Pondering stuff white people like

[alias_sqbr]

Reading the article I mentioned in my last post I was reminded of stuff white people like, specifically this video of the creator talking about his experiences was interesting, the way he went from making a blog for fun to book deal in like a month is intense

Comments

[splintax]

Drive-by UCCan checking in here:

I am often amazed at how openly "left wing" people despise the poor. They watch Today Tonight! And have badly dyed hair! And use bad grammar!I think in most cases these people despise the "stupid" rather than the poor. And in most of these cases, the "stupid" are actually just those who are not as well-educated as the person in question

[alias_sqbr]

Oh absolutely. Of course a lot of the markers of being "well educated" come directly from classism, the whole idea of a "classical education" is to know the things poor people don't and can't. Being smug about speaking "proper english" is entirely about classism: there's nothing that makes any dialect inherently better than any other (more appropriate in a given context, maybe, but not better).

And yes, this isn't directly correlated to wealth, it gets very complicated. I was brought up by poor well educated parents while my husband was brought up by nouveau-middle-class parents with money but not much education, so on the one had I know a lot more about opera and Great Literature, while he knows a lot more about good clothes and restaurants. And then we're smug about it, and the other calls us out for being classist :D

[ataxi]

Yeah, and the other thing is that the motivation to "get an education" in the sense with which we mean it (i.e. go to uni and get your bachelors -- or doctorate, heh!) is almost totally formed by class. So it's not "lazy and dumb", it's just "why would I?".

An interesting phenomenon at the moment is the rehabilitation of the trades in mainstream society -- the ongoing shortage of tradies mean that they earn a lot, and there are these quite noticeable trends in journalism and lifestyle programming to create the idea of the "tradie catch" -- you know, the hot, uncomplicated hunk who earns a lot of money and is great with DIY about the house, like those presenters on Backyard Blitz and so forth. I saw a competition for "Australia's Hottest Tradie" on the SMH website a couple of days ago.

(I wonder if this sort of trend will be accompanied by increasing stigmatisation of the white collar working class? Is The Office an example of that maybe?)

[alias_sqbr]

An interesting phenomenon at the moment is the rehabilitation of the trades in mainstream society -- the ongoing shortage of tradies mean that they earn a lot, and there are these quite noticeable trends in journalism and lifestyle programming to create the idea of the "tradie catch" -- you know, the hot, uncomplicated hunk who earns a lot of money and is great with DIY about the house, like those presenters on Backyard Blitz and so forth. I saw a competition for "Australia's Hottest Tradie" on the SMH website a couple of days ago.

Huh. That had managed to totally pass me by. And thus I have nothing to say on it but "That is interesting" :)

maybe :"despise" is the wrong word

[ataxi]

That's a funny blog. I recognised a lot of myself in the things that were satirised, so it was nice and edgy for me.

Of course, aside from the fact that the "white people" it's talking about enjoy the highest degree of privilege in our world, it's the moral equivalent of forming a "Bogan Piss-take Society" on Facebook and putting up jokes like:Q: Where does a bogan keep his underwear?
A: Under the back seat of his 1973 Kingswood parked on a verge in Kelmscott!
i.e. not that funny for any obvious reason, and unbelievably cheap (hence the creator's ability to churn through hundreds of examples of "Stuff White People Like

Re: maybe :"despise" is the wrong word

[alias_sqbr]

Yeah, perhaps despise is too strong a word. But certainly there's a disturbing amount of classism.

Personally I find I can relate ok to people without much education, but do have problems with people who dislike the idea of educating yourself on principle (especially since they're unlikely to look kindly upon my life choices :D) But I also get annoyed by people who think they're better than other people (especially me, though I don't get this so much any more) just because they have more education.

"No, you're doing it wrong" is just the default for a lot of people when faced with choices they don't understand

Pretty much.

[strangedave]

I read a whole bunch of Stuff White People Like at once, so I caught on that it was a very specific type of white person they were talking about quickly. Not just upper middle class and left wing, but some entries quite specific to the US as well, though many of those references could be translated to Australia, barring the differences in race relations. It certainly has enough winces of recognition from me to keep it sharp ('White people like 80s nights!' Yes, we do

[alias_sqbr]

Oh yes, it's very american too.

much of the hard left spends their whole life trying to work through the cognitive dissonance, and the right spend a lot of time wondering how it is that they seem to have more in common with people on the 'other side'

disclaimer: Possibly very ill-considered rant inspired by certain far left family members who shall remain nameless.

I must admit it's something I find I have to think about. I think it requires more flexibility and compassion than a lot of ideologically driven far-left people can manage: if you believe that anyone who is at all capitalist/homophobic/sexist/racist etc is Pure Unadulterated Evil then you end up only having any real sympathy or respect for other people with exactly the same ideals as yourself. But if you acknowledge that these attitudes, while wrong, can come from understandable motivations and experiences, and these underlying issues need to be addressed(*), then that means maybe having sympathy for Liberal voters which is an impossible proposition