This week I face up to my whiteness
I’m so white it hurts. I’m achingly white, not in the alabaster sense. But in the beige sense.
Being white means I’m not the “other”. If you’re black or Asian, I’m what you are not. Whean they cast for home loan or Milk Arrowroot commercials, my type is assumed in the lineup, then they choose a smattering of “other” ethnic groups to make up the balance. (I speak from cringe-worthy experience here – in my teens I played the whitebread-girl-next-door-with-a-Labrador-and-husband in a number of lowbrow ads. I got the gigs because I was “typical”.)
My differences and my behaviours are not analysed or typecast. Because I’m the norm. That’s what it means to be white.
What also makes me white is that I’m blown away by the internet phenomenon Stuff White People Like. White people always are. I first came across the Canadian-based website in early 2008, shortly after it launched as a list of cultural quirks white folk are partial to, like going out for breakfast (#, 36), yoga, Moleskin notebooks, Banksy artwork, following religions their parents don’t belong to (#2), sea salt, listening to black music black people don’t listen to anymore (#116) and issuing apologies. I wrote about it back then (another thing White People like: claiming they were ahead of the curve). Since, the site has morphed into a New York Times bestseller and the site has clocked more than 72 million hits.
Christian Lander being so very white
A few days ago I went to hear the site’s founder Christian Lander talk about white people. He essentially held a mirror up to every one of us in the auditorium. And gosh if we didn’t’ get a fright! Seriously, white people never have mirrors held up to them – they do the mirror holding (#20 Being an expert on other people’s culture). So it feels dead prickly to be on the receiving end. We like to think we are not a type, that we have the freedom to define ourselves as unique and special beyond the constraints of the stereotyping we impose on quaint multi-cultural groups around us. But, no, we are so very much a type.
Lander qualified that by white he means liberal, upper middle-class. “You don’t have to be white to be white, you just have to be rich,” he says. He also argued that much of white taste is about crafting a particular identity. We buy things to make us look discerning (#132 Picking their own fruit). Sure, we like to be altruistic, so long as everyone gets to see it (#60 Driving a Toyota Prius).
We fall over ourselves to look inclusive (#14 Having black friends), but make a point of distinguishing ourselves from the “wrong type of white person” (#124 Hating people who wear Ed Hardy). And we think we know what’s best for poor people (#62). Oh Lord, it hurts, doesn’t it? At worst the mirror shows us up as highly judgmental and separatist. At best we’re rendered entirely un-unique. You mean all of us are into exotic grains? I thought it was just my thing! (Hello, quinoa, anyone?).
That night I didn’t really sleep. I was squirming that much. I make brash statements about bogans. I love to tell people from overseas how wonderfully rich the Greek community is here in Australia. I preach quinoa. And, if I’m to be frank, this column I write is so white it’d make you look tanned if you were to stand next to it.
But what’s the real issue here? It goes beyond bourgeois tastes. Lander remarked that we’re so busy defining and branding ourselves as special and informed and above the “others”, we lose sight of what we stand for. We’re not honest, which perpetuates white privilege. He quotes Malcolm X as saying, given the choice between a racist and an liberal he’d choose the racist…at least they’re honest. He also raised my pet rant to illustrate this: white people bang on about supporting equal education funding for all, but send their own kids to private schools.
I can’t say that contemplating my whiteness made my week better. But it woke me up to the way in which I often need to define the things I do as “right”. There’s nothing wrong with doing yoga, or liking David Sedaris or watching TED.com or following The Onion. It’s just that it’s not right, either.
Which is, no doubt, a terribly white thing to say.
Kudos to you Sarah for exploring the privaledge of whiteness on your blog in an honest and frank way. “Whiteness” is often invisible and taken for granted, so it is refreshing to see that it is being acknowledged more in the public sphere and through writing.
