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 -
On Free Association vs. Exclusion, or: can white people just do stuff together?
Yesterday I went to church. I would estimate that there are about 150 people at my church. There are exactly three people of color there:
One black teenaged girl, who I believe is the adoptive daughter of a white couple there.
One old guy called Antonio, who I think came from Argentina a long time ago.
A Hispanic woman who is the wife of an old white guy.
The demographics of this church are, basically, the demographics of the immediately surrounding neighborhoods and of this demonination nationally: the people who go there go there because A.) they live close by and B.) they think the EFCA has good teachings to offer about God, the world etc. Everyone comes there of their own free will; all are explicitly welcome. We have never turned anyone away - I am one of the greeters and I try to take seriously my responsibility to make anyone that arrives feel welcome.
Still, when thinking about this, something apparent to me is that this church has no racial diversity. Are we under a moral obligation to try and change that?
If we are: why is that? How did we incur it? Is it not enough to be welcoming, do we need to actively change our demographic composition? What if, as seems to be the case, there are hardly any non-white people that want to come to our church?
If we are not: why is that? Other voluntary organizations come under pressure to diversify, all the time - see "knitting too white," "hiking too white," etc. Would our church not qualify because it's too small? Because it isn't a business? Because we do not have any status to award? Because we have no social media presence?
There is a black church less than four miles away - I cannot imagine them ever coming under pressure to diversify, even though they have the same level of diversity as my church does. Why should that be? I can already think of the Conflict Theory explanation - but what would the Mistake Theory explanation for that be?
I guess what I'm wondering about or driving at is, as my title indicates - is there any limiting principle to the drive for making groupings reflect the population distribution of the country as a whole? Are there organizations for which it would be unreasonable to ask this - or are there simply only organizations whose undiversity hasn't been noticed? I'm not asking this out of any animosity towards any racial group; we would really just like for everyone to come to our church. I just find myself wondering why similar bodies, who didn't choose their racial composition at all, nevertheless come under criticism for that, and some don't.
If it's a social club or political movement, sure. A hobby group, same thing - there's nothing about knitting that says it should appeal equally to all kinds of people, or that knitters need to recruit all of humanity into knitting. Likewise, a "pagan" practice like Hinduism / Shinto / etc. would hardly surprise anyone to disproportionately attract Indian / Japanese / etc. people.
But a church (so I've been told - I'm not a churchgoer myself, much less part of your particular denomination) is explicitly not any of those things. The fundamental self-concept of Christianity is that it's the One True Faith and that it's desirable for all people to believe in it. When I see an organization that professes such a doctrine and yet inexplicably has a demographic profile vastly out-of-step with the local population, I begin to suspect that the members don't actually take their own beliefs seriously. This sort of hypocrisy rubs me the wrong way because it seems to demand a greater degree of deference (from both members and non-members) than would be given if they were just open about being a social/political/hobby/cultural etc. group. (I would say the same about the black church.)
You may accuse me of uncharity or of cynically bludgeoning you with Christian doctrine despite not being a Christian myself - which may be valid, but you can take it as just one outsider's impression given my limited time and ability to discern who among the vast array of characters demanding my attention, resources, and respect is actually deserving of them. Whether this is important to you and your church is something for you/them to decide.
More options
Context Copy link
One of the steelmen for diversity initiatives is that groups (racial or otherwise) can have blindspots, different priorities, and so on.
Thus increasing diversity is a hedge against failure modes.
For a corporation, this might be something as mild as failing to support other timezones or as dramatic as marketing pork to Muslims.
For representative organizations, mainly democratic governments, there are other factors at play.
To some degree the government “owes” all its citizens similar opportunities as part of the social contract.
Perhaps more importantly, it derives its power from consent, and relies on fairness or the perception of such.
If citizens don’t believe the government respects their interests...Things get messy.
This latter type has a natural (compromise) target of matching the constituency.
On the other hand, the first case can expand to fill all available space as long as proponents can claim to be silenced.
Obviously such claims may be legitimate (Jim Crow) or realpolitik.
Given that your church isn’t designed as a government, and probably isn’t hitting any of the big risks for blindspots, it’s probably fine.
When someone can point to harm inflicted by its monoculture, then perhaps you should worry.
