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 -
...
A part of this that hadn't occurred to me until I saw it pointed out is that there seems to be a sort of donation duel between this lady's case and that of Karmelo Anthony, who's a black teen charged with murdering a white teen during a track meet by stabbing him in the heart during a dispute over seating. I think there was a top-level comment here about this incident before, but there was a substantial amount of support on social media for Anthony on racial grounds, including fundraising for his defense. I get the feeling that a lot of the motivation to donate to this lady is by people who feel that the support Anthony has been getting on racial grounds has been unjust, and supporting her is a way of "balancing the scales," as it were. This isn't the instantiation of "if you tell everyone to focus on everyone's race all the time in every interaction, eventually white people will try to play the same game everyone else is encouraged to" that I foresaw, but it sure is a hilarious one.
Now, one conspiracy theory that I hope is hilariously true, is that the guy who recorded this lady was in cahoots with the lady herself and staged the whole thing in order to cash in on the simmering outrage over the Anthony case. But I doubt that anyone involved has the foresight to play that level of 4D chess.
It is kinda funny seeing all the equivocation of the Gamer Word with literal murder coming out of this.
I don’t see many people claiming they’re equivalent, just that this has clearly turned into a game for online racial activists where they’ve each taken a ‘side’.
The black activists don’t actually care about the kid (countless young black men are arrested every year for violent assault of white people, and almost none of them draw any widespread attention in the black community), just like the white activists don’t actually care about this woman (single mother, tattoos, possibly an addict according to some online gossip, exactly the kind of white woman these guys typically clown on). It’s just a competition now.
There’s a lot of people, including people who made their schtick about Violence Always Being Wrong, that have at least had to pointedly say that murder and slurs aren’t equivalent in the abstract, categorizing both as race war, while having nothing to say about this case specifically
That’s because most people outside of the progressive left are in strong agreement that African-Americans have a strong ethnic identity and that widespread low to medium intensity ethnic resentment toward whites is common in that demographic group. Nothing about this case is really interesting, it’s been 30 years since this happened on a much greater scale with the OJ Simpson case.
It is reasonable to say that the motivations of donors in both cases is likely ethnic hostility and that that is what is being discussed, not the actual acts the recipients of the funds (a largely secondary matter) did.
Then why not donate to Dylan Roof, as the xitter compares? Ethnic hostility can still be about particular circumstances, such as the norms around the nuclear word.
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