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oh man i am so white… this lovely sunny sunday morning i have so far gone for a run wearing my heart monitor and then had quinoa porridge at a sunny sunday morning type cafe with a dandelion soy latte… i live smack bam in the middle of brighton, melbourne yet maintain that my parents and i are different to everybody else in brighton… ie. not snobby… cause mum is from the country.. so we have a farm and are aware of life outside of the brighton bubble…. i know, i know, the hypocrisy is horrendous i am well aware…. great article sarah… x
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[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Clare Lancaster, Foodies Online. Foodies Online said: #Foodies sunday life: in which I shine the light on my judgemental, bourgeois, affected, quinoa-loving "white" self http://ow.ly/19BtbJ [...]
Geez thanks for the mirror Sarah, great article. I am squirming a little now, be that , white or wrong
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It’s refreshing you can be so candid Sarah, well put. I sometimes read an Aussie blog called Eurasian Sensation you might be interested in if you don’t read it already, it looks at “race” issues in Australia and the Pacific and in the mix between politics and pop culture he sometimes comes up with some real analytic gems.
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I love that you can laugh at yourself. You actually ‘best’ displayed this whiter shade of stereotype with your GNW appearance. your whole “yoga at bondi with old man river, let’s look down upon and raise our eyebrows at the lowbrow ethnic comedian” made me cringe. i know that’s not the ‘you’ you share here so didn’t let that change my respect for you.
You are awesome Sarah!…although your search for enlightenment is tiring! Just stop doing. And be. Human being.
The other thing that White Stereotribe
people do (the other great white female voice of her generation, Mia Freedman, is a prime example of this) is defend the rights of ‘ethnics’ for all the wrong reasons and then rejoice in their emancipation. eg. the burqa and the freedom to wear it. ‘freedom’. ha! what a joke. A burqa is not a fashion item or statement nor is it a functional garment and it certainly isn’t a law. It is a symbol of “hypocritical piety” based on patriarchal indoctrination.
…but white women defend muslim women wearing a burqa by saying it’s their feminist right!!!! why is it okay for a woman to be stripped (!) of her visual presence in the name of a male God?
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I love that whities have been outed! I’m half German half Maori yet look more white European so people tend to be comfortable making black stereotypes in my company. I do yoga , eat vegetarian etc most of the things whities love to involve themselves with. I do however feel I see things from a part indigenous view also which I’m really thankful for, definitely keeps it real. Sometimes I feel whites are so patronizing in their views, perhaps well meaning? Great article
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#14 “Having black friends” is a feature of my life as an Aboriginal Australian who has worked in the media and internationally. I just want to say – having me as a black friend 20 years ago was NOT fashionable. Now, sadly, I have people wanting to be my friend for all the wrong reasons – and I can pick it. Yet I am an educated and a high earning Indigenous Australian but I still have no place in this society because my voice isn’t represented in mainstream media such as the Sun Herald or Sunday Telegraph, despite having worked for a long time as a journalist myself. Sarah – you did have some valid points in your article, but have you ever met any Aboriginal people who have probably achieved at a higher level than you have – and they do exist – and continue to go unrecognised because the media just aren’t interested in talented black Australians nor stuff that “Black People Like” – which probably every Aboriginal person in Redfern already knows about. That just wouldn’t work here in Australia. Nice the whiteness is highlighted in your article and I get where that comes from, but when blackness and Aboriginal people int his coutnry has never been a topic of interest to probably the vast majority of your readers…….. writing about whiteness is hilarious when you nor any of your paper counterparts have never considered blackness in this country in a serious way and what we have endured for the last 220 years. It’s about time that “Stuff Black Australians Like ” became something that mainstream media was interested in instead of trying to find the negative story of the day. We are all over it.
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October 26th, 2010 at 6:02 pm
Hey Ginny, you raise such a valid point. My column length dictates I cant go into the detail I”d like. But another argument that stems from the dominance of whiteness is that certain stereotyped black behaviours and interests are deemed stuff worth liking…which somehow legitimises a “forgetting” of the rest. In regards Black Australia: dance and art is deemed stuff worthy of liking. But, as you say, what about these people’s take on politics and journalistic style etc.
Where do you work now? What do you write/opine on?
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Hey Sarah, great article. I really see what you mean about being white and feeling completely unoriginal. Although I must point out that, even though we whities have no new ideas or concepts, a lot of the ones we do seem to share (picking fruit, yoga, quinoa, hybrid cars, travel, awareness) share at the core of them a desire to be a better human being. So what if we all desire to be a fairly similar type of better human being? At least we are trying.
