"White people problems"

As I was browsing through Facebook when I suppose to study. Fail. This image, or more like the texts on the image has caught my attention. 

“Laying in bed texting. Drop phone on your face”. Soon after finished reading the texts, I immediately reacted with “Oh my god, this is so true!” Soon after that, I saw the link at the bottom; the image was retrieved from “whitepeopleproblems.com”.

Out of curiosity, I went into this website and realised there was a large amount of images which have similar texts written on them. Interesting enough, each of the texts is illustrating a common problem that the majority of people have.

What it interests me was the title of this website was called the “white people problems”. It firstly brought to me the idea which was opposite to Peggy McIntosh’s article of “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack”. Because “white people” has been “privileged” in so many ways, maybe they shouldn’t be having any problems? But as I read it flipping through more of the images, I realised rather than it is a “white people’s” problem, it was more towards an “everyone’s” problem.  Which this has brought us into an idea of “white” been the dominate of the society.

Begin with the idea of “Eurocentrism”.  According to Robert, he argued. Eurocentrism is an approach that takes European values, judgments, beliefs and cultures as normal, natural and ideal. In other words, it makes European values central, and dismisses others to the periphery. Therefore, eurocentrism could be seen as the dominant perspective in the Western society. Or maybe even border.

In this case, we could relate this “the white people’s” problem with eurocentrism. Eurocentrism can be seen as a very powerful approach in terms of setting the dominant norm to the society. The “problems” which has portrayed in these images were some of the common ordinary problems or mistake that people make. Not only necessary targeted to the white people.

For me, not been a white person. I find that I have associations with these “problems” in each image. And I think it is true because I have been personally experienced them before. I have also showed this to my other non-white friends, they have all agreed with the “problems” on each image. Therefore, rather than seen these common mistakes as been a “white” people’s problem, it also relating to many other race.

The point that I wanted to make was that, the idea of eurocentrism has the power of manipulating people’s idea into a more Eurocentric way, whereas in this case, the “problems” has been illustrated through each of these images, are rather only “white” people’s problem. But it also represents a wider group. Therefore, by using the title of “white people problem”, it has illustrated those common problems through the lens of “white” society.  But it also sets a norms for the public that these problems are also targeted to other different race group.

Ferguson, Robert (1998). Otherness, Eurocentrism and the representation of ‘race’. In Representing ‘Race’: Ideology Identity and the Media. (pp, 65-82). London: BFI.