Monday, January 4, 2010

From My Bookshelf

I grew up a minority. Really. Caucasians have been a minority in San Antonio for decades, since I was a kid. The city's mostly Hispanic - although try to find Hispanica on a map - but as far as I was concerned people were just people. Some spoke Spanish, some spoke Chinese, or Khmer, or German, whatever. It never occurred to me that my people - white folks - might have a culture outside of what I saw in the Brady Bunch or the Partridge Family. Live and learn.

Stuff White People Like by Christan Lander
   This is the definitive guide to white culture. Not to be confused with White Supremacist 'culture,' white culture is focused on self-satisfaction, appearances, and trying to make a difference without really changing anything you're doing in your own life.
   These are short essays about, well, stuff white people like. Such as Music Piracy, Hating Corporations, and Avoiding Confrontation. These are all cringe-inducing insights into the way privileged white folks like myself behave, and how they're perceived by non-white folks. They're the best kind of essays, funny and true, and liable to make some posers change the way they act.
   Mr. Lander is himself a white person, and better yet he's Canadian, which makes him extra, extra white. And thus more than qualified to write this book.

Quote: 'One of the more popular white-person activities of the past fifteen years has been attempting to educate others on the evils of multinational corporations. White people love nothing more than explaining to you how Wal-Mart, McDonald's, Microsoft, or Halliburton is destroying the Earth's cultures and resources.'

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