Gene Expression: How White are you? (Stuff White People Like)

scored a 35.

Posted by: razib | September 7, 2008 10:32 PM

Twenty. You're whiter than me Razib.

/me checks skin color again.

Posted by: Adam | September 7, 2008 11:05 PM

14. Honest. Some of that may be put down to my not being American or living in America.

Posted by: John S. Wilkins | September 7, 2008 11:10 PM

25. I reserve the right to refer to you as "honkey" in the future.

you and your wine bars.

Posted by: agnostic | September 7, 2008 11:11 PM

/me checks skin color again.

race is a social construct.
raise your consciousness.

(now 37 ;-)

Posted by: razib | September 7, 2008 11:31 PM

7. Honestly.

I must be even less white than Wilkins.

Actually it should be 6 because bicycles and coffee are really the same box.

Posted by: Sandgroper | September 7, 2008 11:49 PM

42 out of 107, but the mullet lets me know I'm still the wrong kind of white person.

Still, in the university/urban area where I live, I know or have seen several dozen people who look exactly like the bearded hipster that pops up at 107.

Posted by: canis | September 7, 2008 11:55 PM

12 out of 107 Stuffs White People Like here. And I'm half-white/half-Filipino, so maybe that's it.

Posted by: Christopher | September 8, 2008 12:13 AM

Wow, only 21. It doesn't seem that "white people" includes unhip 40-something suburbanites. (And does enjoying 80s night count if I don't think of the songs as "oldies"?)

Posted by: Peggy | September 8, 2008 12:16 AM

39

Posted by: michael vassar | September 8, 2008 12:19 AM

32. (Non-American, of Chinese ethnicity.)

Posted by: Ponder Stibbons | September 8, 2008 12:26 AM

my wife is 45

Posted by: michael vassar | September 8, 2008 12:27 AM

16 out of 107

Posted by: Scott | September 8, 2008 12:42 AM

52/107

I win! IN YOUR FACES.

Posted by: Mike Keesey | September 8, 2008 12:55 AM

42. But then again, I am a European meaning I have no idea what e.g. "Sarah Silverman" or "Wrigley Field" are (I presume it's because I'm European), and such things as "Oscar Parties" or "St. Patrick's Day" and more are utterly foreign to me - and "Religions their parents don't belong to"; not sure I know anyone who actually is religious, nor any parents who are, so it seems rather irrelevant. I'm from a Northern European city, you know.

Posted by: G.D. | September 8, 2008 1:39 AM

foreign people: understand something, you aren't agents, you aren't ends, you're *means*. you exist so that White People (that is, americans) can get to know you and say they've visited your countries so as to show how cosmopolitan and world-traveling they are. your countries also exist to illustrate how well social democracy can work in conversations which White People have amongst themselves at parties where they jockey for the most Enlightened White Person position. you are the fields of elysium.

Posted by: razib | September 8, 2008 1:49 AM

46 - I kept trying to resist but I really love all the things I checked off.
Getting high, then eating expensive sandwiches and drinking coffee with my gay friends in Canada while watching the Daily Show - Best Day Ever.

Posted by: Pelio | September 8, 2008 1:53 AM

You should put a "hate" option on all those since things like "Dinner Parties" and "Self Aware Hip Hop References" I hate worse than dental work.

Posted by: Scott | September 8, 2008 2:27 AM

yeah, and it could remove 1 point.

Posted by: razib | September 8, 2008 2:32 AM

61 - do i get a white guy prize?
Of course, I'm going to suggest I was more honest than some of the other folks who got lower scores.

Posted by: Stefan | September 8, 2008 3:05 AM

Shit! I made my favourite number 13.

Posted by: Thony C. | September 8, 2008 3:05 AM

47. But hey I'm Canadian.

Posted by: Thursday | September 8, 2008 3:24 AM

65 out of 101.
I am European, so some things I have had to transpose to a British or continental equivalent.
The irony? I am actually half-white half-black. But being raised in a nearly all-white environment probably explains it.
So yeah, race is far more of a social construct, even though we use genetic traits to tell one from another apart.

