Whiter Shades of Pale (19 page)

You might want to keep a brown paper bag nearby for the inevitable hyperventilation that will follow this announcement.

At around fifteen years old, white people begin to develop a crushing fear of the work cubicle. Their first viewing of the film
Office Space
(and all white people like this movie) only reinforces this crippling fear. Eventually they promise that they will never end up trapped inside its partition walls. Instead they will be an artist, musician, comedian, or some combination of the three.

But as they get a little older and realize that they will need money for the things that they like, they begin to take jobs in fields like advertising, media, technology, and law. Though all these jobs feature tasks that used to be easily accomplished in a cubicle environment, white people feel much better about doing the work if they can do it in an office with an open floor plan.

To a white person, spending time filing expense reports, writing emails, and working on spreadsheets within a cubicle is considered “mind-numbing drudgery.” But performing the exact same tasks in an open office with exposed beams and a concrete floor is considered “creative.”

Yet when white people begin working for a company with one of these floor plans, they spend their time fantasizing about moving to one of the offices that ring the main workspace. If only they had that office, then they would have some privacy, they could make phone calls, and people couldn’t look at their screen. In other words, all of the benefits of working in a cubicle.

If you plan to start a business where you will likely have to employ white people, an open floor plan will give your employees a feeling of creativity in the office. But more important, they will take a pay cut for the privilege.

You have probably noticed that white people have had a long love affair with diet soda. It has been said that no white person has ordered a full-calorie soda (outside of kosher and Mexican versions) in more than twenty years. For some reason white people are petrified of the processed sweeteners in these sodas, but have no objections to the myriad of chemicals that go into making a Diet Coke a calorie-free beverage.

If you don’t believe this fact, put a Big Mac and a plate full of cocaine in front of a white person and observe which one disappears first.

This is because when it comes down to it, white people are more afraid of weight gain than they are of chemicals.

However, recently white people have been willing to make the shift back to full-calorie soda, provided that it meets certain requirements. It must come in a bottle, not a can; it must use real sugar; it must come from a city where white people want to live; it must be produced by an independent company; and it must be considerably more expensive than regular soda. If a soda can meet all of these requirements, it is deemed acceptable and will be stocked as a cold option at locally owned coffeeshops throughout the country.

Note: These white people win everything.

All musical genres go through a very similar life cycle: birth, growth, mainstream acceptance, decline, and finally obscurity. With black music, however, the final stage is never reached because white people work tirelessly to keep it alive. Once a musical style has lost its relevance with its intended nonwhite audience, it becomes
more
relevant to white people.

Historically speaking, the music white people have kept on life support for the longest period of time is jazz. Thanks largely to public radio, bookstores, and coffeeshops, jazz has carved out a niche in white culture that is not yet ready to be replaced by indie rock. The biggest role that jazz plays in white culture is in the white fantasy of the preferred way to spend leisure time. Or, to be more specific: all white people believe that they prefer listening to jazz over watching television. This is not true.

Every few months, a white person will test this preferred relaxation technique by putting on some jazz and pouring a glass of wine or scotch and telling themselves how nice it is. Then they will get bored and watch television or write emails to other white people about how nice it was to listen to jazz at home. “Last night, I poured myself a
glass of Shiraz and put Charlie Parker on the Bose. It was so relaxing, I wish I had a fireplace.” Listing this activity as one of your favorites is a surefire way to make progress toward a romantic relationship with a white person.

Along with jazz, white people have also taken quite a shine to the blues, an art form that captured the pain of the black experience in America. In the 1960s, a bunch of British bands started to play their own version of the music and white people have been loving it ever since. (It makes sense. After all, the British were the ones responsible for the creation of the blues in the seventeenth century, or more accurately, they were responsible for the conditions that created said blues.)

Today, white people keep the blues going strong by taking vacations to Memphis, forming awkward bands, making documentaries, and organizing folk festivals. Blues and jazz appeal mostly to older white people and a select few young ones who probably wear fedoras. But that doesn’t mean that young white people aren’t working hard to preserve music that has lost its cultural relevance. No, there are literally thousands of white people who are giving their all to keep old-school hip-hop alive. Even as you read this, white people are telling other white people about the golden age of hip-hop that they experienced at their suburban high school or when they watched
The Wackness
.

If you are good at concealing laughter and contempt, you should ask a white person about “real hip-hop.” They will quickly tell you about how they don’t listen to “commercial hip-hop” (music that black people actually enjoy) and how they much prefer “classic hip-hop.”

“I don’t listen to that commercial stuff. I’m more into the real hip-hop, you know? KRS-One, Del Tha Funkee Homosapien, De La Soul, Wu Tang. You know, the old school.”

Calling this style of music “old school” is especially apt since the majority of people who listen to it did so while attending old schools such as Dartmouth, Bard, and Williams.

What it all comes down to is that white people are convinced that if they had been alive when this music was relevant they would have been into it. They would have been Alan Lomax or Rick Rubin. Now the best
they can hope for is to impress an older black person who liked this music when it was actually popular with black people.

During the course of a white person’s education they will go through many phases, including but not limited to “awkward,” “classic rock,” and “being really into a foreign country.” Of these phases, there is only one that all white people are required to go through before they can obtain their bachelor’s degree. It is known as “Bob Marley.”

Depending on the coolness of the white person, they can experience this stage anywhere between the sixth grade and their last year of college. Regardless of when they went through this phase, every white person can tell you about the time when they had
Legend
on repeat. If you wish to test this theory, go to any floor in a college dorm and there is a 100 percent chance you will find at least one Bob Marley poster.

It is also worth noting that white people tend to get into smoking marijuana during this phase. This is why all white people view the combination of Marley and marijuana as one of the most pleasurable experiences on earth. But when white people really want to take it to the next level, they will combine Bob Marley, marijuana, a long weekend, and some sort of notable outdoor location (beach, cottage, or patio). There are few activities on earth that are more appealing to white people.