OMG! I'm White!

I've held, until this point, the idea that my blog posts would not become some sort of online diary. I didn't want my posts to end up sounding like Go Ask Alice. It is. The very nature of a blog makes it so. The fact that I choose to write about stuff that, in reality, matters to no one but me makes it the kind of self-indulgence that people like me complain about whenever we (I) look at other people's blogs. There's something a little funny about self-indulgence. The funny thing is, is that those who are prone to doing it often think that they're not self-indulgent at all. We tend to say that we're "reflective", or dare I say, "philosophic". Claptrap. Since I think I'm the only person that I know that will openly admit that some steroetypes are true, I was looking some time ago at the blog "Stuff White People Like". I realized, while I was looking (and laughing quite loudly, or LOLling), that alot of the stuff on the blog described me perfectly. I came to the horrific realization -- OH MY GOD, I'M WHITE! The fact that I am here, writing this blog post only serves to confirm the fact that I am indeed a white person ( #149 self-importance, which is just the same as self-indulgence). The problem is, though -- I'm not white. I had a conversation with a professor (who, if this list is anywhere near correct, may be the whitest person that I've ever met) about a year ago about "stuff white people like", and he maintained that the blog is more indicative of class than of race. Meaning, that if a person makes a certain amount of money and has a particular level of education, they are more likely to be a certain way, no matter the race. I actually expected him to answer the way that he did. You see, as the list suggests, white people like diversity. They also like the idea (and they will tell you at the drop of a hat) that all humans belong to the same race (i.e. the "human" race), so I expected that he would say that the list was about something other than race. Of course, given the fact that I was talking to a professor, if not race, then class. (What that meant is, that there is, as I see, an unwilingness among the "educated" to not tie any social problem to economy. This is a result of listening to too much Pacifica, I think). But, really, I am white. I mean, I like tea, I sport a "save Darfur" bracelet and a bracelet of coffee beans supporting free-trade coffee, I own 4 David Sedaris books, I like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report (and yes, in some strange way, Stephen Colbert is my ideal man), I listen to public radio and love "This American Life" (for the record, "Wiretap" is pretty good, too). I have a Liberal Arts degree (political science) and I have a degree in that Liberal Arts degree in disguise, philosophy. I'm crazy about recycling (I rinse, too). The only reason why I want to move to Canada is for the universal health care. Most disturbing is that I know who Noam Chomsky is. I've heard that there is something out there called gender dysmorphic disorder. If I'm not wrong on the name, as I am often wrong about a great many things --I know it's when a person feels that they were born the wrong gender. It's the classis Glenn or Glenda -- a man trapped in a woman's body (or as we've seen recently, a Chaz Bono trapped in a Chastity Bono's body). I wonder, could it be that it's possible for someone to be a white person trapped in a black person's body? I don't mean those kids who hang out at the mall with the sagging pants listening to Asher Roth. I'm talking about something that, if race is more than a social construct, and is (at least to some degree) biologically rooted, is it possible that nature, as in the case of gender, got something wrong? I was really trying not to bring Michael Jackson into this, but maybe instead of jesting at his becomming white, we should have recognized that he may have been sufferring from a real disorder. It may be possible that he was merely correcting a mistake -- he really was white. Maybe. I don't know. Maybe I should send a letter to David Duke and ask him what he thinks about it. LOL.