Stuff White People Like (7 page)

A trip to Wrigley Field with a white person can be the final piece in the friendship puzzle. Be sure to bring khaki shorts, which are required for entry to the stadium.

31 Snowboarding

During the winter months, one of the favorite leisure activities of white people is snowboarding. The sport was invented in the ’80s when a group of white people took a single ski, made it wider, and turned it sideways.

Like all other popular white activities, snowboarding requires the purchase of a lot of very expensive equipment and activity-specific clothing. Assuming that you can wear any winter jacket when you go snowboarding is a common mistake that can lead to wealthy white children laughing at you from the chairlift.

To properly snowboard, you are expected to purchase an oversized brand-name jacket and baggy snow pants. These will not be cheap. Remember, you are rebelling against the conformity of skiing, and the best way to do it is to dress exactly like everyone else.

The sport is also essential to older white people who need to show their other old white friends that they are cool.

Now that you have spent almost $2,000 for equipment and clothing, you will have to pay upwards of $80 for a lift ticket. Then, following a morning of falling down, you can replenish your energy by purchasing a $14 hamburger at the snack bar. If you are lucky enough to live within a reasonable driving distance of the resort, your final expense will be fuel costs to return home. Otherwise you can expect to pay a few hundred dollars for a room near the mountain.

In other words, a white invitation to go snowboarding is like them handing you a bill for three grand. The best response to one of these invitations is to say that you will accompany them to the mountain when a nonwhite person wins the X Games or a gold medal in the Winter Olympics.

32 Veganism/Vegetarianism

As with many white-people activities, being vegan/vegetarian enables them to feel as though they are helping the environment
and
it gives them a sweet way to feel superior to others. For further evidence, note how the vegetarian world has increasing levels of extremism (no meat, no dairy, no eggs, no fish, nothing that has been cooked, etc.).

Much like not watching TV, being vegan/vegetarian makes white people pretty hard to deal with on a day-to-day basis—having dinner, going to restaurants, and having them over to watch political debates all become major challenges as white people will talk about how they cannot eat anything and would rather that the meat and cheese be thrown in the garbage than put into their bodies.

But wait, aren’t there white people who eat organic, grain-fed, free-range cattle and chicken? Yes, but these white people are racked with guilt knowing that they are still eating a dead animal, contributing to rainforest deforestation and global warming.

Whether you are dealing with a meat eater or a vegan/vegetarian, there are many ways to use this information to your advantage. If you require a favor from a vegetarian white person, you should invite them to dinner with your family. When your mother/ grandmother offers them a dish with meat in it, they will reject it, saying that they are vegetarian. When the meal is over, tell them that your mom is very embarrassed, and that in your culture rejecting food is the equivalent of spitting on someone’s grave. They will then owe you a favor, which can be called in when you need a trip to the airport, someone to help you move, a small interest-free loan, or a place for your friend to crash.

If you need to gain leverage with meat eaters, it’s pretty easy. They already feel guilty; just point it out.

33 Marijuana

People from many cultures (Southeast Asia, Jamaica, India, Morocco, Mexico, etc.) like marijuana, but white people take it to an entirely new level.

To simply purchase, roll, and smoke marijuana is not enough for white people. They need to make sure they know all the different strains, cultivation techniques, and methods for smoking it. They even have an entire magazine devoted to it, one that actually has center-folds of plants that people have grown.

White people are also willing to spend more than $500 on smoking devices just to find new and more expensive ways to smoke weed.

It is worth noting that every white person, at some point, has written a high school or college paper about the history of how the DuPont company helped make weed illegal. This paper also teaches about how hemp can be used to fuel cars, make clothing, create food, cure cancer, and solve every single problem on earth.

While you would assume that most white people smoke weed between the ages of 14 and 28 (and act as though they are the first generation to have done so), the reality is that white people smoke weed well into old age. They also smoke weed with their kids! This is not a joke. White people love weed so much that they consider it a “gift” to share with their kids. This has led to a generation that was not allowed to watch
Power Rangers
but was allowed to toke up.

All white people believe marijuana should be legalized, and they consider the Netherlands a pinnacle of enlightenment. Also, every white person has had their most profound weed-smoking experience in Amsterdam, so it’s a good idea to fabricate a story about your own experience there so you can quickly forge a bond. Traditional tales use the following words: hostel, brownie, girl/guy from Hungary, crazy, locked out, chill dudes from Ireland.

Under
no circumstances
should you ever imply that people just smoke weed to get high (they do it for medical/spiritual/social reasons, etc.), or that there are any negative consequences. This will likely alienate you from white people.

On the plus side, white people are always looking for higher-quality, more potent, more organic marijuana. If you promise to hook them up with a special selection from your home country, they will likely pay a high premium.

34 Architecture

If you ask white people what they love about cities they don’t live in, they will say “restaurants,” “culture,” and “architecture.” They just can’t get enough of old buildings or ultramodern buildings next to old buildings.

If you want to fit in with white people you need to learn about I. M. Pei, Frank Lloyd Wright, Frank Gehry, and a whole swath of others. Also, be prepared to say “Bauhaus” a lot.

Once you have the basics down, you should choose a city that people are unlikely to have visited, then make up a name and choose one of the following: (a) opera house, (b) museum, (c) city hall, (d) civic center. Then put it all together into something like this: “Gehry is good, but I’m much more into the work of D. F. Winterhausen. He designed the new opera house in Podgorica.” Wait for a beat and then say, “In Montenegro. Have you never been?” The white person will be left in stunned silence, reverence, and respect.

The reason white people love architecture so much is that deep down they believe they could have been great architects. They feel the same way about other professions, including professor, writer, and politician.

Also of note: White people love big books about architecture. So if you need to get one a gift, this always goes over well because it makes them feel smart without having to read too much.

35
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart / The Colbert Report

The Daily Show/Colbert Report
are held in such high regard by white people that to criticize them would be the equivalent of setting the pope on fire in Italy in 1822. It just isn’t done; in fact, it couldn’t even be considered!

White people love to make fun of politics, especially right-wing politics. It’s a pretty easy target and makes for some decent humor. But what’s interesting is that white people are actually starting to believe that these two shows are legitimate news sources. “Oh, I don’t watch the news,” they will say. “I watch
The Daily Show
and
The Colbert Report.
You know, studies show that viewers of those shows are more educated than people who watch Fox News or CNN.”

White women all consider Jon Stewart to be the most perfect man on the planet. This is not a debate, it is law.

The Daily Show
also features guests like John McCain, writers, policy analysts, and actors. It is comforting for white people to see boring celebrities get interviewed in a funny fashion. It fills their need to do something productive, but also not to work that hard at it.

Take note that Tuesday through Friday during the working week, you can break
all
awkward silences with white people by saying, “Did you see
The Daily Show/Colbert Report
last night?” At which point they will start talking until you are ready to move on to more interesting activities.

36 Brunch

When Loverboy sang “Everybody’s working for the weekend,” they meant that you work all week so that you can earn a break and go to some sweet bars or concerts and rock out as hard as possible because you have two days for the hangover to fix itself. Well, white people work for the weekend, except that their only goal is to eat brunch on Saturday or Sunday at one of their favorite breakfast places.

These places are restaurants that specialize in breakfast food and are usually only open from 8:00 A.M. to 2:00 P.M., and if you arrive at any time after 9:30, prepare to wait for up to an hour with white people who cannot wait to get vegan pancakes, eggs benedict, waffles, or deluxe French toast.