Stuff White People Like - Christian Lander [29]
If you are lucky enough to speak a second language, the best thing you can do for a white person in this situation is to give them an expression in that language that relates to breaking up. This will make them feel better since they are comforted by the gesture and happy to be learning a new expression that they can repeat to their friends.
71 Being the Only White Person Around
This concept ties heavily into #7, Diversity, and #19, International Travel, but it is important that you fully understand how white people view authenticity and experience.
In most situations, white people are very comforted by seeing their own kind. However, when they are eating at a new ethnic restaurant or traveling to a foreign nation, nothing spoils their fun more than seeing another white person.
Many white people will look into the window of an ethnic restaurant to see if there are other white people inside. It is determined to be an acceptable restaurant if the white people in there are accompanied by ethnic friends, but if there is a table occupied entirely by white people it is deemed unacceptable. The arrival of the “other white people” at either restaurants or vacation spots instantly means that lines will grow, authenticity will be lost, and the euphoria of being a cultural pioneer will be over.
Being aware of this can be extremely valuable in your efforts to gain the trust of white friends and co-workers. If you take a white person to an ethnic restaurant and another white person (or group of white people) shows up, you can lose all respect and trust that you have worked so hard to acquire. Do your best to find a table with a divider, or ask the waiter to put future white people out of sight.
Note: This does not apply to nightclubs.
72 Study Abroad
In addition to accumulating sexual partners, binge drinking, drug use, and learning, white people consider studying abroad to be one of the most important parts of a well-rounded college education.
Study abroad allows people to leave their current educational institution and spend a semester or a year in Europe or Australia. Though study abroad is offered to other places, these are the overwhelming favorites.
By attending school in another country, white people are technically living in another country. This is important, as it gives them the opportunity to insert that fact into any sentence they please. “When I used to live in [insert country], I would always ride the train to school. The people I’d see were inspiring.”
If you need to make up your own study-abroad experience, they all pretty much work the same way. You arrived in Australia not knowing anybody, you went out to the bar the first night and made a lot of friends, you had a short relationship with someone from a foreign country, you didn’t learn anything, and you acquired a taste for something (local food, beer, fruit). This latter point is important because you will need to be able to tell everyone how it is regrettably unavailable back home.
It is also important that you understand the study-abroad ranking system. Europe/Australia form the base level, then Asia, then South America, and finally the trump card, studying abroad in Tibet. Then there is the conversation killer of studying abroad—Africa. If you studied in Africa, it is usually a good idea to keep it quiet; it will remind white people that they were too scared to go and they will feel bad. Use this only in emergencies.
73 Gentrification
In general, white people love situations where they can’t lose. While this is already true for most of their lives, perhaps the safest bet a white person can make is to buy a house in an up-and-coming neighborhood.
White people like to live in these neighborhoods because they get credibility