Oh, Diana and Jen, will you ever stop being hilarious?

Our favorite ladies Diana and Jen from Disgrasian have started vlogging! Their first piece is on the "pantless" trend that has been circulating lately:



Fierce.

Because blogging makes you go crazy?

I really don't have time (in the midst of studying for a midterm) to write an extensive post about this recent blogging phenomena I just found out from Racialicious, but you just have to check this out...

Recently three (maybe more?) blogs inspired by Stuff White People Like have popped up online. These blogs include: Stuff Asian People Like, Stuff Black People Love, and Stuff Educated Black People Like.

I like to think of these blogs as "Stuff White People Like About Asian/Black/Educated Black People" blogs, which are kind of meta-parodies of defensive white people themselves.

But ironically, these are lists self-purportedly compiled by Asian/Black/Educated people themselves. I may be just wrong about the tone and intent of these blogs, but these are interesting things to think about - the self-parody of one's own culture/race/ identity. (Or they may actually be written by white people behind the strategically race-effacing interweb.)

Still, I think what changes when we see blogs like these spring up are the types of insight that they display. SWhitePL spoke to issues that illuminate white privilege - (things like Graduate School, which people of color disproportionately do not have the financial independence to pursue in lieu of making money.) The new blogs just make fun of aspects of their respective cultures; the SAsianPL blog just sheds light upon how, say, Asian people like rice. Why, we do happen to like rice.

What do you think? Thoughts in the comments.

It's called Stuff White People Like.

Introduced to us by Nhu-Y, SWPL is formatted as an ongoing list of, well, stuff that white people like (mmm, race normativity). Each entry is a new item on the list, and each is chock-full of satirical logorrhea. SWYPL's writers spare their readers the agony of figuring out the point of this blog by leaving a refreshingly short and anthropological self-description:

This is a scientific approach to highlight and explain stuff white people like. They are pretty predictable.

Now if parody isn't your thing, or if you are easily riled by anything racially suggestive / easily offensive (e.g. A Shot At Love), then avoid this site at all costs. It just so happens that David and I are South Park junkies, so we love parody and -- in recognizing the problematic practice of scientifically studying races -- love this shit. We hope against hope, however, that it really is parody that drives this blog.

Some favorites include:

#11 Asian Girls
#45 Asian Fusion Food
#62 Knowing what's best for poor people
#66 Divorce

Read, laugh, and enjoy.

What's this? Our favorite baller Ahmadinejad has a blog?

... Fittingly named, because it does relativism so well. A blog attempting to educate on transracial adoptions, Choices features mostly posts by these select adopters themselves (one is a Barnard alum). But, as the New York Times often is with its tunneled, caring-white-person stories, the blog has had quite a number of very iffy, "othering" posts by adopting parents. Take a read...



The inaugural post of Choices is exactly the story of a first-world savior discovering the "magical" history of third-world innocent. In "Finding Zhao Gu", the adopting father writes about his search for the origins of his daughter. In doing so, he says a lot of generally self-righteous and Orientalist things - like "yearn[ing] to know the secrets that he, alone among millions in China, held within himself," how the events of his saviorship "felt like fate", and talking in English at the person who found her in order to achieve his personal sense of closure.

Not all of the posts are terrible. In "Beyond the Lion Dance," the same man writes about offering his two Chinese girls (pathological Chinese baby adopter?) a semblance of cultural belonging in Chinatown and worrying about the identity issues they might be faced with in the future. Another explains how she avoided the demeaning videos from African adoption agencies (but only until she actually forced her way to a child that she found particularly adorable, "with darling eyes and nappy hair that was tightly curled and uneven in appearance.")



One article, however, is just ridiculous. In "The Real Thing", Tama Janowitz tries to make herself immune to criticism about what seems like crass child-rearing ways while telling us the deeply ignorant things she says to people about her motherhood... things like, "I say to Willow: 'Well, you know, if you were still in China you would be working in a factory for 14 hours a day with only limited bathroom breaks!'" Her snarkiness knows few bounds. After calling her daughter's features "Mongolian", she proceeds to minimize the problems that other Asian adoptees have had with not having forged a cultural identity. Great writing, Tama - let me know when you want to peddle more of your irreverent, insensitive garbage over the internet... unless after Googling your own name you found that to be a bad idea.

I'm not alone in my disgust. If you want to see the problems that bloggers have already found with this writing, every word in this sentence links to a verbal lashing of this blog. And this is just what Carmen linked on Racialicious.

There's more... Carmen reports that the Times bloggers have been censoring dissenting comments from adult adoptees. Denying claims of their own racism... wow, we haven't seen this before. Relative Choices, all in all, makes me slightly sick. Of course the posts by adoptees themselves are pretty okay, but this should be a reason why we "loosely ethnicity-oriented" blogs exist - to catch mainstream writers in the very troubling things they say.

Hey people. While we always do have many serious and heavy things to talk about here at The Blaaag, I have to say I've personally stepped into pursuits a little bit more, shall we say, frivolous...

(David, what the hell are you talking about?)

In short, I've begun my stint as Heroes recapper on the venerable blog Racialicious. Some of you might remember the piece I posted here about global representation on this show - well, now I've made an entire pastime of commenting on Heroes. Catch my intro post on Racialicious here. My first recap will be for tonight's episode on NBC 9pm Eastern.

Instead of checking (or forgetting to check) The Blaaag every half hour, here's a tip from the resident internet geek.

Use Google Reader. Any of you who have access to a Gmail account will be able to use the Reader to keep track of your web feeds. What are web feeds? According to Wikipedia, a web feed is, "a data format used for providing users with frequently updated content." For all intents and purposes, a web feed is an address on the internet that you can use with Google Reader to keep track of the blogs you read. Just click "Add Subscription" and put in your web feed!

The fun part? From Settings in Reader, go to Goodies and have fun with the toys there. My favorite: the Next bookmark. It's less efficient if you have loads of blogs to read like I do, but if you have only a few, you can always see if there are new updates without ever actually checking the site.

Also, do check the cool stuff at the right of this blog. We at The Blaaag have compiled a shared items feed with content from APA blogs all over the net with topics that we care about and discuss. You can add it to your feed reader, or you can check the side of the page when you visit.

And for those of you who really care about the interesting (and sometimes extremely offensive) things people say in the comments for this blog, there's a comment feed for you, although much of what you'll see is esoteric babble from AAA and PC members.