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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 3, 2022

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Most people read into social subtext, so if you say, "blacks underperform for reasons other than discrimination" what most people hear is "blacks are bad, or somehow inferior." Although you didn't say the cause was genetic (in fact you explicitly gave other possibilities too!), it comes off to most people as being about genetics, just because lots of americans learned in school about scientific racism and how genetic arguments were used to justify slavery or discrimination. It doesn't matter if that's ahistorical, school gave many of us that impression anyways.

Also, in some spaces it's not acceptable to attack black culture. The argument goes that: why build society where it's acceptable to act a certain way by fiat, when you could rebuild it so it's acceptable to act a different way instead? Or to accept both ways of acting. So, "believing black people should change" is problematic to many people.

At the end of the day, explaining black outcomes by discrimination is done in order to place agency, blame, and the responsibility to fix; on society at large instead of on black people in particular.

Most people read into social subtext, so if you say, "blacks underperform for reasons other than discrimination" what most people hear is "blacks are bad, or somehow inferior.

Perhaps not for solely 'discrimination', but if one rejects that historical factors are the cause of racial disparities, what else are you left with? The OC offers as the only alternative 'culture', but that hardly helps; we can then only ask what causes the difference in culture? Hence, if you don't think there's a genetic difference we are left only with history and discrimination.

"believing black people should change" is problematic to many people.

I don't think people regard this as 'problematic' so much as pointless and unactionable. Where does a statement like that leave us in terms of actually making things better? As worthless a contribution as saying your solution to alcoholism is that people should drink less alcohol.

First, cultural differences are just as much an accidental difference between people as genetics. I do agree that history can influence culture, though.

The framing is important though. If we say culture is the cause, the solutions that come to mind are "socializing black people to act differently." If we say discrimination is the cause, the solutions that come to mind are reparations or something.

I agree the exact cause and effect is largely the same, so I will reiterate that the whole debate is largely a proxy argument for who is an agent. Feminism being also woke adjacent treats men as the only agents, too.

E: typo