Appreciation for "the beautiful white dialect"

A bit of lovely arch irony from the ExoticWhiteGirls Tumblr, on "The beautiful white dialect":

I love how beautiful and simple the exotic white dialect is. Because it has less words and lacks any logical grammar, it just sounds so peaceful, calming, and real. You can just feel the emotion when you listen to them speak. It varies from tribe to tribe, but throughout the white motherland is basically the same. I took a two-week service trip to build a McDonalds with authentic white food and lived with an authentic white family, so I know. It’s so sad that they’ve started using civilized words from modern languages, “cash” and “pajama.” It must be because there’s no concept of cash in white culture. Did you know they have twenty different words for “coffee” but no word for “self-aware?”

Les blanches exotiques

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

MORE: Funny • language • race

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Grey Eyed Man of Destiny

I don’t get it. Or at least I hope I don’t get it. I had an honest-to-goodness douche chill reading this.

“Did you know they have twenty different words for “coffee” but no word for “self-aware?” is one of the worst jokes I’ve ever read or heard.
- http://jere7my.livejournal.com jere7my
  
  Imagine a well-meaning white person returning from a two-week trip to Africa, brimming with stories about how “exotic” and “close to nature” and “blessedly simple” the people s/he met were. Then do a flippy-flop.
  - http://goodsharer.com/ Aloisius
    
    So imagine a person I’ve never met saying incredibly offensive culturally insensitive things?
    
    And that’s supposed to be what? Funny? Ironic?
    
    This site seems to be some kind of parody of a group of people I’ve never met, but the author seems to think is endemic enough to recognize. Maybe as a Jew from San Francisco, my social circle is lacking in jackasses or the culturally inept.
    - chaopoiesis
      
      It’s supposed to be satire, which is kind of a classic response to cultural oppression. (File under goyim jokes.)
      
      For the record, Los Anthropolocos have the prior claim on the discovery in question.
- Wreckrob8
  
  The more I think about it the more apt the coffee and self- aware stuff becomes. The Western sense of individuality requires very little self-awareness and seems to be the antithesis of Eastern concepts of self-awareness. Where would capitalism be without our sense of individuality and coffee, without the coffee houses of seventeenth century London (or Starbucks now)? Maybe you were being sarcastic and I’m not paying attention?
  - Grey Eyed Man of Destiny
    
    Ok, yeah, I did get it.
    
    My point is, among others, that they used “self-aware” in the very sentence that explains that “self-aware” is not a word. That is not a good joke. Also, “cash” has romantic (white) roots. Further, the whole joke gets very confused between “english spoken by poor english speakers” (who are certainly not necessarily white…) and “the english language as an illogical and porous system,” which, of course, it is, but which arguably gives it its strength and subtlety.
    - Wreckrob8
      
      I was thinking cash the Chinese coin. Now I’ve googled it I find there is a different French root. Things start to make sense now.
    - http://jere7my.livejournal.com jere7my
      
      “Self-aware” is a compound word, so it’s arguable whether English has “a word” for the concept. And while “cashier” does indeed come from Middle French “caisse”, money-box, “cash” in the sense of “coinage” may come from Sanskrit “karsa”, via a term for a Chinese copper coin.
      
      But I think you’re still missing the joke. This is written by an ersatz clueless foreigner, so errors and half-truths and misapprehensions are part of the funny. Eskimos don’t have fifty words for snow, either.
      - sarahnocal
        
        Like introspective?
  - waetherman
    
    I’m certainly not self -aware until I’ve had my double espresso in the morning.
- sarahnocal
  
  I don’t get it either, other than just more American self loathing
  - sarahnocal
    
    Oh, and introspective is a good word.
  - millie fink
    
    I don’t get it either, other than just more American self loathing
    
    ?
    
    The blog is put together by a non-white American about exotifying tendencies displayed by white Americans.
digi_owl

Ok i admit it, i do not get the joke at all.
- Felton / Moderator
  
  http://exoticwhitegirls.tumblr.com/explanation
DewiMorgan

If you don’t get it, then I guess you may not now what it’s spoofing?

There are plenty of (pseudo)anthropological articles out there describing other cultures with basically these same phrases; the “eskimos have 20 words for snow” trope is applied to pretty much every culture, for example.

The whole thing is doing that, describing white, western culture through the eyes of an anthropologist as bigoted as the white anthropologists that have used those same phrases about other cultures.

Alternatively, RTFA, and click the “just so we’re clear” and “people who get it” links.
- Ipo
  
  They don’t only have 20 words for snow.
  
  Us exotics of course have even more words for snow.
- http://marjaerwin.livejournal.com/ Marja Erwin
  
  A lot of anthropology is about not doing that.
  
  And the stories about 20/200/2,000 words for snow are rooted in debates [such as the controversy about the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis] over the relationship between linguistics, psychology, and anthropology, not in any need to exoticize.
  - http://jere7my.livejournal.com jere7my
    
    Originally, sure. When your aunt brings it up at the dinner table after getting back from her trip to Alaska, in the context of how charming and innocent and unspoiled the native peoples are, it is part of the exoticization impulse.
millie fink

Ha, well-played!

A lack of self-awareness in racial and cultural terms is indeed one of the hallmarks of so-called white people. As are their supposedly objective, benign approaches to and appropriations from other cultures.
- EvilTerran
  
  Nice stereotyping.
  - millie fink
    
    Ah, I forgot, when I speak of common tendencies among “white people,” I must watch out for their fee fees by saying “There there, OF COURSE I don’t mean ALL white people. If it doesn’t apply to you, then bully for you, and for the people of color who end up having to deal with you.”
    
    Feel better now?
    - Jean Baptiste
      
      Your attitude is absolutely stunning. Switch “white people” for “people of color” and “people of color” for “white people” in your post, and see how offensive and (seemingly?) hateful what you said is. The fact that you think it’s perfectly fine to feel as you do is probably the saddest thing of all.
      - millie fink
        
        So you don’t think there are common tendencies among white people?
        
        There certainly are among other people, and it’s not bigoted to say so if those tendencies really exist. Take, for instance, a common black male tendency to be especially wary of the police. Or, conversely, a common white tendency to be more trusting of the police. Or, to get back to the point, to perceive members of apparent non-white groups in exotifying ways.
        
        Yes, many white people also don’t trust the police, but if you don’t get what I’m saying, well, go read more of that wonderful tumblr.
        
        http://exoticwhitegirls.tumblr.com/archive
        
        I don’t “hate” white people, not at all. I just wish more of them would get a clue.
    - http://twitter.com/riprowan Rip Rowan
      
      “Common tendencies among white people.”
      - millie fink
        
        To say that something is common among the members of a group is not to say that all members have it in common.
      - http://www.madziabryll.com Cefeida
        
        Add ‘in the postcolonial West’ and it sounds a bit better.
    - Wreckrob8
      
      Stereotypes are only useful when they are used to demonstrate that they don’t exist. Oh, well.
  - Wreckrob8
    
    So stereotypes have no conceivable/conceptual use?
  - EH
    
    Stereotyping is not done, it’s observed.
mjed mazga

I admit that I stopped caring about the quality of this alleged joke once the author said “less words.” I’m not really sure what that is, but I wish I some one would explain it to me using as few words as possible.

edit: increase difficulty by explaining it in “as little words” or “as much words” as possible.
- neurogami
  
  First rule of language jokes: know your own language.
- http://marjaerwin.livejournal.com/ Marja Erwin
  
  “Less” is good English, and most likely good Frysk.
  
  English-speakers have been using less in this sense for more than a thousand years. Prescriptivists have been interfering for less than two hundred and fifty.
  