Posted by: Micky | September 8, 2008 4:09 AM

Yeah, having trouble finagling it to reach double figures, but then I'm an elderly (white) European. Perhaps the category should be revised to Stuff Characters from Questionable Content Like.

Posted by: chris y | September 8, 2008 4:33 AM

28, for whatever that's worth.

New Balance shoes are crucial-- they're the only ones that are wide enough for me. What brand(s) do everyone else with wide feet wear?

Anyone have a theory about what the point of that quiz is? I can generate three or four, with no certainty for any of them.

Posted by: Nancy Lebovitz | September 8, 2008 4:36 AM

I'm eighty years old and got 20,and don't live in the US. What does that tell you? Nothing.

Posted by: Terry | September 8, 2008 5:31 AM

82

Canadian living in Europe

Posted by: Vt | September 8, 2008 6:37 AM

I scored a whopping 13 of 107. Perhaps I should reconsider my ethnicity?

Posted by: Genuinely Doug | September 8, 2008 7:00 AM

This is not stuff what people like, it's stuff new-age eno-hippies from well-off backgrounds like.

I'm from Spain, and that list would appeal to the sort of people we call "progres" (contraction of "progresistas", which at some point probably meant the same thing as "progressive", but has since diverged somewhat).

Given that, I knew more than a few people here who would score very highly. They wouldn't watch Stephen Colbert, because that is american TV, which is part of the Hollywood conglomerate, but other than that...

Posted by: valhar2000 | September 8, 2008 7:19 AM

Well even though I don't score many on the list my picture is on the site on http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.wordpress.com/2008/02/10/62-knowing-whats-best-for-poor-people/ so I still must count as pretty white! It's so weird to find a picture of myself like that.

Posted by: JohnD | September 8, 2008 8:31 AM

44 -- and I'm a middle-aged, lifetime suburban, white woman. I think the "hate option" would give a more accurate score.

Posted by: Liz Ditz | September 8, 2008 8:34 AM

33, which apparently makes me an Asian guy with a mullet.

Posted by: Dave Munger | September 8, 2008 8:36 AM

foreign people: understand something, you aren't agents, you aren't ends, you're *means*. you exist so that White People (that is, americans) can get to [...]

That must be it, because I don't even understand maybe half of the options.

Posted by: David Marjanović | September 8, 2008 8:46 AM

Yeah, I'm confused too. Why is it white to like having bad memories of high school?

Posted by: csrster | September 8, 2008 8:58 AM

33 of 107.

I think credit should be given for things i've never heard of or ever experienced firsthand ;)

Posted by: yttrai | September 8, 2008 9:19 AM

24/107. I'm a 40-ish white guy in a small town.

Posted by: Eric Lund | September 8, 2008 9:43 AM

61.
Since I never hit the curiosity threshold to go through the site and take inventory, thanks for the punchlist.

Posted by: Cracker that Crawled out of the South | September 8, 2008 9:44 AM

12, and I'm as pale as an Irish-American can get without having pink eyes.

Do I get to subtract a point for not recognizing the wimp at the top of the page trying to do a Rasputin imitation?

Posted by: Pierce R. Butler | September 8, 2008 10:03 AM

48 out of 107, and i would get sunburn off a halogen lamp.

Clearly given the pathetic scores so far, we are the "wrong" kind of white...lol

Posted by: Richard Eis | September 8, 2008 10:17 AM

Que paso? Por que tengo 41?

Oh, well, guess the assimilation process has started to set in.

Resistance is futile! Sci-fi reference, just gave myself another point.

