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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 29, 2024

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White Dudes for Harris

It should be remembered that it was the Democrat party that broke the ice on invoking White Identity Politics directly to muster political support. The Republican party has only ever used proxy rhetoric like "they have to come legally" or "tough on crime", but looking at the recent Convention it's clear the Republican strategy is to go for the Big Tent rather than directly appeal to white voters. It's the Harris campaign that makes the direct appeal to white men, and you would not see an event like this hosted within the Republican party.

This is another indication that we're probably over the hill of Peak Woke that a white identity is acknowledged in a non-critical context:

“There is an epidemic amongst men in this country,” Mike Nellis, a Democratic strategist who helped organize the call, told The Hill.

“That loneliness, that anxiety, that disconnection, it gets filled by something. And what Republicans have done an incredible job of, depressingly so, is creating a permission structure that makes it very easy for white men to embrace Donald Trump, to embrace MAGA culture, to embrace this sort of devolution of our politics into something much more crass,” he continued. ...

Nellis, on the other hand, argued that Democrats have been too quick in the past to give up on constituencies that seem out of reach, like rural voters and white male voters.

“We should be fighting for every inch and damn sure know that the Republicans do that. They communicate with every constituency that they can win, lose, or draw,” Nellis said.

“If we could move even a fraction of white men and get them to a place where they feel comfortable with being a part of the multicultural movement that is the Democratic Party, as imperfect as it is a lot of days, that would change our politics dramatically and so much for the better.”

That's a huge shift in messaging from just a few years ago in the midst of the Floyd riots.

Hlynka can't stop taking W's, it seems.

This strikes me as a bizarre decision by the Harris campaign. Who knows, maybe I'm the brainlet here, but as a white dude, after 10 years of being shat on, this feels like pretty transparent opportunistic pandering. I'm actually very curious what our resident progressives think about this maneuver. Is Kamala fixing your race- and sex-segregated problems appealing to you?

I mean, I'm progressive and I acknowledge the nuance in gender and race issues in our country. Race isn't a monolith. Gender is not a monolith. I would reject any fellow progressive's premise that every white person is inherently racist and that every man is anti-feminist, simply because there is a non-zero amount of white people who aren't racist and a non-zero amount of men who are anti-feminist. There are white people on the right who aren't racist, there are Black people on the left who are racist. There are conservative feminist men and liberal misogynist men. There are non-straight conservative black men, and straight, liberal white men.

The list goes on. People don't ever fit neatly into specific boxes. The whole point of progressivism, to me, is to allow for intersectionality so we can have collective conversations about how to make our country better.

Race isn't a monolith... white people... Black people

Oh really?

I dont think I can recall a more transparently racist, or at least racially monolithic movement than this particular push by the swap creatures infesting the halls of Big Journalism than this particular quirk. We must always capitalize "Black" to denote their universally shared identity and experiences, but "white" people are normal, default, boring individualists who dont share a common identity? Thats not me exaggerating, thats straight from the AP Style guide. Its tranparently divisive and racist, and also hilariously ignorant of ethnic relations within Africa proper.

If you want me to believe you dont see race as a monolith, dont treat it like one. Assuming all black people share experiences because of their skin color is peak whitey guilt.

If I didn't capitalize the word "black" in my sentence, there could be people here who would demand I capitalize it. What would you have me do?

Also, from the link you provided:

After a review and period of consultation, we found, at this time, less support for capitalizing white. White people generally do not share the same history and culture, or the experience of being discriminated against because of skin color. In addition, AP is a global news organization and there is considerable disagreement, ambiguity and confusion about whom the term includes in much of the world.

It would appear that this decision made by the AP wasn't just something they decided out-of-the-blue. They sought guidance, they considered it, and decided that for now, this is the best way to handle it.

  • -13

there could be people here who would demand I capitalize it

How did you end up here? Genuinely curious

Edit: “Here” meaning TheMotte

This isn't an official warning, but consider it a disapproving squint. I don't think you are "genuinely curious," I think you are displeased at a leftist posting and you are subtly implying he's a troll or a brigader and questioning whether he belongs here. If you are genuinely curious, there are less confrontational and non-sequiter ways to ask someone how they found us, and if you do think he's a troll or a brigader, it's not your job to "police" the Motte unless he actually posts something that is against the rules.

Ok apologies, there was definitely an element of trying to enforce a consensus there and I was certainly transgressing. That said, it was hard for me to believe the user wasn’t a troll and had somehow stumbled here without being aware of the culture/consensus that does exist here (even if speaking of it or acknowledging it is mostly against the rules).

For god's sake, don't harass away every leftist who comments here, this place could use some more ideological diversity.

It's quite possible he is a troll (or at least pretending to have stumbled upon us when he actually heard about us elsewhere and decided to come see what's what). That said, "Posting leftist views" does not make someone a troll.

As for the 'culture/consensus' that exists here, it's not against the rules to "speak of it" (that is, speak of what you think the culture is). It's against the rules to try to enforce a consensus. In other words, you may think of this as a right-leaning, anti-woke space, but we do not prohibit leftist/woke views, and we explicitly forbid trying to chase them off, or make them feel like they don't "belong" here.