Different,Like Everyone Else: Stuff White People Like and the Marketplace of Diversity

This article explores Stuff White People Like (SWPL), a popular blog that has lampooned the cultural practices of a certain kind of bourgeoisie‐bohemian White person since its inception in early 2008. The overwhelmingly positive reception of the blog motivated the authors to explore the complexities of this commercial humor project in the context of the twenty‐first century multicultural neoliberalism in the United States. Through analysis of both the blog entries and online audience response, they ultimately claim that SWPL is limited in its potential for antiracist cultural work because it fails to challenge the logic of neoliberalism—indeed, it operates firmly within it—and defers a radical critique of White privilege. Moreover, SWPL facilitates gleeful celebration of essentialized White idiosyncrasies by incorporating a form of White “ethnicity” in the twenty‐first century neoliberal marketplace of diversity.