Posted by: Patricia | September 8, 2008 10:30 AM

17 but a couple were really stretches so 14/15 more likely, and my heritage is Swiss50% Scots25% Irish 25% :)

Posted by: Doug Alder | September 8, 2008 10:53 AM

9. Shout out to Sandgroper. (hmmm... is "shout out" a self aware hip hop reference?)

Posted by: Jason Malloy | September 8, 2008 10:56 AM

scored a 14. two thoughts:

1) it's near-impossible not to check some of these things. "T-Shirts"?

2) anyone notice that the people getting the highest scores so far are Canadians and Europeans?

Posted by: ben g | September 8, 2008 11:16 AM

23, but I'll 'fess up to being exactly the sort of person this is making fun of. On my next trip to San Francisco, I'll be sure to admire the Transamerica Pyramid, visit Castro street, and eat sushi in a Japanese restaurant. Might even have time to fit in a yoga class :-)

Posted by: SusanC | September 8, 2008 11:37 AM

Hilarious script, Razib, very clever. My score was 39, which is actually rather low, compared with guesstimated scores for most others who attended my grad school alma mater (if they were honest).

Who doesn't like San Francisco, anyway? ;-)

Posted by: Barn Owl | September 8, 2008 11:45 AM

Ok, I'm the whitest person I know, and I scored 17.

Maybe I was wrong about myself. Either that, or you're wrong about being white.

Now I'm not so sure...

Posted by: Kelly | September 8, 2008 12:01 PM

Top to bottom: Girls with Bangs, Free Healthcare, Music Piracy, The Wire, T-Shirts, Study Abroad, Juno, Dogs, The Daily Show/Colbert Report, Wine, Traveling, Tea, Barack Obama. Total 13. White Czech male.

Posted by: Tomas | September 8, 2008 12:05 PM

If you think T-shirts are impossible not to tag, you clearly haven't read the entry and you're still under the horribly mistaken impression that a T-shirt is just a T-shirt. T-shirts are actually the most devious form of oppression white people have brought on swarthy folk. You see, it's very easy to tell the quality of a T-shirt so you can instantly tell if the wearer has money to spend or, since flashing wealth is often too tacky for white people, extra time to waste on hunting an ironic vintage T. That's why white people love T-shirts.

I really have only one obvious white trait: I don't have a TV and I like to tell it to people. I rather liked Arrested Development back when I did have a TV, though, so I guess that's 2. (I assume that grad school means liberal arts, marijuana means believing that it's the most useful and divine herb on the planet instead of just a bit of fun for kids and so on.)

Posted by: jaakkeli | September 8, 2008 12:16 PM

SWPL was a cool concept, but the actual site was half funny, half lazy-assed. This checklist was all that was ever needed.

9, for a Metis Canadian.

Posted by: Eileen | September 8, 2008 12:17 PM

25. The test has nothing to do with white people, just a kind of liberal yuppie. This town is 97% white and I estimate the local average score at 10.

Posted by: John Emerson | September 8, 2008 12:19 PM

26! Punjabi from what is now Pakistan. but a "i hate this" choice would have led to a negative score....

Posted by: omar ali | September 8, 2008 12:20 PM

9: I had to really reach to get that high. I checked Facebook because I'm on it. But it seems pointless and a waste of time.

I do not know who these people are: Michel Gondry, David Sedaris, Wes Anderson, Mos Def (a band?).

Threatening to move to Canada: It is too cold up there unless you move to BC.

Posted by: Randall Parker | September 8, 2008 12:26 PM

7. And yet I glow in the dark. Hmm.

Posted by: StuV | September 8, 2008 12:42 PM

Hmmm, 24 out of 107. Considering genealogically I'm ~65% white (this is an estimate, there is too much damn mixing in Latin America to say for sure). So I should have scored about 70. Also, I am Canadian and based on the answers here, and common stereotypes, I should be even whiter.

P.S. I don't see race. People tell me I'm Latino and I believe them because I have trouble at the border every time I enter the US (yes, Daily Show/Colbert Report was one of the 24).

