Street roots., January 07, 2011, Page 8, Image 8

8
street roots
Jan. 7, 2011
The white
man's
burden
K erm it the Frog m ay lam ent it isn ’t easy being
green, b u t blogger a n d author Christian L ander
fin d s being white comes with its own baggage
BY ROSETTE ROYALE
C O N T R IB U T IN G W R IT E R
hat would you do, say, if you came
across a group of people who’d never
been studied before? Some yet-to-be
chronicled civilization of homo sapiens who
acted in ways that, on the surface, made little
sense but whose internal logic demanded
deeper explorations? Would you apply for a
research grant to study them? Or would you
write a blog? Well, if you’ve got a penchant for
comedy and one-liners, you’d go for option
two. That’s what Christian Lander did and
people can’t get enough.
Maybe the ethnographic works of Christian
Lander don’t spring to mind as easily as those
of Claude Lévi-Strauss, who upended the
notion that savages exist, or Margaret Mead,
who presented successful, war-averse
matrilineal societies. But chances are, if you
do yoga, drive a Prius, watch “Mad Men” or
“The Colbert Report,” read “The Onion,” love
the ACLU, Noam Chomsky or reusable
shopping bags, Lander knows you. And he’s
written about you on his blog, Stuff White
People Like, which, to date, has had more
than 76 million hits (a factoid that would
impress many white people.)
But hold on, white people. Before you get
your hackles in a tizzy and throw your glass of
organic pomegranate juice with acai across
your IKEA-furnished living room, just know
that Lander has the heart of a humorist. What
he’s really doing is holding up a mirror, at
times, a pretty funny one, to what he sees in
the circles he’s traveled in, which are largely
circles of white people. And his observations »
have obtained a white-hot popularity. His first
book, “Stuff White People Like: The
Definitive Guide to the Unique Taste of
Millions,” enjoyed a healthy life on the New
York Times Bestseller list Perhaps the same
future will arrive for the just-released “Whiter
Shades of Pale: The Stuff White People Like,
Coast to Coast, from Seattle’s Sweaters to
Maine’s Microbreweries.” (Random House,
$15)
In a little afternoon study session at the
Alexis Hotel in Seattle, Lander and I got down
and dirty on the notion of whiteness. I
learned a lot from his ethnographic research,
as we touched upon topics ranging from the
humorous (over-priced sandwiches, anyone?)
to the serious (why is the progressive class
so, well, white?). Field notes from our
conference follow. But politically correct
students should be forewarned: References to
the “w-word” abound.
W
•
Rosette Royale: Do you remember the first
time you saw a white person?
C hristian L ander: Yes. I was just out of
the womb and I saw my father. I believe that
was the first one. But the first time I really
remember meeting a white person was when
I got home from the.hospital and I met my
next-door neighbor. And from there, my
brother. So I’ve been noticing them for quite
some time.
R.R.: Did you know that you were going to be
doing this kind of work?
C.L.: No, no. I was literally born into the
field. I was under the impression that I was
PHOTO 8Y JESS LANDER
going to grow up and follow a typical white
career: documentary filmmaker, journalist,
nonprofit administrator, possibly some so rt of
fundraiser for an opera company. Little did I
know I was heading toward this
anthropological study of this world. And I
don’t think I can escape it. I’m like Kurtz (in
Joseph Conrad’s “The Heart of Darkness.”)
I’m in “The H eart of Whiteness” here.
R.R.: Well, Seattle is sometimes known as a
heart o f whiteness. .
C.L.: Yeah, I’ve noticed th a t Although I’ve
recently been to Portland, which might have
taken over.
R.R.: So why do you think it’s important to
understand white people?
C.L.: They’re very difficult to understand.
They do things that don’t make a lot of sense.
One of the examples I use is Moleskine
notebooks. White people, they’re all creative
and need places to write down their ideas and
they like to carry it wherever they go. Now,
they could get notebooks, such as that (points
to my reporter’s notebook), which are very
inexpensive, that provide all the functionality
of Moleskine notebooks, that are l/2 0 th the
c o st Yet white people will pay a premium for
binding and the ability of other white people
to see them carrying a Moleskine notebook.
Because ultimately, you need these signifiers,
that you are creative. This helps th e Apple
computer company stay in business. Why
would you ride a bike with no gears? We
spent all this time inventing gears to make it
easy to ride around the city. Why would you
make it harder on yourself? Because
ultimately you want to be recognized as
someone who’s better than the person riding
the bike with the gears.
• It’s just such a challenge to get it across,
that people understand this isn’t some sort of
"mental disease: This is just how white people
operate.
R.R.: Now, no offense, but you’re white. Or at
least you look white.
C.L.: I am white. I don’t deny.
R.R.: Are you like the white people you find
yourself studying?
C.L.: Yes. I mean, I ride a fixed-gear
bicycle. I’m an idiot. I wait in line: I went to
Salumi (the Seattle artisan meat restaurant
and deli) today for lunch and I waited in line
to get my sandwich. The joke I have in the
new book is that white people like waiting in
line-in most other cultures when you see
people waiting in line for food, something
horrible has happened, like a dictator has
taken over or a natural disaster has struck.
But for white people, a new bakery has
opened. And so I was right in there, all
excited, couldn’t wait to eat my sandwich. So
I’m a part of i t
I think that I wouldn’t have the ability of
observation if I weren’t really examining and
making fun of myself. Because if you do these
observations without a kernel of truth, they
fall flat. And so the fact is that I’m going after
the pretentiousness of me, of what I do that’s
pretentious, fidiculous, my need to be
recognized as progressive. I’m just attacking
it viciously. And I think that’s what connects
with people. If I wasn’t going after myself, it
wouldn’t nearly have the same power.
R.R.: Is it upsetting to skewer yourself? Or
humbling?
C.L.: What’s more humbling is I thought I
was making fun of myself, I think I’m the only
See WHITE PEOPLE, page 9