589 SOCIAL THOUGHT & COMMENTARY Stuff the Professional- Managerial Class Likes: “Distinction” for an Egalitarian Elite Daniel Rosenblatt, Carleton University ABSTRACT Despite what its name might suggest, the satirical website “Stuff White People Like” is an insightful commentary on the values and tastes of liberal members of the American “professional-managerial class.” Besides calling attention to the “racing” of class, the site presents a portrait of these people that allows us to read the way structurally inherent anxieties around class re- production and a historically conditioned quest for authenticity and individu- ality are sedimented in their everyday behavior and consciousness. The pop- ularity of the site in 2008 reflected public interest in the intersection of race, class, and culture in the context of Barak Obama’s presidential campaign. [Keywords: Middle class, race, consumption, popular culture, Obama, Internet, public anthropology] At the end of the day, you don’t have to be white to be white; you just have to be rich. —Christian Lander, creator of “Stuff White People Like” blog 1 I n March 2008 and then again in July of that year, the popular anthropol- ogy blog “Savage Minds” hosted animated discussions prompted by the website “Stuff White People Like” (hereafter SWPL). 2 For those who are Anthropological Quarterly, Vol. 86, No. 2, p. 589-624, ISSN 0003-5491. © 2013 by the Institute for Ethnographic Research (IFER) a part of the George Washington University. All rights reserved.