Profile: The White-Chocolate Homeboy
Very few urban (and suburban) characters are more obvious than the White Chocolate. Even though there are several major varieties and intensities—determined mostly by geography—you rarely mistake a White Chocolate for anything else.
As the consummate example of racial incongruence, things started off pretty rough for the White Chocolate Guy when he first emerged in the late 1980s. Early trailblazers, like rapper Vanilla Ice, were the subject of endless ridicule and scorn in those primitive dark ages. These days, White Chocolates live out in the open with the confidence—often a little too much—that they enjoy the same legitimacy as their non-synthetic chocolate counterparts.
Appearance & Dead Giveaways
- Hip-hop attire, from subtle to way-over-the-top: big-ass t-shirt; baseball cap with un-creased bill and un-removed tags; loosened laces on sneakers; oversized, sagging pants; ostentatious jewelry
- Urban lexicon, with simulated accent (e.g., “I ain’t even trying to hear that.”)
- Ethnic strut and physical gestures (holding crotch when walking; overly emotive hands when explaining things; talking more out of one side of his mouth than the other; driving with a sagging lean and a single, outstretched arm centered on the steering wheel)
- “Hard,” tough-guy look and posture
- Engages in racially legitimizing behaviors like: playing basketball, blasting hip-hop music, and “fixing up” his car
- Two-sided “bid-ness” card: shitty job during the day, side-hustle at night (Credit: Reader MAC)
Posted in Ambiguously Ethnic, Profiles | 
Tags: Eminem, Racially Incongruent, Vanilla Ice, White Chocolate, White Guys
You forgot running some sorta bit’ness on the side, aka hustling. Trying to make a dollar outta 15 cent.
That’s right! That’s 100 per-sizz-cent my bad. In fact, I have a name for that phenomenon: the “two-sided bid-ness card.” You advertise one business on one side, and a totally unrelated hu$tle on the other.
racist drivel. this is 2010, get over it already. In the real world there are wealthy black people and some of them wear business suits or golf professionally or run the worlds largest superpower. there are also poor and working class people who happen to be of primarily european ancestry, some of whom wear hip hop gear or sell drugs or work a straight job and are just trying to get by like everyone else. This shit isn’t clever. It’s not original. It’s just the same old tired cliched bullshit that small minded people who think your skin color determines what you can or can’t do with your life have been pedaling for centuries.
get over it.
Ok, ok, I’m “over it.” But one question: Do you think the whole website is “whack,” or just that one post? We’re always looking for ways to improve the website, and they should all be a little like that one. Ya heard?
For a while, we considered turning the site into a preachy, sanctimonious place called “The-Human-Race Street,” but we realized there’s already a huge group of malnourished vegans and hipster canvassers taking care of that arena (mostly, I’m afraid, in the SF Bay Area).
I bet a white chocolate wrote that last comment. Ha ha. Doesn’t he or she know that generalizations are hilarious?
No doubt. I was thinking the same thing. But it wasn’t like I was critical of the group. I was just identifying it. I guess that was enough to upset the homie.
This is where the phrase “Don’t hate the player, hate the game” might be suitable
Random hecklers! Awesome. Small but unmistakable signs of increased relevance.
I was once a full-blown white chocolate. Then I grew up, and realized that skateboarding and blink 182 didn’t have to be gay. And that baby blue sweatsuits with a matching fitted cap, and air force ones, brought alot of unwanted attention to myself. I still enjoy the hip hop culture, still write graff, listen to rap music, and bust out some funky dance moves on a friday night, but I’m not consumed by the idea of trying to associate myself with any one culture or movement, I just ‘do me.’ I think the white chocolate’s problem is that they take themselves to seriously, and in the end they end up looking / acting like clowns, and clowns aren’t serious. Nevertheless as “J” pointed out, there are legitmate white people, who grow up emersed in African American ’street culture’ and are in a sense legitmate ‘products of their environment’… YEAAAH BABY!
You get mad props for coming forward with this autobiographical shit. I knew some 90s-style White Chocolates back in the day, and they had the same issue as you–overdoing it (e.g., saying a labored “aw-ite” instead of “all right” at inopportune, inappropriate times).
So I agree that White Chocolatism needs to be subtle to be effective. Add a little street to your mix, but keep it real. It’s interesting that you initially resisted your impulse to skateboard and listen to Blink 182. Presumably, you’re doing that now?