It all started with an instant message conversation, but this Wednesday night, author of Stuff White People Like: The Definitive Guide to the Unique Taste of Millions,"" Christian Lander, will be visiting as part of the Wisconsin Book Festival.
""Stuff White People Like,"" one of the year's most popular Internet sensations and model for it's-painfully-funny-because-it's-true comedy, was published in July and has its roots in a conversation about ""The Wire.""
Lander, author of the site www.stuffwhitepeoplelike.com and book, was talking with his Filipino friend Myles Valentin in January when Valentin said he would not trust a white person who did not watch the HBO series. The two traded reasons why white people may have missed the show - they were too busy getting divorced, going to therapy or doing yoga.
""Alright, that's it,"" Lander recalls saying to himself. ""It's time to start a blog.""
What began as a small list spread among friends and then caught fire thanks to endless e-mail forwarding and word of mouth.
""I didn't see more than 10 people reading it,"" Lander says. ""It wasn't even in the back of my head that it was going to get popular ... The fact that it exploded still surprises me.""
It's important to remember that the list, which stands at 111 items and is updated regularly, is not about the tastes of your ""Joe Six-Pack"" kind of white people.
Instead, he is writing about affluent, politically-left-leaning, liberal humanist ""Joe Wine and Brie"" white people.
Lander is talking about San Francisco (characteristic #91) and Public Radio (#44) white people, the ones who drive around in Toyota Prius (#60) with bumper stickers (#100) proclaiming their support for Barack Obama (#8). But if these do not sound like race-based traits to you, Lander says that's because they are not.
""It's fundamentally more about class than technically is about race,"" he says. ""So you don't really have to be white to be white.""
According to Lander, what he calls an ""inherent competition"" among Americans - the keeping up with the Jones' mentality - has manifested itself in a new desire among mostly white people to appear the most empathetic, racially tolerant and enlightened.
""It's still as much about ego as buying a big car in the '50s was,"" Lander says. ""The whole idea of anonymous charity and doing what's right because it's right has been commoditized just like anything else.""
Lander expanded the blog into a book, ""Stuff White People Like: The Definitive Guide to the Unique Taste of Millions,"" and his tour will take him to Madison Wednesday night.
A theme of the festival is ""great books inspire great conversations,"" and Lander says he hopes the book can make readers able to talk about race more easily by pointing out our differences with comedy.
""Recognizing difference isn't racist,"" he says. ""Recognizing difference is essential to understanding. So I think if that conversation begins, that's fantastic.""
As for the blog, Lander says it has a bright future, precisely because of e-mails like the one he recently received from a friend about the phenomenon of ""hooping.""
Apparently some white people, probably the ones who enjoy children's games as adults (characteristic #102) and religions their parents don't belong to (#2), have started, as Lander puts it, ""this spiritual thing around the fucking hula hoop.""
""As long as people keep doing stupid shit like that,"" Lander says, stuffwhitepeoplelike.com will have a place in the world.
Christian Lander will speak at Borders at 3750 University Avenue Wednesday at 7:00 p.m.
