Sometimes cynicism hits it right on the nose

The Onion is many college students' main news source. The tongue-in-cheek weekly can be found on the floors of UW-Madison's largest lecture halls, and the paper's news boxes on State Street empty out faster than a keg at a sophomore house party. I've been a loyal reader for years, constantly scanning The Onion's pages for race-related issues. This week, I hit the mother load.

Titled, "I won't have my daughter bringing a black man into this house until I've tidied up and created a welcoming environment," columnist Harold Toomey turns cultural stereotypes on their heads. His article is full of fast-paced wit and irony, all hinged on our understanding of "black" and "white" culture.

Toomey's article is that of a panicked father, unprepared to meet his daughter's black boyfriend not because the man is black, but because he hasn't "prepared." He hasn't done dishes or picked the old magazines up off the coffee table, nor has he bought a good bottle of wine or stopped by the gourmet market for food his daughter's boyfriend may like to eat.

My personal favorite:

"And just think of what this will do to Lucy's poor mother! Kathryn will be absolutely devastated. What do I even say? 'Hey, honey, guess what? Your daughter is coming home with a black man and we're all out of the nice microbrewed beer.'"

I admit, the article had me laughing out loud several times. But then I realized--this article is funny because it relies on our firmly established stereotypes of what it means to be white and what it means to be black. White people drink microbrewed beer and vintage wine. They shop at gourmet markets and bring their organic food home to be prepared on perpetually-perfect granite countertops. They wear Banana Republic slacks and Tod's loafers. Black people, well, do not. Toomey knows we hold these stereotypes, and that's why his article is so clever.

The popular blog "Stuff White People Like" showcases many elements of today's "great white way," from white people's affinity for hummus to their tendency to study abroad and adopt East Asian children. Of course, it's all generalizations and stereotypes, but the blog, like Toomey's piece, relies on our views of what it means to be white in our society.

And with this understanding of what it means to be white comes an equally stereotyped understanding of black culture. If "white culture" is identified as high-brow, expensive and refined, "black culture" is its foil: low-brow, cheap and vulgar. Typifying white culture as marked by affluence and upper-class taste, we simultaneously relegate all nonwhite cultures to primitive, lower-class status.

The difference between "Stuff White People Like" and Toomey's column is that while the blog focuses explicitly and exclusively on whiteness, Toomey juxtaposes black and white to show us the stark contrast between our conceptions of the two races and the lifestyles that accompany them. I argue that The Onion article packs a greater punch than the blog by assigning what we commonly think of as "white culture" to a black man. Our laughter is a subconscious reaction to what we perceive as an inconceivable situation: A black man who drinks India Pale Ale? Couldn't be!

Hopefully The Onion audience won't toss this one on the floor of Sociology 104. Hopefully readers will recognize why the article is funny, identify its critique of America's racialization of culture, and then take Toomey's dry-as-toast satire into the real world, decoupling culture and race to embrace a wider worldview.

And they say this stuff isn't real journalism...


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