Whiter Shades of Pale (7 page)

Stand back and watch. That white person will immediately begin an elaborate fantasy about the type of people and potential body parts that have come in contact with that doorknob. Once they have settled on something appropriately disgusting, they will visualize the actual touch so vividly and graphically that it will make them dry heave uncontrollably.

Here is where you have two options. If your intended goal was to drive them crazy, simply say, “What else did you touch today?” and walk away. If your goal was to put this white person in your debt, simply step in and hand them some hand sanitizer and a small amount of ipecac. Once the white person returns from the bathroom, they will assume that you have saved their life and will feel they owe you a favor, big-time.

Though white people are always filled with guilt, there are a few effective ways to alleviate it. Popular techniques involve: running distances for charity, donating money via text message, feeling sad for an appropriate amount of time, and giving spare change to the homeless. But none of these is as effective and more satisfying than paying taxes.

When white people think about high taxes they are reminded of many of their favorite things: Europe, Franklin Roosevelt, free healthcare, and sticking it to people who are richer than them.

The system is perfect for white people because it allows them to feel as though they are attacking the upper classes but doesn’t make them give up their car, stand mixer, or
fleur de sel
.

A typical white person’s enthusiasm for paying taxes operates on a fairly uniform scale. It begins right in the middle during high school, when white people read their first book by Michael Moore or Howard Zinn. It reaches its apex in college, when they begin reading Marx and the Frankfurt School. During this time white people will be at their most fervent about the need to redistribute wealth among all the classes. Amazingly, this zeal wears off at the exact moment when white people receive their first real paycheck. This love of taxes may abate on a personal level, but in public they can never complain about taxes being too high, for fear of looking like the wrong kind of white person. Instead they must accept their tax burden and ask for more, like Oliver Twist asking for more gruel.

Of course, some white people will spend their entire lives fighting for
more taxes to help support education and the arts. They are known in the white community as artists and graduate students. In the rest of the world they are known as “poor by choice.” Since neither group is likely to ever make an annual income that requires them to pay taxes, they remain steadfast in their support of increasing taxes for the wealthy, though their very existence is in a way a type of tax upon a very specific group of rich white people called their parents.

Taxes also provide a wonderful way to help you improve the spirits of white people. When tax returns are due and white people are acting stressed-out, you can make white people feel great by saying, “You know, if it weren’t for government programs I never would have gone to college. Probably never would have eaten breakfast.” Pause, touch them gently on the shoulder, and whisper, “Thanks.”

Then ask them if they can spare a few dollars for lunch.

It is a fact that white people will never turn down an opportunity to enlighten other people on the correct way to think. While this is very easy to do through email or face-to-face conversation, it is exceptionally difficult to do while driving a car. Fortunately for white people, there is a solution that is both popular and ineffective: bumper stickers.

Before talking about the types of bumper stickers that white people like, it’s very important to get an understanding about layout and placement. When a white person drives an older car (six-plus years old) that has a resale value under $2,000, they will coat the entire backside of the car in bumper stickers. Because of the abundance of space, they are free to include stickers from all areas of white support: music, politics, the environment, insults to right-wing politicians, and various movements imploring people to keep a city “weird.”

But when white people have a nice new car, such as a Prius or an Audi station wagon, the fear of losing resale value prevents them from applying more than one sticker. Therefore that one sticker must properly capture the essence of the car and the political views of the driver.

The safest and most accepted choice for a sticker is always one that supports a Democratic presidential candidate (Ralph Nader is an acceptable
substitute). As of February 2008, white law required an
OBAMA ’08
bumper sticker to be placed on the back of every Prius. Though these stickers reach peak effectiveness during an election year, it is acceptable to leave this sticker on the car until the next election regardless of whether the candidate actually won. If it’s a disputed election, as in 2000, the sticker can be left on for the life of the car.

If a white person does not feel like supporting a candidate, they will likely select a bumper sticker that tells other people what to do. Some popular ones include telling people to
COEXIST
and to
STOP EATING MEAT
.

Though there is no conclusive evidence about the effectiveness of these stickers, white people show no signs of abandoning the campaign. In fact, there is a white myth that tells of an unenlightened man who was driving on the freeway and saw a bumper sticker on the back of a Subaru station wagon that read
GO VEG
. The sticker was so moving that he threw the hamburger he was eating right out the window and became a vegetarian on the spot. Two days later, he affixed the same bumper sticker to his car and the process began anew until enough people had changed their views to form what is now known as the city of Portland, Oregon.