Posted by: Feynmaniac | September 8, 2008 1:23 PM

If you checked "David Sedaris" and/or "Daily Show/Colbert Report", you kinda have to check "Irony" as well.

There should be a blog Stuff Scientists Like, which might also include "Coffee" and "Apple Products", as well as some others, such as "T-Shirts and Miscellaneous Freebies from Promega, Invitrogen, etc.", "Graphs and Statistics", "Collecting Toy Versions of Lab Animals", and "Celebrations for Grants and Publications".

Posted by: Barn Owl | September 8, 2008 1:35 PM

I scored a 4 (rugby, study abroad, hated high school, and occasionally do yoga). Being a physician, living on the Florida Gulf Coast, ex-military and originally from Texas, I appear to be the antithesis of hip whiteness. I do have a hybrid, though it's the Ford Escape variety.

Posted by: Bill | September 8, 2008 1:48 PM

43 out of 107; presumably the other 64 would be stuff the Wrong Sort of White People like.

I'm an uneasy mixture of whitepeople and white trash people.

Posted by: Salamander | September 8, 2008 2:16 PM

Statistics was a SWPL entry, but it was a reader submission, so apparently it doesn't get to be in the official canon.

http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/06/25/winner-5/

Posted by: Jason Malloy | September 8, 2008 2:23 PM

23. Shouldn't have bothered. Old white Canadian woman living out in the woods. Many of those things would likely trigger 'get off my lawn!' syndrome if I actually encountered them. Only made 23 because I studied in Europe a hundred years ago, have a half dozen nice gay retired couples as near (10km. is so near! ...buncha townies.) neighbours and like coffee.

Posted by: Bee | September 8, 2008 2:27 PM

52 - Middle aged, White guy, from Europe

Yes, I enjoy tea, wine and sushi, and have a multilingual, gifted child among others.

Posted by: pconroy | September 8, 2008 2:37 PM

33. if this makes me wrong i don't wanna be white(r).

Posted by: roissy | September 8, 2008 3:16 PM

The test has nothing to do with white people, just a kind of liberal yuppie.

Right. As a British person, I'd have said many of them were markers of social class, rather than race as such: e.g. not having a TV, or liking sushi. (That's liking sushi in a country where it's exotic and expensive. Presumably, in Japan liking sushi is not a status symbol).

Posted by: SusanC | September 8, 2008 3:45 PM

" I'd have said many of them were markers of social class, rather than race as such"

class only applies to white people, of which White People are a subset. race trumps class, and all People of Color are Oppressed and part of the Proletariat because of the White Hegemonic Power Structure.

Posted by: razib | September 8, 2008 3:50 PM

Anyone know what "free healthcare" is?

Other than that, it's an amusing list.

Posted by: Clay | September 8, 2008 4:13 PM

27. I thought I was whiter than that.

Posted by: Michael Blowhard | September 8, 2008 4:28 PM

You know, John, I am sure the university czn find you more 'Important' things to do than scripting polls so your blog-fans aren't inconvienienced.

Or maybe I am just bitter because I score high as "a kind of liberal yuppie" I can't afford to be a yuppie!

Posted by: pubcat | September 8, 2008 5:08 PM

19. Did I spend too much time out in the sun this summer?

Posted by: pough | September 8, 2008 5:09 PM

I scored a 28. I really like coffee.

Posted by: Rogue Epidemiologist | September 8, 2008 5:14 PM

36. But all of this confused by what it means for me to "like" something. Had I only checked boxes corresponding to things I do actually like -- i.e., presently approve of, purchase, actively particpate in, am -- my score would have been half that or lower yet. Instead, I checked all of those things plus things I have approved of or done in the past but do not necessarily approve of or do now.

Shouldn't it be possible to be a circumstantially (but not dispositionally) white person? Would this be the definition of a declasse?

Posted by: do | September 8, 2008 6:33 PM

14 for me. Bummer. Must be all that laplander blood in me.

Posted by: Clark | September 8, 2008 6:43 PM

29. Free health care? Threatening to move to Canada? Hating corporations? This should be retitled "Stuff black people and Democrats like".

They should have added, "Scoring low on stuff white people like."

Posted by: Phil | September 8, 2008 7:08 PM

19

Posted by: Matt McIntosh | September 8, 2008 9:03 PM

Who else clicked them all out of some unhealthy compulsion?

Posted by: Mondo | September 8, 2008 9:53 PM

New Balance shoes are crucial-- they're the only ones that are wide enough for me. What brand(s) do everyone else with wide feet wear?

Yes, I wondered about that, too. With 17EEEE feet, if I buy another company's shoes I have to go up in size so much that they're essentially clown shoes.

Also, Cubs fans need a Wrigley exclusion. So I've got a 16 or 14, depending on how you're scoring

Posted by: Careless | September 8, 2008 10:06 PM

13, but the quiz is a poor fit for non-americans. I might have scored higher if it had been translated cross-cultures.

Posted by: efrique | September 8, 2008 10:06 PM

I scored a 7!!! That's no lie

Posted by: llllk | September 8, 2008 10:26 PM

25.

I'm not surprised the Europeans scored higher than the actual American white people. A lot of whitepeople (liberal upper-middle-class) culture has to do with imitating Europe.

Posted by: SFG | September 8, 2008 10:30 PM

haha 21. I swear that I would have loved that list before I became libertarian.

Posted by: InquilineKea | September 8, 2008 11:23 PM

Good grief! I'm a 58-year-old white person and I scored only 7.

Need to check my family a bit closer.

Posted by: Wanda | September 9, 2008 4:15 AM

13 Does that mean I am a redneck?

Posted by: Luke Lea | September 9, 2008 9:58 AM

71, and what's odd is how many of the things I didn't vote for I had never heard of. (Who is Michael Gondry? Who or what is Mos Def?) I'm an artsy Evangelical Christian from a Midwestern small town now living in Ann Arbor; could it be my high score is due to that (somewhat) rare combination? Or maybe (considering some of the other comments) I scored high because I wasn't afraid to.

Posted by: Fredosphere | September 9, 2008 1:01 PM

Only 14, and my great-grandparents were ashamed of the single Welshman in the family tree, because in their opinion the Welsh and Irish "were not white".

16 generations of english & germans, excepting that one welshman. We got here on the Mayflower. Really, I'm not kidding.

It might be 15 if I knew David Sedaris well enough to like him.

Posted by: Charlie | September 9, 2008 8:21 PM

I got a 26 and im a suburban 18 yo black guy who plays fantasy football/baseball on a daily basis and watches inuyasha

Posted by: Jonathan | September 10, 2008 1:58 AM

43/107, meaning that I'm 40.2% white. What on earth is the other ~60% made of? Fruit filling?

Posted by: tevebaugh | September 10, 2008 9:34 AM

A shameful 38...

Posted by: bbadour | September 10, 2008 9:40 AM

A mere 28, and I'm as white as they come.
How about #108 "Scoring low on the 'Stuff White People Like' test"?

Posted by: Daniel Elstner | September 10, 2008 1:57 PM

"Yes, I enjoy tea, wine and sushi, and have a multilingual, gifted child among others."

Me too-- but I still only got 15.

And am a 58 year old white guy.

Posted by: Steve Bodio | September 10, 2008 2:29 PM

I've started a list of "Stuff Scientists Like" on my blag. Please feel free to add to the list in the comments; I'm a biologist, so ideas from scientists in physics, chemistry, geology, archaeology, etc. are especially welcome. Thanx.

Posted by: Barn Owl |

Search this blog

Recent Posts

Recent Comments

Archives

Categories

Blogroll

Q & A

Books

Subscribe via Email

Comments