tabularasae:

Recently I’ve come across plenty of hashtags on facebook pointing fun of white and socio-economic privilege. It seems as if there’s a hashtag for every kind of display of white privilege: “Ugh, there’s no starbucks in the Burbank Airport” (#whitegirlproblems); “There’s nothing in my fridge that takes less than ten minutes to prepare” (#1stworldproblems); “I’m the only white person here to take the SAT” (#whitepeopleproblems), and so on and so forth. 

Now to be fair, in context, some of these hashtags are actually pretty funny, and I myself have whipped out the hashtag during thoroughly grating conversations with privileged peers (I felt oddly enthused and proud when I snidely whipped out #whitegirlproblems in response to a girl who was “seriously stressing out” while trying to debate where she wanted to go to dinner [“Sushi or Italian? I just can’t decide! And I’ve had sushi twice this week already!”]). Websites like “White Whine” are hilarious in how plainly and effortlessly they point out how socially skewed and spoiled many people in the “First World” are (A little introspection among the top brackets of society—who knew?!). Even better that websites like “White Whine’ and hashtags such as #whitepeopleproblems are frequently and most often employed by whites.

But the one troubling thing about these hashtags is this: It seems as if—as always seems to be the case—that calling attention to the privileged mindsets and behaviors of whites is only able to happen in a jokingly meta or ironic way. Stuffwhitepeoplelike.com was hilarious and great in that it exposed how staples of many socio-economically stable, white, suburban cultures rest on white and class privilege, while never once providing an alternative to this culture and ideology. The numerous times I and other people of color have seriously (and fairly, no less) analyzed and raised awareness to the many facets and examples of white privilege prevalent in our culture only to be shot down compared to the recent surge in #whitepeople/firstworld hashtags is incredible. 

While people of color and authors of the critical culture literati are frequently lambasted for merely drawing attention to this cultural trend, many white people—strangely enough—take part in it themselves. This surge in shallow self-referencing among the privileged, while perhaps appearing in some ways progressive, is really only reflecting and supporting the privilege it quasi points fun at. Which points to another, latent facet of these kinds of privileges: that dominant cultures have license to draw attention to themselves only in shallow, lighthearted, and flippant ways. Replace #whitegirlproblems with a brief paragraph actually analyzing and critiquing said “white girl” behavior and I’m sure all hell’ll break loose; replace #1stworldproblems with a link or an article commenting on America’s use of sweatshop labor in Malaysia or China on the Facebook status of a man complaining about his scoffed Nike’s and see if people are so willing to chuckle. 

Putting a mirror up to your lifestyle is only fun when you’re certain you won’t have to change said lifestyle; calling attention to how absurd it is to complain about petty instance x, y and z is only humorous if you’re unaware of the pervasive extents to which said instances are truly unfunny to someone else (someone most likely experiencing #3rdworldproblems I’m sure [or even worse: someone, in America (we don’t all experience the “First World” in the same way) whose labor is exploited, who doesn’t have health benefits, who *GASP!* couldn’t even afford that four dollar latte you just spilled inside your pristine white Lexus]). 

Am I saying #1stworldproblems, #whitegirlproblems, and other hashtags of the sort should be abolished? NO! Of course not—they’re funny! And despite my super-serious blogging persona, I do in fact enjoy a little meta-humor, and poking fun at the ridiculous (A sarcastic holler of “#whitegirlproblems!” to a girl complaining about how she was agonizing over figuring out how to transport drugs she purchased for a concert: priceless). But I do wish—and I do think this is quite reasonable, all things considered—that we were able to address #whitepeopleproblems not just on #whitepeople’s terms, and that white people, and socio-economically stable people, and Americans, and Europeans, and those who (and this includes myself, and I’m sure almost every person reading this in one way or another) are privileged were able to communally embrace poking fun at our privilege with the same verve and enthusiasm as when we criticize, analyze, and deconstruct it. 

Okay? #That’sall.