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fewer_vs._less
  
  http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2819
- giantasterisk
  
  Is this really so complicated? It’s parody. Have you never spoken with a privileged, but none-the-less ignorant white person recount their trip to some “exotic” country (read: prominently non-white)? Despite their clear ignorance of nearly anything outside their own culture, such a person will often feel so superior to the “primitive” culture they visit that they feel imminently qualified to speak about its people’s habits, language, etc. Such people seem to believe that whites are the de facto anthropologists of the world, and everyone else is from a sub-culture that can only truly be understood through the white lens.
  - http://jere7my.livejournal.com jere7my
    
    Egg-zactly. It’s not a joke about how silly or quaint the English language is; it’s a joke about people who go to other countries and come back saying how silly and quaint their languages are. The accuracy of the commentary is beside the point.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1040387534 Martha Clayton

What does “white” mean? It seems that the intended meaning is actually “ethnocentric idiot” which is really unfair and perpetuates negativity. I have heard similarly stupid observations made by people of many ethnic backgrounds about cultures they have “discovered”. The entire “joke” seems really outdated and mis-informed. It’s also not irony.
- millie fink
  
  Outdated? Not at ALL. Behold, Meghan Lochte.
  
  http://exoticwhitegirls.tumblr.com/post/30122028914/hippie-logic-so-for-all-the-people-who
  
  Warning: autoplay
- GlyphGryph
  
  This is pretty clearly irony employed as satire. From your questions, I understand why you wouldn’t think so, though – irony involves undercurrents, and you seem to have missed the intended message. Somehow. It’s not like it’s terribly deep irony…
  
  The phrase is not genuine, and has a meaning removed from that taken at face value.”White” doesn’t mean anything here, not truly – it’s a tool to guide thought in a certain way, to encompass the target audience in mirrored language that reflects on themselves. Treating all “whites” as White is sort of central to that effect, since it’s a commentary on those who treat other skin colors as a monoculture of some sort, and the building and unfounded expansion and communication of stereotypes due to a lack of real understanding.
  
  What, exactly, is “misinformed” about the joke, btw?
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000444450214 Genre Slur

bwahahahahahah!
semiotix

Look, can we talk about the wholesale appropriation of white culture by commercially motivated nonwhite performers who don’t really appreciate the meaning of the art they’re stealing?

I mean, let’s say you’re a big fan of Kanye West. Okay, that’s fine. But if you don’t know that he stole all his best stuff from Pat Boone and Conway Twitty, then you’re just conveniently writing white people out of your history.

Again.
- millie fink
  
  Ha. Doubleplus good, sir.
- GoatLordMessiah
  
  What happens if you’re a big fan of the works of Wagner?
Wordguy

From Les Boingaires Exotiques, “…They have twenty different ways to explain jokes to trolls…”
Pope Ratzo

I just came back from a week in Wisconsin, which is the deepest, lightest of the white homelands.

Wife and I were in a restaurant where they serve fried potatoes covered in melted (white) cheese and they give you a little white paper cup of mayonnaise in which to dip them. I am not joking.

It was scary at first, but after a while, you start to realize that they really are just like you and me. It is the traits we share with these white natives that are important, not our differences. And some of their food is quite nutritious, once you get past the complete lack of flavor.
- pharmavixen
  
  If you should find yourself in Wisconsin again, for a truly authentic white experience, I suggest you try the deep-fried mac and cheese. A word of caution: you’d best share one order with others and not eat the whole thing yourself. I mean, they’re used to it because they grew up with it, but it might be too much for you.
- SomeGuyNamedMark
  
  The lives of folks in traditional suburban Massachusetts settlements is simple and charming. Every day they take their motorized carts to the market and return with fresh foods and delicious dishes prepared for them. They eat together that evening in a ritual I’ve come to know and love as “tv time” where they gather around an electronic fire.
Saltine

This may blow my karma for the day, but I have a newborn keeping me awake all night, and I work at an HBCU , so my tolerance for those who are butt-hurt over a joke like this is about zero. If you seriously don’t get the (admittedly somewhat tiresome) humor of the piece, go read Wikipedia on white privilege . If you do get the point, and you just really don’t like the idea of people generalizing about “whiteness,” you can stress test your cardiovascular and digestive systems by Googling for “Stuff White People Like” for even more pointed and possibly tedious humor.
- SomeGuyNamedMark
  
  Your thick skin and sense of humor offend me. Please turn yourself in for reeducation.
Preston Sturges

Stuff White People Like

http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/
- http://openid.anonymity.com/1usu0u Anonymous
  
  I like the premise behind the linked blog but the execution is far from stellar. Basically, SWPL is the same “anthropological” joke done much better.
  - millie fink
    
    I’d say it’s similar in that SWPL is also an “anthropological” joke, but also that it differs in that the linked blog satirizes a tendency common among a far wider range of white people. SWPL more narrowly satirizes white hipsters.
    - http://twitter.com/fossilfuels Funk Daddy
      
      I listen to some seriously dated hip hop… I hope this doesn’t mean I’m a hipster.
      
