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March 17, 2009

Reflections on Christian Lander one year later

Posted by Anna Bowen at 04:21 PM ET | Comments (2)

I was flipping through Christian Lander's web-site based book, What White People Like, which has garnered lots of media attention and blushing from those who can relate over the past year. Among the culprits? Brunch, high-performance clothes, Moleskine notebooks, sushi, taking a year off, IKEA, saving Africa, etc. Most people are familiar with this already. I was thinking about this on the subway, thinking Christian Lander needs some more critique, when I overheard a group of middle aged white-Anglo people behind me discussing their love of jogging, half marathons, and staying in shape. Their conversation initially caught my attention because they started talking about how "the Kenyans" are always running past them and are so very fast. One of them said her favourite thing was to find a 5k "brunch jog" - that way she could jog a loop and reward herself at her favourite brunch spot. No joke.

So a little more than one year after Lander's webpage became a hit overnight, and six months or so after his book was published, nothing much has changed (save perhaps awareness, that elusive term). Will it ever?

Having been put in my place by subway eavesdropping (Lander is obviously hitting this thing on the nose), I reflected a little more on Lander. My first reaction is funny, funny, yes, yes, ooh uncomfortable, funny, irony, oh irony. But that only gets you so far. My next thought is that it's amazing that "white people" love this stuff (Not the "stuff," but the book and the blog). However, I can imagine many Canadian "white people" laughing along but sort of looking over their shoulders thinking, I totally love brunch! Wait a second, I'm white?

Thoughts?

1. Although we try to avoid talk of race in Canada, unlike our American counterparts who are more at ease with being upfront about it, the popularity of this site and book - even up here in multicultural Canada - shows that we know deep down inside that race is still an issue despite the beacon of multiculturalism that we uphold.

2. "White people" can take a joke (well, for the most part - a lot of not-humour comes out in the comments), a good first step

3. But what about this comment about "the Kenyans"? What of the things that these selfsame "white people" don't like? Burkas, for instance, or elementary schools in "undesirable" neighbourhoods? One blogger pointed out that "white people" don't like too many people living in one house. As we look a little deeper into what it is "white people" don't like, the joke gets a little less funny.

The cover of today's G&M shows a couple who fit deftly into the pigeonhole "white people," cuddling on pillows with their "Instant Family," siblings they adopted from Ethiopia. Although the premise is that this is a win-win situation, there's no pretending that overseas adoptions are not sometimes (a) fashion statements (b) benevolence
statements, or (c) trendy.

As Chandler Levack pointed out in her timely THIS article last year, what works about Stuff White People Like is that you can "laugh at yourself while maintaining a sense of superiority" when you read this stuff. And while that's what makes Lander's joke so successful, it's also what allows room for, and demands, more work.

More entries on: Race

November 19, 2008

Margaret Wente, the race thinker

Posted by Daniel Tseghay at 05:31 PM ET | Comments (0)

Margaret Wente has now covered race and its discontents in two consecutive issues of The Globe and Mail. Yesterday in her opinion piece, "Testing, testing, bigot 1-2-3", she described an outwardly, and unabashedly, prejudiced aunt - a woman who would often have a nasty thing to say about the black people she called "coloureds". This personal sketch then led itself to a discussion of the implicit racism nearly all people in the modern world betray, at least now and again, and the role it plays in the violence and social dysfunction we can find in some communities. Her piece for today's issue follows yesterday's easily and naturally. "Discrimination eats away at you - and increases your chance of mental illness" consists of an interview she conducted with British psychiatrist, Kwame McKenzie. The title, however, is only a partial summary of the their discussion since McKenzie notes a range of issues. He spoke of the fact that people of different ethnicities and cultures may describe mental illnesses differently and how physicians might work to recognize these ways; and the prevalance of certain illness in some communities. The effects of perceived discrimation (racial or otherwise), McKenzie described as being pronounced and even debilitating with various mood disorder potentially arising.

We need a more flexible health-care system consisting of insightful professionals capable of adjusting their methods to suit the needs of their patients. The one-size-fits-all approach will not work in a country as diverse as ours.

More entries on: Race

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