More options
Context Copy link
I'm a convert to Eastern Orthodoxy. A common problem that converts have is that a lot of churches are ethnic enclaves. Forget being white, there are some churches that will make you feel uncomfortable for not being Carpatho-Rusyn.
My church is an Ecumenical Patriarchate Greek church. It is the only Orthodox church in a region of about 500,000 people. As a result, the parisioners are all kinds of Orthodox. Greek, Russian, Ukrainian, Serbian, Romanian, Ethiopian, Bulgarian, Arab, plus a bunch of converts. I think the diminished focus on one ethnicity strengthens our congregation's mutual focus on following Christ.
It is also beautiful that we recite the Lord's Prayer in every language a parishioner speaks. Some days you hear half a dozen languages.
More options
Context Copy link
Your church is under no moral obligation to become more diverse, because no organization is. The people complaining about "x too white" are morally wrong, and it is an indictment of our society that they have so much power. It is no more moral to complain that something is "too white" than to complain that something is "too black".
What you have a moral obligation to do is to welcome everyone, regardless of race. It sounds like you do that. After that, the demographics of your church are entirely unrelated to questions of right or wrong. They just are whatever luck happens to make them.
More options
Context Copy link
I like the argument that exclusion through execution shaped western countries.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/147470491501300114
More options
Context Copy link
The word 'diversity' as it is used by the woke and Critical Social Justice activists does not mean the same thing as most people use the word 'diversity' in the common parlance. This is also true for a whole range of woke buzzwords - inclusion, liberation etc. This is part of a deliberate linguistic motte-and-bailey strategy, probably most easily demonstrated by the word 'equity' replacing the word 'equality' and relying on the average person to not know the difference in meaning between the two.
'Diversity' as used by the woke really just means 'differing from and against that of (what they perceive as) the hegemonic oppressive system'. Diversity for them means increasing the representation of 'marginalized peoples' who are necessarily marginalized by the oppressive system. The oppressive system (in your example it's 'whiteness') does not need to be represented as it is both omni-present as it is a hegemonic system, and is oppressive and therefore morally shouldn't be represented. 'Diversity' (the good thing) can only be achieved when whiteness (the bad thing) is completely removed, by conventionally authoritarian means if necessary. Therefore reducing or suppressing the presence of whiteness and its primary vector of white people will always increase diversity. A group with no white people (or white adjacent) and only 'marginalized peoples' is maximally diverse. It doesn't particularly matter which marginalized peoples they are (barring some progressive stack infighting).
It driven by Conflict Theory in the same sense that all of Critical Social Justice (and its Neo-Marxist base) is driven by Conflict Theory. All the believe exists is power dynamics and conflict between groups.
More options
Context Copy link
The purpose of that attack is not to ensure that the recipient changes their ways and transforms their community to be a pluralistic collection of races. The purpose of the attack is to chastise and lower the status of the recipient in that moment by implying that they have a stank of Racism that can never be quite cleaned. Had you perhaps say a dozen or half a dozen non-white members, the attack line would then become the traditional jab that some of your best friends are black.
Ask these people for solutions to this and you will not get any immediately actionable goals. At best you would hear abstract targets like "tackling structural racism" or social rituals like "having uncomfortable conversations" with no real explanation as to how to get to these goal or what the result of an uncomfortable conversation is supposed to be. I do not recall who said it now, but the best line I have ever heard on this is that there would be no real difference in material outcome between someone reading out a Land Acknowledgement and someone reading out John Wayne quotes on a stage.
More options
Context Copy link
Coming from a center-right Christian, I don't think you're doing anything wrong. I think the drive for making groupings reflect the population distribution of the country as a whole is misguided, overlysimplistic, and based on Goodharting. The argument for forced diversity is generally based on two premises (I apologize if these aren't steelmanned enough, but it's the impression I get from the mainstream):
Lack of diversity is evidence of racism. If everyone were truly equally welcome, you would have equal representation, so the fact that you don't proves you must have secret prejudices and institutionally racist structures that are driving other races away.
Diversity is a good unto itself. More diverse groups will be better and happier, and more cohesive.
