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Small-Scale Question Sunday for May 19, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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So that “white woman cries over random injustice in the world” archetype that is often joked about. Eg a girl cries over the rainforest being destroyed… why does it only seem to be white women? I actually can’t recall ever seeing a black woman online crying about some injustice or harm which doesn’t affect them personally. I wonder: while it may be laughed off as pure naïveté, could it actually be evidence of a greater natural disposition toward empathy?

Just to test my intuition, I looked into who is most likely to run animal shelters or participate in animal rights and it is white women. If you look at animal rights protestor photos online they are almost always white. This over representation is of course criticized online and called white supremacism. Yet what better test is there of empathy than if you are emotional about the plight of animals? One’s emotional response to the suffering of animals is a consequence of their ability to feel the shared feeling of intelligent beings. IMO the political aspirations which follow from these feelings are flawed, but that’s a somewhat distinct question from whether it effortlessly leads to empathy.

You're just talking about upper middle class college educated women.

Redneck white women don't do that. Rich Black or Asian girls do.

redneck white women

Lots of animal refuges, horse rehab places, etc are run by rural white women though

Rich Black or Asian girls do

I have not seen this. Do rich Chinese girls advocate for animal rights in China?

Yeah, my sister-in-law is as redneck as they come and she never met an animal she didn't try to save.