My ongoing fascination with the unfolding of Stuff White People Like led me here today; which in turn led me to Black People Love Us!, from 2002. I think it probably does similar work on white identities (i.e. reconfirming them through self-reflexivity), but as a deliberately political strategy it perhaps directs the debate with more precision. Compare the media that it got with that of SWPL.
As you can see from my reading list, I’m a fan of the blog Stuff White People Like. I’m also White (proof: I like all of the things listed here, with the exception of Manhattan, which I haven’t got around to visiting. I ‘did’ South America before Europe, you see.). So, apparently, are most of the folks who dig the site, to the point where the (white) author is soon to release a book with Random House. To some extent the whole trajectory of this blog takes on an outline of ressentiment; configured by Fiona Probyn as a “giving that is always already a taking”. The self-reflexive white subject (self-reflexivity being, undoubtedly, something else that White People Like) recognises themselves with some shame, laughs at themselves (such is their white humility), generates a similarly motivated following of white compadrés. The blog author gets a book deal. The white readers buy the book. And at the end of the day, it’s hard to say whether power, or at least capital, has shifted any; although I guess that’s the edge of irony, and humour …
A journal entry I wrote from the Canadian Embassy in Quito, 19/12/2007:
I lost my bankcard (the second of two that I bought with me), and the Australian Embassy in Santiago is lending me 100 USD to see me straight until I get back to Mexico City. I am waiting for them to fax through the authorization to the Canadians. I find it quite amazing that the government is providing for me in this situation. I felt lucky to have whatever it is that seems to go along with being an Australian Citizen. I have thought a bit about the arrivant these past twenty four hours. Also about how my reliance on the state has something to do with wanting its indifference, its professionalism, the clear boundary between me and the system which means our relationship is instrumental. Refusal to rely on the state in this instance would mean investing myself in a web of relations that won’t end at the reception desk or my identity papers. I want that distance, the language of rights and citizenship - not the affective entwinements of community and mutual aid. Something in me prefers the uniforms and the paper shuffling to the indebtedness of the family or community bond, the requirement to talk about yourself, to feel grateful and reciprocal. I’ve never been sure if this is a personality problem of mine or if it is a recoded longing for another form of nonstate, nonsovereign community - one that retains certain disinvested features of certain relationships.
The state as unconditional gift? Surely not! But for me, today, with all the global privileges that have enabled me to escape physical crisis again, it has felt somewhat like that.
Don’t tell anybody.
(Of course, the state can be more like an unconditional gift (and less like one of towels and soap, in Az’s formulation) for people like me because I meet its condition in being an Anglo Australian of settler descent. I repaid the 100 USD by electronic transfer a few weeks ago. And that was it).
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