This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I'm guessing this is South Bay or thereabouts. The Dumbarton bridge marks the beginning of Asian (south and east) tech town. Indians and Chinese tech workers are eating up the area from Palo Alto to San Jose back up tp Fremont. But that is silicon valley proper, so it's hardly surprising.
The rest of California and the Bay Area is not infested with Indian and Chinese tech workers taking over.
Wow, does sideswiping an entire group of people as an "infestation" not count as being overly antagonistic here?
Backseat modding does.
You guys are allowed to mod however you want---it's your website. It's just dishonest to pretend to be a neutral "place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases" when there's a pretty clear bias in which groups you're allowed to use this kind of antagonistic language against and which you aren't.
Whatever you guys might claim to be, this seems to be a place where it's ok to call an immigrant group an infestation but not to say that the antebellum south was an execrable culture.
You have either fundamentally misunderstood or are fundamentally misrepresenting the thread you linked. You are in fact allowed to say that the antebellum south was an execrable culture, and many people have said here it many times before. You can in fact argue that Confederate statues should be torn down, and you can even argue that people who think otherwise are bad; many people have argued that here many times before. You do in fact have to be careful about how you talk about any group here, and quite a few anti-woke people have in fact been banned for failing to do so properly. The objection in that thread, as described to you repeatedly at the time, was that you were conflating people to object to the destruction of Confederate memorials with slave owners.
I think the antebellum south was an execrable culture, and holding the history constant to the start of the Civil War, I prefer our actual history where their society was destroyed through mass violence to counterfactuals where it might have been allowed to fade away peacefully, continuing to perpetrate evil throughout its decline. Further, I think that destroying Confederate monuments is both stupid and evil here and now. I'd be happy to discuss either opinion with you as time permits, as either side of either opinion fit comfortably within the rules here.
I never conflated these two groups in that entire conversation and repeatedly tried to explain that I didn't. From the very first post, I tried to be very clear that I was only talking about the antebellum south:
This is in fact the main issue. If you try to argue many points on this forum, you get pattern-matched and rounded-off to a very different point that is actually objectionable. You can take however many pains you want to say that you are just talking about the antebellum south, and even the moderation team thinks that you are somehow also talking about the modern south. Like how are you supposed to interpret the group that's being teabagged by melting down a statue as something other than the group led by the person the statue represented?
In the case here, a similar effect creates huge blindspots when applying the guideline:
How is "infested with Indian and Chinese tech workers taking over" at all being careful while talking about a group? Pointing this out, however, gets conflated with other crying wolf about racism, so this rule about not casually and unjustifiably sideswiping large groups of people doesn't really get applied properly.
Reading the conversation, it looks to me like you did in fact conflate the two groups.
"the outgroup" in this comment is pretty clearly referring to contemporary people, not the Confederate slavers. The context of the entire comment is about people in the present day.
Your reply:
(bolding mine.) He's talking about one thing, you respond with a line that makes it seem like he's talking about something else. That doesn't make for good discussion. Especially when you follow it up with:
I find it doubtful that you were actually confused by what he meant by "moderate". If you want to argue that such people aren't actually moderate, you can present an argument. You offer a declaration, framed uncharitably. This is building consensus, and it also makes for bad discussion.
You seem to have a habit of writing posts in a way optimized, intentionally or not, for maximizing heat and not light. You also seem to have a pattern of conversation centering on moral outrage that people might possibly disagree with you. If you are actually interested in discussing why someone might not want confederate statues destroyed, or why they should want them destroyed, that's something we can do here. It would help to start from the assumption that people might reasonably disagree with you.
It's not, and he has in fact been warned. On the other hand, at least it's not an uncharitably-framed argument over definitions of words. The person you're complaining about is pretty clearly a racist, and they aren't hiding it or being weaselly about it. That's actually preferable to the alternative, which is why we have the "speak plainly" rule, and, as I understand it, is one of the reasons we tolerate significant amounts of vitriol toward parties who are not actually present in the discussion.
This is not clear at all (except for literal neo-confederates who want to bring things like slavery back). The confederacy is a completely different culture from the modern south and making the connection from destroying a statue of a confederate leader to somehow teabagging modern southerners is almost a non-sequitur! Sure, some people mistaken about who actually represents their values might be upset but this is an unfortunate side-effect and really the fault of those people. It's definitely not anyone's intention in melting down the statue and really confusing if it's referred to by such a motivated word as "teabagging"---to the point where the most natural thing is to immediately dismiss that as a possibility.
Again, the far-and-away most reasonable interpretation for which group is being teabagged by a statue being destroyed....is group the person led/was part of.
I'm clearly missing something here that made modern southerners an at-all reasonable interpretation for that group: which of the following is it?
Like maybe it was clear to you he was talking about one thing, but that's completely opaque to anyone who doesn't share the politics of this place.
I thought he was referring to neo-confederates as moderates and trying to double-check this because that isn't really a reasonable definition of moderate.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link