"Whiter Shades of Pale," by Christian Lander

Being very interested in the critical and complex topic of race in America, I often read serious material on the issue. But despite all the very serious problems inherent in this difficult subject, there is a humorous side of the topic as well. I know this is a delicate area, but I think most topics can both be serious and, sometimes, have a lighter side. For examples, see the work of many great comics and “serious but comic” commentators on race, gender, class, religion, and more. (Think the late Richard Pryor, or Chris Rock, for example; these are quite different in some ways, but both were/are fearless in using comedy to illuminate and confront racial issues.) This is a preamble to saying that I just read the book “Whiter Shades of Pale: The Stuff White People Like, Coast to Coast, From Seattle’s Sweaters to Maine’s Microbrews” (Random House, 2010), and found it quite funny, in a good-humored “poking-fun-at-ourselves” way. The author of this book, Christian Lander, already well known for his blog, StuffWhitePeopleLike.com, and for his 2008 book, “Stuff White People Like,” is no Richard Pryor, but writes on this topic in a light vein. This current book, “Whiter Shades of Pale” (note the reference to the iconic Procol Harum song) consists of 92 short chapters on topics such as “Ivy League,” “Single-Malt Scotch,” “Unpaid Internships,” “Nannies,” “Messenger Bags,” “Bumper Stickers,” “Flea Markets,” “Anthropologie,” “Frisbee Sports,” “Trader Joe’s,” “Black Music that Black People Don’t Listen to Anymore,” “The Huffington Post,” “Heirloom Tomatoes,” “Expensive Jeans,” and “Ikea.” These chapters are interspersed with wonderful line drawings of individuals deemed representative of major North American cities such as Boston, New York, Washington, Asheville, Chicago, Madison, Boulder, Los Angeles, Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, and of course my city San Francisco. For each full-page drawing, there is hilarious annotation of the person’s clothing and other accessories. Of course all of this is very tongue-in-cheek. It isn’t really about all white people, but about what others have called “bobos” – bourgeois bohemians –, in other words, self-styled liberal, hip, usually urban, and generally privileged white people; Lander includes himself in this category. He also notes that sometimes this group of “white people” actually includes members of all races. The book and its chapters and drawings are all part of a gentle send-up of an all-too-easily-parodied "type." In conclusion, I am tempted to include lots of quotations here, but will limit myself to one representative example: “White people have plunged headfirst into world music. If they play it loud enough…, people are almost guaranteed to say, ‘Who is this?’ To which the white person can say, ‘You know, when I was in Bolivia, I really got into this flute music. I got this CD from a group of musicians on the streets of La Paz.’”