site banner
naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   35427 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 3, 2022

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.

24
Top New Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I am as racist and White supremacist as any can be, and I don't want any of the terrible things people think racist White supremacists want. I don't want to lynch them. I don't want to fly them to Africa. I don't want to put them in camps.

I just want society to stop catering to its lowest element. I want us to stop burning wealth and social capital on trying to uplift the black race out of a hole they dug themselves in. I want to shatter the mass cultural delusion that White people are responsible for black underperformance, that it's us keeping them down instead of them holding us back -- I just want them to fuck off and do their own thing, and I don't care if that thing succeeds or fails, so long as I don't have to pay for it or live in it.

There is no fix. The White race are not messiahs or babysitters. It's up to them to fix their problems, and the best thing we can do is go completely hands-off while they do it.

I don't care if that thing succeeds or fails, so long as I don't have to pay for it or live in it.

Is that you, Antidem?

https://antidem.wordpress.com/2015/07/15/dear-black-people/

One aspect of the establishment left’s recent push for gay rights is that they are quietly but visibly dumping blacks as their most favored oppressed minority in favor of gays. This is largely a simple matter of political practicality. When nice white ladies of the sort who often vote for Democrats turn on the TV and see large groups of feral blacks burning down Baltimore, it makes an impression

Boy that one aged like a little match girl. I guess he never imagined getting white ladies cheering for mass arson. Absolutely astonishing to remember 2015 from 2022.

Boy that one aged like a little match girl.

I regret that I have but one upvote to give....

I don't want to fly them to Africa.

Why not? Kerosene too expensive?

Consider that it would be the ethical thing to do.

If you look at the Black American experience from an objective, detached point of view, for some their current situation can be considered to be worse than slavery.

Slavery meant regular exercise, food and healthcare included, and relatively stable lives. They potentially grew up with family or at least some kind of role models around them.

Some of them even graduated to lording over other slaves.

When slavery was officially abolished in Brazil, they just ended up without a job, so the landowners who had just freed them asked them 'so you're looking for a job? How about you come work on my plantation for less than what I was spending on your food, shelter and healthcare?' That's how favelas were created, they all piled up in poor conditions which remain over a century later.

Now they get in huge amounts of debt for college degrees that they may not even be able to complete, they get scammed by banks and car dealerships due to the white flight brought about by their freedom of movement, they murder their own children in unprecedented amount...

Despite all of that, if they still somehow end up being part of the small group that is hard-working, motivated, religious, behaving morally etc, still, they are at a huge disadvantage. They have to compete in the work place with people that are on average a lot smarter, even if they literally come from the 3rd world like Indians and top 0.01% African immigrants.

And on top of that they have to deal with the stereotype of the 13%, despite themselves being part of the 10%(?) 'good ones', they will never make other people comfortable, they will never have a waiter (even black themselves) enthusiastically take their table, etc.

The ethical thing to do is to send them back, for their own good.

Why not? Kerosene too expensive?

As much as I wish history went differently, they are legal US citizens, and have been widely recognized as such for a long time. I'm unwilling to support the government having the power to arbitrarily mass deport its own citizens.

I'd happily support a program to help deport minorities who voluntarily signed up and revoked citizenship, however.

Blacks were steadily improving from the end of WWII until about 1975. It was the import of mostly white originated social experiments in replacing the traditional family structure with welfare and single motherhood that ruined it, so whites have a duty to fix what they've made.

Of course the way of going about this is simply dumb and won't work and should be opposed for those reasons, but there is a real white man's burden to spread white civilization to african americans because on a deep and fundamental level, we broke it.

Those policies were put in place by the Democrats who win 90% of the black vote.

Who is "we" precisely?

I took "we" to mean "white people."

Blacks were steadily improving from the end of WWII until about 1975. It was the import of mostly white originated social experiments in replacing the traditional family structure with welfare and single motherhood that ruined it, so whites have a duty to fix what they've made.

I am comfortable accepting the notion of racial guilt and the need to address the mistakes of the past, provided we start at the early 1600s, not the 1970s.

provided we start at the early 1600s

What is the implication here?

1619 is widely considered the start of serious African enslavement in North America, at Jamestown, though there was a slave presence beforehand. If I accept Whites have a responsibility to correct their mistakes, as @hydroacetylene asserts, then I must accept that first mistake being bringing blacks to the country to begin with.

That ship has sailed. Culturally modern day African-Americans have nothing in common with Igbos or Shonas or whatever. They have slightly more genetically in common, but they're still mostly mulattoes who wouldn't be reckoned as black in Africa, and anyways we're talking about a broken culture.

