“The dinner party is the opportunity for white people to be judged on their taste in food, wine, furniture, art, interior design, music and books. Outside of dictatorships and a few murder trials, there might not be a more rigorous judgment process in the modern world.”

This week, in honour of the magazine’s fashion special, we will be investigating the deeper cultural underpinnings beneath the seasonal flutter: the permafashion, as it were, that we display through our lifestyles, most scarily at dinner parties. Our ironic guide to these underpinnings – quoted above – is a new website which I highly recommend: www.stuffwhitepeoplelike.com .

It should be noted that in this instance, “white people” is a derogatory term, more often used in America, for vaguely lefty, urban, affluent idealists. One might also call them Bodens, or Yuppies, or Grups or Bobos – “but ‘white people’ is funnier”. The website, now a runaway success, was started earlier this year by Christian Lander, a Canadian living in Los Angeles, but his waspish and, indeed, WASPish observations apply equally well to the British.

White people get their humour from Monty Python and The Simpsons; they have cornered the market in charity bracelet sales; they love Penguin Classics, David Hare plays, rock festivals and literary festivals; they hate maths and they want to raise their children as bilingual, preferably in Mandarin. They are very particular about their coffee beans.

They pretend they listen to classical music, even attending concerts, while secretly hating every moment, or as Lander says: “Classical music has used white guilt to exist for over a century beyond its relevance.”

The typically British white person is the sort who likes the outdoors and is always “making the most of it” in the rain in Cornwall. Importantly, the white person should make it clear that it is on holiday and not working (hard to tell in these BlackBerried times) by wearing special outdoor performance clothes with uplifting logos such as North Face or Patagonia. On their damp holidays, white British adults will typically and without embarrassment play communal games intended for children, such as rounders, sardines and charades.

Naturally, white people can’t dance, but they do queue very well, as evidenced by the tent city outside Wimbledon every year. White-favoured sports, other than queuing, include rugby and cricket, since these activities involve wearing natural fibres rather than the slimy nylon and vulgar brand names of football. Sports with breaks for sponge cakes and sandwiches are preferred to those with Bovril and pies.

White people love Barack Obama and hate Sarah Palin. Dave-wise, they secretly like David Cameron, while pretending to love David Miliband. White people think they know what is best for poor people; they like to cite their experience of poverty as students, when they lived, God forbid, on baked beans. In political terms, knowing what’s best means white people give poorer people ASBOs, try to stop them eating cheaply in McDonald’s, worry about them over-extending on the never-never, and threaten to weigh their obese children at school.

“Naturally, white people do not get offended by statements directed at white people,” explains Lander. White people just wish they belonged to a cooler, more colourful tribe and are apologetic about their affluent existence. “In fact, they don’t even have a problem making offensive statements about other white people. As a rule, white people strongly prefer to get offended on behalf of other people.” Thus they love rocking against racism, protest marches, or their modern, caring replacement – a 10km charity fun run.

Increasingly, white people like me have allotments, which were once the kingdom of the working classes and immigrants. Now the white people, who are dictatorially organic, complain about the old-timers using chemical fertilisers and spraying their cabbages with diluted Jeyes fluid to keep the bugs off.

As a report in last week’s papers noted, the supposedly “greenest” people who recycle, insulate, erect solar panels and compost are, of course, white. But it is those very same white people who take the most long-haul flights. White people can’t shoot hoops, but they can ski. Expensively.

Although white people try to be green, this is expensive, because they must have a Toyota Prius or a G-wiz. They love anything Apple, from iPods to iPhones and iBooks. They must also, if possible, possess a piece of classic furniture from Eames or a Le Corbusier copy. Obviously, a white person needs a high-end running shoe to avoid injury, and cannot buy anything that might be made by small unwhite children in faraway places. Thus the vegan-friendly New Balance running shoe, made in Wales, is the only choice. I have, I am embarrassed to say, two pairs.

kate.muir@thetimes.co.uk

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