I partially agree with 2, with a lot of caveats, most notably that I don't think race is the appropriate way to measure this. I strong disagree with 1, not least of which because it largely contradicts 2. Everyone is different, and has different talents and skills and likes and dislikes. This is a good thing, and should be celebrated. This is real diversity, the way God made us. It is written:
"We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us. If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your faith; if it is serving, then serve; if it is teaching, then teach; if it is to encourage, then give encouragement; if it is giving, then give generously; if it is to lead, do it diligently; if it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully." - Romans 12:6-8
Different people are good at different things, which allows you to specialize. Maybe one person is a skilled businessman and earns lots of money to donate, maybe another person is good with children and helps in the daycare, and a third person is good at socializing and helps welcome new people. And this is true both inside and outside of the church. If one person is really good at electronics, and another person is strong and likes chopping down trees, then it would be silly to roll dice to decide what careers they end up in, they should do the thing that they're talented at and enjoy doing. And if it turns out to be the case that there are statistical difference in the talents and pre-dispositions of people based on race or gender, then this is perfectly acceptable within the Christian worldview. Similarly, if there are outliers/counterexamples, people who don't perfectly conform to racial/gendered stereotypes, then this is perfectly acceptable too. We should be celebrating people for who they are, not for whether they do or do not conform to stereotypes. If 90% of your skilled businessman charity givers are men and 90% of your daycare helpers are women, the woke would see this as a problem. The sexist logic says:
A. Being a skilled businessman with lots of money makes you better than someone who's good with children
B. Men are better at being businessman and women are better with children
C. Therefore, men are better than women.
The sexist says this is perfectly acceptable and the correct world view. The woke says that C is obviously wrong, and A is true, therefore B must be false, and everyone is equally good at everything. Which seems to me like an unhealthy perspective on diversity, and a denial of observable reality. The Christian says that A is false, therefore it doesn't matter whether B is true or not, it follows that C is false (or at least is not immediately implied by this logic, and is accepted as false for other reasons). We are all different, and equally valuable and loved children of God the way he made us.
I apologize for sort of going off on a tangent there, but I feel this is important as the foundation for the rejection of the woke view. We can reject artificial notions of equality and diversity because we have our own view which is founded in the Bible (or classical liberalism, for the atheists with similar worldviews). We can do things which the woke consider discriminatory and be confident that they aren't because they are working off of mistaken premises.
Bringing this back to race, we can then accept that there are nonrandom but not absolute trends in the talents, behavior, culture, values, and needs of people of different races, and that these are a good thing to be celebrated, not something to be denied or suppressed. But this also means that different people will feel comfortable in different environments, and that this will trend via race. Some people like loud exciting worship music, some people like more classic and solemn. Some people like shouting out when they agree with something the preacher says, some people find that distracting and want focus on the words being said. If you haven't already, I highly recommend you attend a couple services at your local black church. If you already have, try to recall the similarities and differences. And also think about other churches you've been too, regardless of the predominant race of atendees. Pay attention not just to the message being preached, but all of the differences in style and presentation. And which ones you liked/disliked. Why are you attending the church you are, and not a different church? Is it just because it's closest? Is it specific people you know and if they swapped churches you would follow them? And why is your church it the way it is. If your church and your neighboring church completely swapped styles, music/schedule/messages/pastors, would you keep going to your physical church that behaved completely different, or would you swap to the other church that became behaviorally equivalent to what you have now?
I can't say for certain, but a large component of it is in style and presentation. Different people like different things and, if you and the black church merged/mixed, and ended up with two ethnically mixed churches, you would inevitably have a bunch of people dissatisfied with the style and presentation of their new church, either because you kept things the same and the new people would lose the style they had before, or because you changed your style to match what the new people wanted, in which case the old people would lose the style they had before. Diversity doesn't just mean making every location a homogeneous mix that partially caters to the lowest common denominator to appeal to as many people as possible simultaneously, it sometimes means having a diversity of locations that appeal to lots of people. And this is something to be celebrated. Similarly, a television show doesn't need to have aliens and dragons, sappy romantic drama, and masculine sports, all in the same show (though you can do that if you really want to), you can have different shows that appeal to different tastes. And, importantly, you then don't gatekeep by stereotyping people and restricting them to only the thing you designed for them, you let people choose out of their own free will and they will sort themselves out according to their actual interests.
