Exploiting the Archives: The Gleeful, Oblivious, Privileged Idiocy of Chet Hanks' White Boy Summer

But he looks so smart!

Chet Hanks, Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson’s son and the Billy Carter of the Hanks family, is one of those ridiculous human beings who never trends on Twitter for anything positive. 

If you see that the artist formerly known as Chet Haze is trending it’s never because he pulled a baby out of the flaming wreckage of a deadly car crash or wrote a powerful and provocative poem. 

No, if people are talking about Chet Hanks it’s invariably because he said or did something incredibly stupid that reminded the public just how much they enjoy laughing heartily at his antics. 

You know the phrase “Lord, grant me the confidence of a mediocre white man?” It was not coined specifically about Chet Hanks and his lazy ramble through a uniquely charmed life but it applies perfectly to the black sheep of the prestigious acting family. 

Goofus to Colin Hanks’ Gallant, Chet is the smirking, gum-smacking, weight-lifting embodiment of unexamined white privilege. If Axe Body Spray became sentient it would look and talk and act exactly like Hanks and Wilson’s spectacularly under-achieving progeny. 

Tom Hanks worked hard his entire life doing legendary, award-winning work in order to ensure that his good for nothing son never had to work a day in his life.

Chet and Tom Hanks are both famous for making people laugh. The crucial difference is that the laughter Chet’s surreally non-self-aware shenanigans engender are exclusively of the unintentional variety 

That was certainly the case when Chet Hanks popped up to hilariously and obliviously predict that the Summer of 2021 will be a “White Boy Summer.” 

We’re still reeling from the seismic cultural changes brought about by the murder of George Floyd in May of 2020 and the protests that followed and this damn near translucent, baking soda-colored motherfucker has the audacity to declare that white boys were finally going to get an entire season of their own to really strut their stuff. 

Chet’s exact words in an Instagram video that immediately went viral because it gave us the sweet, sweet dumbass Chet Haze content we crave were, “Hey guys. Look, I just wanted to tap in really quick. I just got this feeling, man. This summer is, it’s about to be a White Boy Summer. Take it how you want it. I’m not talking about Trump, NASCAR type white, I’m talking about me, Jon B, Jack Harlow type white boys this summer. Let me know if you guys can vibe with that and get ready! Because I  am!”

The video was accompanied by the words, “Is it bout to be a #WhiteboySummer or am I trippin ???? Tag a REAL vanilla king #Respectfully 😂😂😂” 

When Chet predicted that 2021 will be a “White Boy Summer” he was not talking about Mitch McConnell or elderly members of the British royal family but rather super-cool white guys like himself who are so deeply immersed in black culture and hip hop culture that they’re essentially black men with white skin, in their own minds and vivid imaginations at least.

To give Chet Hanks the benefit of the doubt, what he said about 2021 being the year of the White Boy Summer was incredibly stupid and tone-deaf but also well-intentioned. Hanks was essentially predicting this will be the year of the Black White Boy Summer, since a deep reverence for black culture is what unites Jon B, a forty-six year old white Jewish R&B singer and songwriter who was scoring top ten hits as recently as 1997’s “They Don’t Know”, Chet Hanks and Jack Harlow, a twenty-three year old rapper. 

One of the many hilarious and poignant things about Chet Hanks’ prediction of a White Boy Summer is that Chet Hanks is now thirty years old. So for 2021 to truly be his time to shine it’d be more of a White Man Approaching Middle Age Summer. 

Then again Chet Hanks still has the persona and vibe of a good looking high school meathead who can’t get over how fucking awesome it is to do keg-stands and make out with cute girls at his first college frat party. 

Colin Hanks definitely seems like a chip off the old block. Chet Hanks has more of a bootleg Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino thing going on.

Being Tom Hanks’ idiot son means never having to grow up. Chet can remain a posturing man-child forever. 

Needless to say, a lot of folk were not, in fact, vibing with Chet’s vision of a “White Boy Summer” and he became a target of culture-wide mockery yet again. 

Despite what Chet Hanks might think, every summer is a white boy’s summer in which white boys, particularly rich, famous, handsome, shredded white boys like himself, have it easy. There’s no White Boy Summer for the same reason there’s no White History Month; when you reap the institutional and individual benefits of racism, white supremacy and white privilege twelve months out of the year, as white men do, then it’s pointless and ridiculous to agitate for a specific season or month to call your own. 

I am indeed ready for a White Boy Summer or, as it is otherwise known, Summer, and invite y’all to tag a REAL vanilla king in the comments (#respectfully!). That said, I would be way more excited about the Summer belonging to literally any demographic other than my own. We’ve had our time to shine for the last several millennia. Why not give someone else a turn, even if they did not begin life inside the testicles of the winner of multiple Academy Awards? 

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