I dont think it necessarily portrays a lack of honesty though. A lack of originality maybe… But I consider myself a white person (I look like the Greek my heritage thinks I am but I grew up in Perth so I will consider myself this for the sake of argument.) While I love yoga and breakfasts at cafes and sushi and roller derby, I genuinely like these things. They bring me joy and pleasure and make my little cup of happiness overflow, to the point where I don’t care how many other people (white or not) like it. But there is a lot on that list I dont agree with. I don’t care for soccer, I love red meat and would fail at veganism/ vegetarianism, I travel soberly and avoid backpackers, I dont shop at farmer’s markets or have black friends and freely admit I know sod all about wine and other cultures.
Oh, and I actually dont enjoy Things White People Like. I find it angry and snarky and overly critical.
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It’s so funny that we try to be different from everyone else around us that we end up belonging to a pattern.
I guess the point is: don’t be a hypocrite. Be humble. Don’t try to be the cool one all the time, that’s pathetic.
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I discovered SWPL through your blog, Sarah, and I found exactly the same thing – it held a mirror up to me and the things I “like”. For those of us who missed Lander’s Opera House talk, you can watch his Authors@Google speech on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfRgjW4hFcU
I love a few of the points he makes:
1. Just because you have “progressive” views, doesn’t mean you are open-minded.
2. Do what you believe in on a blog. Don’t try.
3. It’s more of a class thing, not a race thing.
4. “White people” still have a desire for status and competition among neighbours – which is now determined by authenticity and environmental awareness (rather than wearing a big diamond ring and driving a Bentley). It’s just a shift – we are still as competitive as ever.
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[...] A really interesting piece by Sarah Wilson about what it means to be white. [...]
I know I’m a bit late to the discussion, but I just read this posting a few days ago and it’s gotten me a bit keyed up. Not necessarily at you Sarah, because I do think you’re very sincere about your discomfort. And I know this type of post is risky, so I thank you for putting yourself out there.
However, my problem is that the privilege described in the TWPL book and blog really has nothing to do with the realities of systematic racism and white privilege.
What unfortunately happens, however, is that people confuse the two issues. Which leads to posts like this written by whites about how “embarrassed” they are by their whiteness, based on superficial things they really shouldn’t be embarrassed about. Which ultimately leads to a bit of eye rolling and to some of the frustration I’m guessing Ginny upthread (though I’m not trying to speak for her) and other people of color feel when they read such navel-gazing, because it’s not addressing the real issue at hand.
To have mirrors held up to you by other whites…well…frankly, it’s examining privilege from an empowered position. It allows you to investigate privilege from a “safe” place. It allows you to feel as if you’ve had a dialogue about race and privilege, when in actuality you’ve only had non-challenging discussions with people very similar to yourself. It creates a feedback loop through which whites assuage their guilt, without having to do any of the deep self-examination that truly leads to development and change. And ultimately, it makes light of the very real pain that systematic racism causes.
To add insult to injury, TWPL takes away the agency of people of color to enjoy “middle class” things, AND simultaneously exist as people of color. Apparently, if you are middle class, a person of color, and enjoy yoga, well then you aren’t really a person of color. Or conversely, no matter how much money you have, if you are a person of color you can’t enjoy yoga, because it’s something that only white people like.
It’s a bit of cliche to pass on, but Peggy MacIntosh wrote a wonderful piece that begins to get to the root of what white privilege is REALLY about – an invisible, unacknowledged (for the most part), unconscious set of advantages and assumptions. You can read it here:
http://www.amptoons.com/blog/files/mcintosh.html
I know TWPL is supposed to be funny and taken lightly, but when I see posts like this it bothers me that TWPL’s points are conflated with real issues of race and privilege. Because let’s face it, to say that you’re whiter than white and privileged because you like quinoa and drive a Prius is completely missing the point.
BTW, I’m an African American woman who happens to very much enjoy reading your self-defined, supposedly very “white” blog!
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