Part of observing the world around me, is occasionally identifying patterns. I like to think that I’m a pretty observant person, and I feel like I’m pretty good at identifying patterns, especially when I see commonalities in behavior or tendencies in demographics.
To cut to the chase and keep my word count down and free of paragraphs of extraneous fluff, I’ve determined that white people are extremely willing to accept questionable aesthetics and/or quickly latch onto the new and niche, as long as the result of their collective acceptance makes something “theirs.”
And once something becomes a white people thing, all the other basic white people begin to glom onto it and perpetuate the stereotype even stronger and give it more and more momentum, to where it gets to this point where upon visual identification of it from the rest of the world, it’s automatically associated with being a white people thing.
In the past, I have brogged about things about how white people really love Major League Soccer, and how white people really love the new Ford Bronco, but I’ve given this a lot more thought than I probably should have considering all the things in the world that would be slightly more productive to think about alternatively, but to the point where this could potentially become a series of posts or at least worth justifying the existence of a white people tag on the brog.
Over the last, I’d say four years, I’ve noticed a trend in home design, along with a correlation of seemingly only white people partaking in it: black and white homes. Homes that are entirely black and white, be it white brick, white panel, white siding.
I’m talking straight up white; #FFFFFF white, 0.0.0.0 white. Not “bone,” not “French white” or any shade of white that has any iota of colored pigmentation in it whatsoever. Just fucking default plain white, but all over the home.
And then comes the black, usually in trim, shutters, doors, maybe an accent wall or side of the home. Garage door(s), gutters, support beams, full on black. #000000 black, 100.100.100.100 black.
Homes like these, I’ve seen an increase of them popping up all around the city, especially in the little bubble of zip codes that I live in, since I do live in an area with a high concentration of white people. Roads that I’ve driven on, I’ve seen homes that clearly sold during the nuclear real estate boon just a year ago, and it’s evident that the new owners tore down the old homes, and erected these black and white, white people monuments in their place. Empty lots or little parcels of land in which I didn’t even think that a home could be built upon, now have homes that are more black and white than a weekday newspaper comics page.
Even a home in my own neighborhood, frankly one that I would’ve gone after myself it were available at the time in which I was looking for a house, I remember walking in my neighborhood one day, and I nearly went snow blind when they had completely whitewashed the entire fucking home, before they put their all-black trim on it. Like, this couple paid a large sum of money to transform their ordinary home into this gaudy black and white structure smack dab in the middle of a cul-de-sac with more ordinary looking homes all around it.
And the thing is, although my sample size is small in confirmation, I’d wager a good bit that every single one of these homes is resided by white people. Many of the homes that come to mind while I’m writing this post I know by virtue of visual confirmation of the residents that they’re white, others have some serious tells that they’re resided by white people, most notably shit like big fucking Dodge Ram trucks, orange guy or Yosemite Sam political signs out in front, among other very obvious white people-centric things that easily fill in the blank.
The bottom line is that black and white houses have become this very obvious indicator of white people living somewhere, and I imagine I’m going to be flabbergasted the day I drive past a black and white house, and I see a minority coming out the door or garage. However, I imagine that when such a day occurs, similar to the fashion in which white people abandoned cities throughout US history, it will probably mean that white people have begun to abandon ship on the trend are on the prowl for something other home aesthetic trend that they can make theirs, before any colored folk decide to get in on the trend.
