On Having Black Friends

By Nicholas Stix
August 23, 2010

The satirical blog, Stuff White People Like, contains a January, 2008 essay, “Having Black Friends.”

Christian Lander got the concept for SWPL and his eponymous book from David Brooks’ 2001 book, Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There.

Not that Lander isn’t good at what he does, but credit, where credit is due. After all, years ago, I used to drop my VDARE colleague Steve Sailer a line, whenever it sounded as if he had just ghost-written a column for Brooks or the latter’s New York Times colleague, John Tierney, so I ought to give Brooks credit, when other people use his ideas without attribution. (I’m not talking strictly about plagiarism here.)

My understanding is that Brooks, who combines intellectual curiosity with desperate triangulation—leftward, ho!—still occasionally pens a column based on Sailer’s ideas, but I don’t read him that often these days. (I spend most of my time these days perusing the crime stories that my reader-researchers keep me richly supplied with.)

“Having Black Friends” was guest-authored by Kristen Warner.

Since we are on the verge of electing a black president, it seems important to explain why white people want black friends. Every white person wants a black friend like Barack: good-looking, well-spoken, and non-violent. Obviously, whites want black friends so as not to appear racist (see earlier Obama post). However, if we dig deeper what we notice about white people is not if they have black friends but in fact, how many black friends they have. White people like numbers. They like to count things like stars in the sky and the death toll at Mt. Everest and the number of times they’ve seen Tori Amos and/or Phish in concert. Counting the number of black friends is then clearly a divine imperative. The number of black friends white people possess also illustrates their comfort with black culture. Here’s a handy guide to the number system:

You’ll want to read the rest.
I posted the following comment.

NS: I used to have black friends. But I’ve lived in New York City for 25 years. If you’re white, unless you’re a complete phony, of which the city has a couple million, much of what you want to spend time with friends doing, is complaining about insufferable, black racists, who:

1. Cut in front of you in the checkout line/on the street/subway/bus;
2. Try to humiliate you in the checkout line/on the street/subway/bus;
3. Try to rob you in the checkout line/on the street/subway/bus;
4. Try to rape you in the checkout line/on the street/subway/bus; and
5. Try to murder you in the checkout line/on the street/subway/bus.

My black friends didn’t want to spend time complaining about insufferable, black racists, and so they are now my black ex-friends.

As one of my black ex-friends once said, “It’s all about black and white, and white and black.”

That elicited three responses.

Phyl: You sound like an ingnorant fool, to have lived in NY for so long. I almost feel sorry for your experience with black people.

sosowhat: what the hell are you saying? i think you owe us reading your comment some clarity of what the hell your talking about. why are your ex black friends your ex black friends? because they raped and murdered you in the check out line? huh?

Enigma the Coon: black friends?
Icky poo, echhhhhhhhhhhhh, not me!

I responded to Phyl: Phyl, How could my 25 years of experience with thousands of black racists make me an “ingnorant [sic] fool”? You got some ‘splainin’ to do.

To sosowhat, I wrote: sosowhat?