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ABSTRACT
Despite what its name might suggest, the satirical website "StuffWhite People Like" is an insightful commentary on the values and tastes of liberal members of the American "professional-managerial class." Besides calling attention to the "racing" of class, the site presents a portrait of these people that allows us to read the way structurally inherent anxieties around class reproduction and a historically conditioned quest for authenticity and individuality are sedimented in their everyday behavior and consciousness. The popularity of the site in 2008 reflected public interest in the intersection of race, class, and culture in the context of Barak Obama's presidential campaign. [Keywords: Middle class, race, consumption, popular culture, Obama, Internet, public anthropology]
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At the end of the day, you don't have to be white to be white; you just have to be rich.
-Christian Lander, creator of "StuffWhite People Like" blog1
In March 2008 and then again in July of that year, the popular anthropology blog "Savage Minds" hosted animated discussions prompted by the website "StuffWhite People Like" (hereafter SWPL).2 For those who are not familiar with SWPL, it was a humorous blog that became an Internet and publishing phenomenon in 2008, for a while registering more than 300,000 daily hits and spawning a book that remained on the New York Times best-seller list for several months.3 The blog consisted of a list of things that "white people" liked, followed by a few paragraphs expanding on each item. The list included things such as coffee, film festivals, farmer's markets, organic food, Barack Obama, the Sunday New York Times, Wrigley Field, liberal arts degrees, beards, glasses, McSweeney's, hardwood floors, dive bars, and rock climbing. The entry on yoga is typical:
15. YOGA: Though its roots are in India, the global tree of yoga has most of its branches in rich white neighborhoods. Yoga has been so thoroughly embraced by white people because it requires large amounts of money and time, two things that white people have a lot of.
Yoga is essentially stretching with guidance. Advanced yoga is just regular yoga done in a very hot room.
You might think that since yoga is such a minimalist activity, it can be done almost anywhere. But you would be...