White Shame
Benjamin Schwarz writes in The Atlantic about White People, jumping off from Christian Lander's blog Stuff White People Like. Subhead on the story: "The new "white people" are bigoted, but not the way you think--or they'll admit." And note that these White People, in Schwarz' words, "aren't always white, and the vast majority of whites aren't White People ([Lander] doesn't even capitalize the term)":
When I interviewed Lander on the telephone in July, he acknowledged that White People are in fact "desperate to define themselves as other than white." Indeed, he rightly places "diversity" and "tolerance" highest on the list of virtues prized by White People (as did Brooks for Bobos). Of course, this group shuns the suburbs (sterile, bland ... white--a view that hasn't advanced much since Malvina Reynolds's contemptuous "Little Boxes" of 1962) while it embraces certain neighborhoods as "authentic" (Williamsburg, Echo Park, the Mission) and spurns other enclaves and cities (say, Astoria, Reseda, Concord). Lander's White People approve of the kind of diversity that affords them the aesthetic and consumer benefits of what they like to think of as urban life--that is, the kind that allows them toget sushi and tacos on the same street. But they will also send their kids to private school with other rich white kids so that they can avoid the "low test scores" that come with educational diversity.Here and elsewhere, accompanying the book's mockery of the essentially innocuous solipsism of White People is what Lander, a man of the left, described to me as his exasperation with progressives' "cultural righteousness" and "intolerance and groupthink"--a set of attitudes that enhances and is enhanced by a profoundly smug and incurious outlook. To be sure, these faults aren't peculiar to the progressive and the hip, but Lander repeatedly and cleverly shows how some of White People's favorite activities (watching political documentaries, "raising awareness," foreign travel), which they complacently embrace as broadening, are in fact lazy and tend to be intellectually and politically stultifying: White People "like feeling smart without doing work--two hours in a theater is easier than ten hours with a book."
Anybody's thoughts turn to my merry band of trolls?
> get sushi and tacos on the same
> street. But they will also send
> their kids to private school
That may be more about simply being thrifty. Ten years or so ago someone did an article about the typical American millionaire. By that point, they were often middle class people who simply had the good sense to save a lot of money and invest thoughtfully. They often had one indulgence... Good dinners out on Friday or nice clothes for work or a car that meant a lot to them... But otherwise, they were thrifty as Hell.
And in general, this White People Like X theme got very boring very fast. Many whites in America, though of humble origins, are our champions at nurturing good families, delaying gratification, and having faith in education and hard work. And then it pays off for them. If at that point you want to make fun of their ideas about authenticity, then go ahead and let 'er rip. (It's a lot of fun. I made time to see Brooks on his "Bobos" tour at an Orange County library a few years ago.)
But I suspect you're missing the forest for the trees.
Crid [cridcridatgmail] at October 16, 2008 1:25 AM
True. They just have the biggest bullhorn and insist on blaring it in everybody else's ears.
Jim Treacher at October 16, 2008 1:33 AM
Hmpf, In my experience, a diversity advocate is little better than a not very well closeted bigot.
Lets bus the kids in the middle class district across town so they can experience diversity...but I'm sending my kids to private school or home schooling them so I can avoid that.
A person who holds all choices equal will offer any amount of money and time out of the public purse to prop that notion up.
Inequality in educational results and admissions? Well, quota systems, reserved slots, dollars for diversity style programs, and legal suits.
Unequal representation in bank loans...ignore credit related reasons and make legal changes to force acceptance of applications by unqualified persons...so what if it causes bankruptcy and ruin to both corporations and private citizens alike...its for diversity!
Low test scores and unequal graduation rates?
Don't address the problem...classify bad English as a separate language, treat it as a valid form of student expression (whatever that means), and practice social promotion to move the failures up and out of the system...because surely the magic of diversity will even things out then!
Robert H. at October 16, 2008 6:03 AM
Well, everyone needs some reason to feel superior. It's hardly a new phenomena.
I have this mental picture of Lander (and his "White people") - they aren't too good in sports, nor math and science. They've never actually served in the military, or lived in a foreign country. They went to a "good" school and got a "good" education and feel that entitles them to feel superior to others.
Let their pipes back up, and its amazing how quickly the attitude of superiority toward the plumber gets hidden away. At least until he leaves.
When the failure of their cherished ideals is brought up, the underlying assumptions are never wrong. The fault is always in the implementation.
You don't find many of them working in Information Technology. Computers don't care how many times you keep doing something wrong. You won't get a different result. You need to modify your approach.
MarkD at October 16, 2008 11:00 AM
Ben Schwarz is just about the most humorless person on the planet. And he's a zillion years old, or at least too old to get this.
And since he's at UCLA, he comes in contact with white people who are just like Lander's White People (like Hillary Clinton, they all had grannies who were Jewish or Cherokee or Montenegrian or something dusky), but won't admit it.
And boy, is The Atlantic about three months late with this?
KateCoe at October 16, 2008 8:06 PM
You read my mind! The whole time I was reading this item I was thinking Sadly, No! and got quite a chuckle from your last line.
One mark of the closet racist is the inability to admit that they dislike anyone black. That's the current way to spot them. Someone who isn't racist will treat them just as they do other white people -- they'll like some, hate some and be neutral about most of them.
But then again, these patronizing s.o.b.'s don't realize that black people are just, ahem, people. Good, bad and indifferent. Some admirable, some assholes and most, just like most of us, somewhere in between.
T's Grammy at October 17, 2008 11:13 AM
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