--
That said, you don't want to take this too far. If we specialize too much and things segregate too much then we become fractured and separate communities, rather than one body of Christ. Imagine if all of the rich businessmen went to one church and had no one to take care of the children, and all of the daycare helpers went to another church and didn't have enough money. People with different talents and traits should work together and help each other and jointly advance the cause of Christ. While this does not require you to all attend the same church services, it would be good if you did stuff together and acted as part of the same cohesive community. My local (predominantly white) church regularly interacts with a nearby (predominantly black) church. The pastors are good friends and frequently meet, occasionally arrange joint services where both congregations come together and have both pastors preach, or occasionally the pastors will swap for a week and preach to the other congregation, and occasionally set up service projects to help out the local community and spread the gospel. In so far as there are cultural difference between our churches, both of us have valuable perspectives and things to say and share and teach each other, so it's good to be exposed to their perspective and view each other as part of the same overall community. But at the end of the day, I don't think we need to draw a meaningful distinction between their church or any other church, which also have different cultures and valuable perspectives, and we don't need to force or incentivize their congregation to join our church or vice versa. They're always welcome at our church, and we're welcome at theirs, and that's a good and acceptable system which isn't racist. If the rest of secular society had a better foundation for what's right and moral without being paranoid about racism, they could do something similar and function in a similar way. Sadly, they do not.
More options
Context Copy link
You say you have 150 regular members and only 3 minorities? I'm really skeptical that your comminity is 98% white. You don't have a specific responsibility to make your church less white, but if there aren't many minorities at your church there might be some deeper underlying issues.
Well, usually it's down to the history of racial bias. White churches have a history of excluding black people. I don't know if that's true for your church, but white organizations can't just say they're open to black people as if that undoes hundreds of years of discrimination.
Without doxxing myself, the latest census I saw for my town -- in 2019, as I recall -- has us at 96.something% White.
OP probably does not live anywhere near me, but outside of major cities and border territories, there remain a lot of very White communities. It's not terribly hard to believe he might live in one.
If you live in a community that is 95%+ white, there are probably some deeper structural forces at play here. After all America is only 60% white. I don't think OP has a responsibility to just recruit more members of color, but there's might be some other reason why his community doesn't have very many minorities.
Don't be shy, what are the structural forces? Don't mind the downvotes.
I had 0-1 black kid in my elementary school classes. Due to history, I saw more Natives. As I grew up, I saw more people of different races. Today, my city is more diverse than ever. I don't think we got less racist. I think that it's as simple as this: historically the place was settled by whites, and eventually the town became economically attractive to outsiders of any race.
More options
Context Copy link
I agree with you in a literal sense but I'm not sure I agree with the connotations of your comment. In particular, I think discrimination plays a relatively small role in explaining the variation in racial diversity in the US. And in the cases where discrimination does matter it is often the case that areas with more historical discrimination have more racial diversity (e.g. areas with a history of slavery tend to have more Black people today).
I think that latitude explains a fairly large portion of the variation in racial diversity in America and degree of urbanization accounts for much of the rest. First, latitude: slaves were originally highly concentrated in the south and so Black people today are still concentrated there. Also Latino immigrants are naturally concentrated in the South. Second, degree of urbanization: it is much easier for immigrants to find jobs in big urban centers rather than rural areas, both because there are more types of jobs and higher turnover. Also jobs in rural areas are more likely to be seasonal and thus less likely to lead to permanent residence. Also it is easier for immigrant communities to form in urban areas due to higher population density and this has a snowball effect.
There is at least one way in which historical discrimination played a big role in the low levels of racial diversity in some parts of the US: the collapse of Native American populations caused by war, disease, etc. But given that no state has a very large population of Native Americans today, I don't think this explains much of the variation in racial diversity.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I'd say a more productive avenue, other than worrying about demographics per se, would be to get some people started coordinating joint activities and projects with the black church.
