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 -
To be clear, my experience with ordinary, working-class-in-the-sense-of-actually-works and middle class blacks has been that they know there's an issue with their culture, are often frustrated with African American Community Leaders and democrats for not addressing or acknowledging it, and don't really like or want their kids around 'niggers'. Black women wish their pastors would do something about poor male behavior being endemic in their communities, everyone wants something done about (hard)drugs, black men wish working hard and staying married was more incentivized by their cultural taste-makers, and even the outright black supremacists are usually surprisingly chill with whites(not Jews though) in practice. Yes, many of them believe racism gets in the way, many of them think shitty schools can be fixed by shoveling money at the problem so more black kids can go to college, lots of them think jail isn't the right way to deal with drug problems, lots of them think rap music is fine instead of the root of half the cultural issues they complain about, etc, etc. Yes, they're often offended by white conservatives who answer 'well why do our schools have to suck?' with 'because your culture does', but you would be too- Vivek Ramaswamy may not have been right that American kids should be shoved into a South Korea type grind but a lot of the objections to it were based on offense rather than discussion of the data(for the record, I think the South Korean rat race is just pure pointless suffering and if I was dictator of South Korea I would legally limit school and study hours).
A data point: 71% of black Americans think hip hop has a negative influence on the culture.
Thought hip-hop has a negative influence. 2008 is basically an eternity ago for the purpose of those discussions.
That's true. I thought Pew were meant to conduct surveys repeatedly.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I've had similar direct experiences. Unfortunately, I've also had direct experiences where individual blacks I knew bought the progressive racism/white-supremacy message hook line and sinker. There's a large section of the community that knows that at least a considerable portion of the problems are in-house. Aaron McGruder made a career out of shouting that message through a megaphone. But when push comes to shove, my observation is that the race-baiters win. Blue Tribe tells blacks that their problems are the fault of Red Tribe. Blue Tribe gets political power, Blacks get cheap hope and the avoidance of some really deeply unpleasant conversations. Until Red Tribe figures out how to make a better offer, it seems unlikely that this will change. And again, why should it? Red Tribe signed off on the promises too. Red Tribe politicians made all the same speeches about how education would fix everything. Red Tribe really does largely support and run the systems that coordinate meanness against individual blacks, at least if you're speaking in general terms. And crucially, Reds fundamentally do not have a better offer, at least from the black perspective, and at least in the short term. "we don't know how to solve this, and much of it is your own fault" is never going to beat "it's all their fault, help us beat them and we'll make you whole."
Adding to this, reds don't even have a better offer to the write-offs within white America than "At least we don't blame you for minorities' problems.". The present Trump administration is flailing at a solution for high school educated male wages being stagnant at best for the last 50 years (This fucks over black men harder, BTW, given their lower level of college education.) and probably isn't going to find one.
For better or worse, IMO Trump's rise was fueled by a creeping sense within white America that the "writeoff" portion was being expanded from "high school dropouts" (who barely exist) to "high school educated". Nobody cares about this guy, but people get mad when their nice but unexceptional kid with an IT degree struggles to find well-compensated employment.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I think there are good aspects to Asian schools that we could bring in, though perhaps not to the extreme that those schools go to.
I think first of all, as a culture, we must start taking academic achievement much more seriously. America doesn’t take education seriously, and instead tends to be rather casual about tge project. And the result is that almost half of all American adults cannot read on an eighth grade level. Mathematics and science fair no better. Because of this, we’re generally stuck when it comes to innovative ideas and deep thinking in philosophy or the arts. If we took school and education as seriously as we take sports, with high achievement being celebrated and rewarded.
But the other thing that makes it work is the tracking. Not every kid who graduates goes to tge same “university to office job” track. If you haven’t earned the grades and done the work, you will go to lower colleges, trade schools, or vocational programs. This not only reduces the competition for entry level positions for college graduates, but ensures that every group ends up with a skil they can use to support themselves.
Most of the actual problems come from taking the system to extremes. Over competing in sports leads to 13 year old kids needing Tommy John’s surgery. To much competition in academics makes people miserable. Neither is an indictment of those activities or those who take them seriously. If rules are put in place to keep the competition sane, competition is generally good for people and drives them to do better. The alternative is underachieving with all the problems that come from that.
‘Half of Americans can’t read on an eighth grade level’ is one of those statistics which sounds bad, but using the same definition how does it compare to other countries with ‘deep’ orthographies such as Australia, France, etc.
English is legitimately harder to read than Finnish, Spanish, and in fact most of the rest of the world’s languages. Add to that that the American education system just absolutely loves terrible teaching methods. An oriental grindset probably isn’t the solution compared to phonics and maybe spelling reform.
‘But the US has lower reading scores than Italy’ is just not a fair comparison. I would guess that, keeping the standard constant, the USA teaches reading about as well as Australia and France and only slightly worse than China and Japan. I could be wrong. But ‘making everyone so miserable that we have a .7 TFR’ isn’t the solution.
More options
Context Copy link
The US is anything but stuck when it comes to innovative ideas. And no, they're not ALL from immigrants (and some of the immigrants were educated here). As for deep thinking in philosophy, if that means we have neither Foucault nor Derrida.... uh, good? The arts (assuming you mean non-commercial) everywhere in the First World seem to have disappeared into either pure self-referential naval-gazing or been eaten by lefty activism.
We definitely don't need more Asian-style schooling. We don't need to break intelligent kids and turn mediocre kids into grinds.
More options
Context Copy link
Most of this doesn't sound right.
I'm not completely sure what this is supposed to mean. PMC Americans and aspirants take it very seriously. Others take it pretty seriously, but from what I've heard there are a lot more PhD graduates or MA graduates than positions that really need that level of education. The government takes it seriously and pours enormous amounts of money into the project. Teachers generally take it pretty seriously, roughly proportional to how much they can get their students to do. Perhaps lower class blacks and hispanics and trailer type whites don't take it seriously enough. America and the various states keeps trying to push at these groups, inspire them, prod them into loving books and whatnot, but it mostly doesn't take. There have been a lot of educational reform movements. It is perhaps not very effective in terms of value for money.
What would greater seriousness look like? Perhaps more removal of disruptive children from classrooms? That is, of course, very political.
It is. People are very happy when their kids do well in school. They get awards, congratulations, eventually scholarships. Lots of kids are not involved in sports.
That is a description of current reality.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link