Travelling:
What’s amazing is that all white people have pretty much the same experience, but all of them believe theirs to be the first of its kind. So much so that they return to North America with ideas of writing novels and screenplays about their experience.
From #15, Yoga:
Yoga is also an expensive activity. It gives white people the chance to showcase their $80 pants. The cost of four yoga classes is equal to the amount of money it would take to pay for uniforms and travel costs of an AAU Basketball team in the inner city. Lastly like other stuff that white people like, yoga feels exotic and foreign (ties into post #2 about eastern religions) and deep down in some way, white people feel that participation makes up for years of colonial rule in India.
From #61, Bicycles:
But not all white people love bicycles in the same way, there is much diversity. First up, we have the younger urban white folks who absolutely love their fixed gear bicycles. These are seen all over college towns, Silverlake in LA, Williamsburg in Brooklyn, Queen West in Toronto, and Victoria, British Columbia. Fixed gear bicycles meet a lot of requirements for white person acceptance. They can be made from older (i.e. vintage) bicycles, thus allowing the rider to have a unique bike that is unlikely to be ridden by anyone else in town.
What's interesting is that a lot of the "stuff white people like" according to Stuff White People Like are shared by bourgeois-urban-yuppie-hipster U.S. people of color, and also many Mexicans in Mexico, I'm finding. (As I'm writing this, I'm consuming Stuff White People Like #1, Coffee.)
* Photo above, from the Stuff White People Like about page.
** A NOTE ON FRIDAY'S bombing in central Mexico City: Since I've been asked a bit, here's what we know about what happened. A bomb went off in the hands of a man on Avenida Chapultepec near Metro Insurgentes around lunchtime, about two blocks away from the capital police station. The man died, and two others were injured. The city went on high alert, and the government is saying that the Sinaloa cartel is responsible for the botched attack, which it alleges was intended for the SSP headquarters. It couldn't have been a very big bomb; the papers today are running gruesome images of the dead man on a stretcher with only his hand blown off and shredded skin hanging from his legs. Interesting side-bar, the D.F. government will seek to house the urban Otomis who had been squatting on the empty lot near the blast site and are now displaced.