      Egads! That same hope is a trademark affliction of hipsters!
      
      I shall state Emphatically that I am not a hipster. ahem. I am not a hipster.
      
      Lemony Lime! They do that too!
      
      Fuck those guys
  - Preston Sturges
    
    I always liked this one:
    
    #116 Black Music that Black People Don’t Listen to Anymore
    
    ………if you are good at concealing laughter and contempt, you should ask a white person about “Real Hip Hop.” They will quickly tell you about how they don’t listen to “Commercial Hip Hop” (aka music that black people actually enjoy), and that they much prefer “Classic Hip Hop.”
    “I don’t listen to that commercial stuff. I’m more into the Real Hip Hop, you know? KRS One, Del Tha Funkee Homosapien, De La Soul, Wu Tang, you know, The Old School.”
    Calling this style of music ‘old school’ is considered an especially apt name since the majority of people who listen to it did so while attending old schools such as Dartmouth, Bard, and Williams College.
- GoatLordMessiah
  
  I’ve never understood SWPL, If it had been stuff hipsters like, It would make more sense to me, but would kill the joke, I guess.
Julie Mango

Many (white) people here seem justifiably upset about the crass stereotyping taking place at ExoticWhiteGirls. I sympathize, though as a person of color I can only imagine what it must feel like to be objected to such hateful generalizations. Here, this will make you feel better: http://www.blackpeopleloveus.com
- millie fink
  
  But but but, we SAID we don’t notice your color anymore, so why you gotta go talking about ours?!
  
  smdh
- http://goodsharer.com/ Aloisius
  
  black people love us is not funny either.
  - millie fink
    
    Maybe not to the kind of white folks who get all butthurt over that kind of thing.
    
    I think it’s hilarious. And its satire is spot on too.
    - GoatLordMessiah
      
      Humour is a subjective thing. Their website design is objectively bad.
Wreckrob8

I don’t know. Language is necessarily denotative and connotative and coded and cannot avoid stereotyping. The more blatant and egregious the stereotyping the more obvious that should become. Whole areas of discourse then become meaningful only on account of their lack of content. I fink.
Navin_Johnson

There there….
Just_Ok

Ageist much?
http://twitter.com/fossilfuels Funk Daddy

Butthurt or butt-hurt is totally legit on the interwebs, even in high falutin boingboing discussions. It means “something we all get sometimes, but right now it’s you and not me” Like a splinter, or stubbing your toe, if you make a big deal of it people snicker and point
EvilTerran

Come now, Navin. We fall on the same side of pathetic internet arguments in BB comment threads often enough, I’d have hoped to have earned more a contentful response than that in your eyes.
millie fink

Nah. It just makes you a person who still doesn’t get it.

And “hateful”? Towards what, do you suppose?

It’s not hateful towards white people, and certainly not towards all white people. I’d say it’s an expression by a non-white person of being fed up with something that a lot of white people do, and that something is exoticizing people of color. If you can’t see how very common that is, let alone what kind of problem it is, then you’re just not paying the right kind of attention yet.
EvilTerran

Ok, ok, you got me there. Believe it or not, I did consider that before hitting the submit button, I just couldn’t think of a better way of expressing what I meant at the time. Bad form, I know.
Jean Baptiste

I definitely get it. I just don’t want it. You and I disagree. Let’s leave it at that.
Navin_Johnson

You see, Saltine pretty much nailed my opinion on it. Some of the entries were pretty funny, others pretty hamfisted, but in general not worth getting upset about. I too was going to use the word “butthurt” as well :(