African Americans as they actually exist today are an ethnic group characterized by broken family norms, elevated rates of crime, poverty, etc. And the latter two come in part from the former, which was broken by white people in pursuit of "liberation" in the 60's and 70's- before all that, blacks were taking strides towards closing the gap.

That sounds like a problem for them, not me.

If you're advocating for race politics, the answer to that is- your fellow whites shouldn't have broken those family norms for ideological reasons.

That still sounds like a them problem, though. I see no reason whatsoever why I should feel obligated to the blacks regardless. Even if Whites were responsible for their plight -- which I reject -- I wouldn't care, as I'm not black.

More comments

Why?

Why do you think the primary determination of group membership should be race? “Catering to its lowest element,” as you put it, applies to welfare claimed by whites, to special-needs programs, to any infrastructure sullied by the huddled masses. Throwing out black people will not change that.

Racial segregation is stupid and wasteful. If all you really care about is raising average intelligence, then you’d be better off advocating general selection coupled with race blindness. But then you wouldn’t get to draw a clean dividing line, and you wouldn’t get to cash in on the easy tribalism.

This, of course, is assuming that intelligence is all we should care about! The founding principles of human success include the ability to extend charity to those less fortunate. You are careless to discard that skill, and foolish to do so on the basis of race.

I also object to the claim that hundreds of years of chattel slavery, followed by 100+ of abuse in a time of relatively limited mobility, counts as “digging themselves in” a hole. But I suppose that’s a moot point if you don’t actually care about culpability. As LBJ put it,

If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.

I also object to the claim that hundreds of years of chattel slavery, followed by 100+ of abuse in a time of relatively limited mobility, counts as “digging themselves in” a hole. But I suppose that’s a moot point if you don’t actually care about culpability.

Consider that hundreds of years of chattel slavery is actually still ongoing right now in the continent they escaped from. If you look at a family, the ones that stayed behind are more likely to be enslaved or in horrible conditions right now than the ones whose ancestors were transported to North-America.

North-American Africans actually have way higher living standards than their cousins from back home.

Living standards do not sum up the entirety of the human conditions, but there is a case to be made about simply stopping to teach racial history to African-Americans.

The recollection of the racial violence seems to be just as bad if not worse than the actual effects of the racial violence. After all, the African-Americans alive today are objectively better-off materially than if their ancestors (not them) had not been enslaved.

They admit it themselves:

When her son wanted to leave America and give up his passport, she recalls telling him: “You will not give up the passport because it is the key to the candy shop” — meaning access to all the economic opportunities America provides. “It would be rewarding people who did what they did to my ancestors to give the key to the candy shop,” she told me. “I will stay here and throw the Constitution up in their face. I am going to be here. They would be so happy if we all got on a boat and left. And I do not want to make them happy.”

Why?

Reality is that which does not go away when you stop believing in it. In that light, racial differences, racial in-group biases, and racial spoils are unambiguously real. I didn't make the game, but I'm willing to play by its rules.

“Catering to its lowest element,” as you put it, applies to welfare claimed by whites, to special-needs programs, to any infrastructure sullied by the huddled masses. Throwing out black people will not change that.

Time, money, status, and effort are all zero-sum. The more of anything we waste on blacks, the less we necessarily have for others.

Racial segregation is stupid and wasteful. If all you really care about is raising average intelligence, then you’d be better off advocating general selection coupled with race blindness. But then you wouldn’t get to draw a clean dividing line, and you wouldn’t get to cash in on the easy tribalism.

I don't care at all about average intelligence. If blacks were dumb but harmless I'd covet their multiplication.

This, of course, is assuming that intelligence is all we should care about! The founding principles of human success include the ability to extend charity to those less fortunate. You are careless to discard that skill, and foolish to do so on the basis of race.

I'm very charitable toward my people. I have no need to extend charity to outgroups.

I also object to the claim that hundreds of years of chattel slavery, followed by 100+ of abuse in a time of relatively limited mobility, counts as “digging themselves in” a hole. But I suppose that’s a moot point if you don’t actually care about culpability. As LBJ put it,

History is full of genocide, slavery, persecution. We threw the Chinamen in concentration camps after breaking their backs on the railroads. The western world has collectively tried to wipe the Jews out for centuries. Worse, even blacks in their own countries do poorly.

I reject your attempt to render agency the sole domain of the White race, as flattering as it is.

What is this place?

This website is a 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. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats