AVC: Your site's an acquired taste. For white people who don't like it, what's the most common reason?
CL: There's a couple. One of them is, "I'm white, and I don't like anything on this list. So I find this very offensive." I always find that particularly funny, because it's like, "So you're offended that I've made a generalization about your race that doesn't apply to you? I think every other minority on earth has been through this in the last thousand years, so good. I'm glad you feel that way." And then the other thing is people who get offended by the whole idea of stereotypes in any capacity. I got an e-mail from someone in Canada who reported the site to a hate-crimes commission. Actually submitted it and said that they wanted to get the Canadian government involved to shut it down as a hate crime.
AVC: Did anything come of that?
CL: No. One of my commentators left this; it was the best comment they ever said: "There's a big difference between these stereotypes and other stereotypes. The difference is, white people don't get denied jobs for liking yoga. These aren't hateful stereotypes, they're not demeaning stereotypes. There's a big difference in where it's going. There's not a hateful aspect." So I think that sums it up perfectly, about why those people are wrong when they get upset about it.
AVC: A lot of angry people like it, too, though, including white supremacists. The white-supremacist forum Stormfront linked to your site.
CL: The guy posted it, and then people listed their own things that should be on the list. One of them was "living with my own kind." All these awful things were in there. It was just like, "What have I done?"
AVC: Surely you could have seen something like that coming, though.
CL: When I started this, I didn't consider more than five minutes ahead. It surprised me where it was coming from. The funny thing is, I knew about Stormfront before. In the late '90s, I was playing a videogame called Tony La Russa Baseball. Loved it, one of the best baseball games for a computer ever, and it was made by a company called Stormfront Studios. So I typed "Stormfront" into Google—sorry, at the time, AltaVista—and they had the domain first. That's how I first came across it.
One of the things with my site that I thought was great was that it took the idea of racial difference and it approached it from a non-hateful way. So when people do spin-off sites, like Stuff Educated Black People Like or Stuff Asian People Like, it was written by black people, or it was written by Asians, and it wasn't done in a way to be offensive. It was meant to sort of say, "Here are the things we like as a people, and it's kind of stupid."
AVC: Another angry person has copped to liking it: Kanye West linked to your site. Have you heard from him?
CL: No, but I'm trying my best to. I want him to write an entry on himself. I just want him to write the word "sweaters." That's it. Just write, "Sweaters. —Kanye West."
AVC: The site reads as a guide for non-whites on how to deal with white people. Was that always its intention?
CL: Absolutely, in a hilarious way. It's funny when I'll get an e-mail from someone who's black saying, "I wish I had this before I left for college, it would have saved so much time." So there is actually a good mix, because people get the joke, and that it is as much about class as it is about race. People who are in this upper-middle class, they relate to it. And the fact that is, that class is still overwhelmingly dominated by white people. As much as we'd like to think it isn't—"No, it's dominated by this perfect coalition." No, it's white people.
That's where the humor transcends race a little bit. People can relate to this. They say, "You know what? I'm black, but I've been called white my whole life because I like these things." I'm not making a judgment about the things themselves, but about the way people approach the things. That's where the audience is. And then, a lot more old people than I thought. [Laughs.] Which is great, though, I love it. That's fantastic that they get the jokes and they find it funny. I'm thrilled with that.
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