How to Win White Friends: Whiteness and Hyper-Visibility in 'Stuff White People Like'

• In Event: Race, Whiteness and Culture

Abstract

This paper investigates a recent popular weblog, Stuff White People Like (http://www.stuffwhitepeoplelike.com) as a useful case study in the hyper-visibility of whiteness. I argue that Stuff White People Like’s rhetorical treatment of whiteness functions in two very different ways: first, it opens up space for a critical examination of white privilege’s pernicious effects and second, it undermines the effectiveness of the analysis it makes possible through its celebration of whiteness as quaint, but innocuous.

Author

• Blake Abbott, University of Georgia