They mention that there's a black church within four miles with reversed demographics. Given that there isn't an unlimited number of black people to go around, should the black church break up and distribute its members between the nearby white churches? If whites should be conscious of how welcoming they are to blacks, should blacks strive to embed themselves into white contexts, rather than self-segregating? Suppose black people actually enjoy being around other black people; would that be a problematic preference we should seek to change?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I think the desire to have a more diverse body of Christ is good. However, if your demographic reflects the demographic of the neighborhood, that's not necessarily a bad thing. I think diversity becomes a problem when you have an historically white church in a predominately black neighborhood with practically no racial diversity. One of the things I've experienced with churches is that unless you're in a university or sort of cosmopolitan setting, you're just not going to cater to everyone always. For instance, a pipe organ will run off some people while contemporary music will scare off others (such as myself), frequently due to its lack of meatiness. There have been some attempts to create more robust contemporary music (such as Reformed University Fellowship, which has put classical hymns to more modern instrumentation), though, that serves the function of hitting both crowds.
If your church does want to make an effort to diversify, it might be worth talking to non-white individuals who have visited your congregations or others like it to see what made them feel welcome and what did not make them feel welcome and to see if adjusting that or making your church more broadly appealing would be wise. I know there's a lot of things that white folk don't just realize are off putting to non-white individuals and vice versa and merely starting conversations may be more enlightening.
Although, funny enough, the Catholic Church from what I've seen often tends to have more diverse populations that mainline Protestant denominations. And, the Catholics tend to be pretty rigid by comparison.
I sense the faint scent of pipe tobacco on this post. Another Reformed?
Hahaha, I am quite knowledgeable of Reformed traditions but I myself am more broadly Evangelical.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Diversity of what sort?
1 Corinthians 5:11 would exclude many, welcomed by many denominations today.
An abundance of diversity and pride has fractured many churches.
Diverse ethnically ala Acts 2:8-11. I agree that you have to draw some thick doctrinal lines, which modern mainline denominations are not doing very well
If we want the ethnically linguistically diverse to hear in their own tounges we still may be in seperate congregations. Though I've no principled objection to an organic ethnically diverse congregation.
My objection is that many mainline denominations fail to expel the wicked from among them.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Catholic churches have more diverse congregations to the point of legitimately needing to set language policies, something it doesn't have a lengthy institutional memory of doing because historically it was all done in Latin.
A shortage of Spanish and- in some dioceses- Vietnamese and Tagalog speaking priests is a major problem for the Catholic church in the USA.
Is it? My Irish Catholic church ended up with an Hispanic priest.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?
Disclaimer: I haven't read it, I am going on word of mouth.
Originally published in 1997, so "pre-woke" era and more Mistake Theory than Conflict Theory.
More options
Context Copy link
By "X theory explanation", do you mean "if you are an X theorist, you could explain it like this" or "if [your opponents who are responsible for this state of affairs] are X theorists, this is how they would justify their choice"?
Assuming it's the former, it doesn't seem like a hard exercise. I'd think that the mistake that camp pro-SJ does in this and many other scenarios is assuming that just because certain minorities have inferior SES nationally on average, they always and everywhere can not possibly be at a local advantage or have something to bestow withholding which on an ethnic basis can be unfair to individuals and ultimately to the detriment of all. Maybe there is a white or Asian teenager who grew up over in the neighbourhood of the black church, in a particular subcommunity where all his friends and social superiors are black. The only status that he would be feasibly placed to pursue in his life is status in his local community, which is significantly gatekept by the black church in question, and even if they aren't formally rejecting him, in practice he would obviously, visibily be out of place if he tried to join and participate.
The easiest way to make the mistake-theoriness of the view stark is to then treat both sides as sum utilitarians. If we compelled the black church to make an explicit effort to admit more people who look like him, would this on balance do more good by helping people like the hypothetical black-neighbourhood kid (or any number of other effects which I didn't address, such as the sense of civic belonging that may be fostered by everyone being subject to the same rules), or more bad by making the job of running a $disadvantaged_minority church even more onerous than it already is (and accordingly keeping the black-white SES gap greater, with all the disutility this entails)? Presumably the SJ utilitarian response is the latter, but are they right about this?
More options
Context Copy link
It's your church. The only moral obligation it has is to serve the needs of the congregation in a righteous and forthright manner. If you all crave more non-Whites, for whatever reason, then there's a responsibility to recruit them. But if the group is content with what it has, that is enough.
Do not confuse "come under pressure" with an actual obligation. Many people will tell you that you have to do something. You don't. You can in fact ignore those people and tell them to pound sand and continue as you will. They have no power save that which people grant them via willing submission.
Just have a spine. The ultimate defense against woke subversion and conquest is not being a worm.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link