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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 7, 2025

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how much of a cost would you say you and your people have borne only to end up (statistically) at the bottom of the ladder?

I'm from a backwoods holler of a resource colony. The rate of interpersonal violence may be somewhat lower than the darker half of the melanin spectrum, but "my people" are still statistically at the bottom of the ladder in everything except kindergarten vaccination rates.

To answer your question directly, I think I'd be quite nihilistic about politics achieving anything at all. Hopefully I could recognize how much worse the alternatives could be (as I try to be, even while I rant that we could- easily- do so much better), but that wouldn't make me much happier about explicit racism (towards anyone). Or at least I hope I could still stick to the principle of the matter.

They mean what the people interpreting them thnk they mean, no more and no less

Well, not quite, we have a system designed with certain people to do the interpreting, balanced by having no direct enforcement mechanism. Harvard, UNC, Michigan, and Minnesota are doing no interpreting at all; they're flipping two middle fingers up at the Constitution, the Supreme Court, and everyone else who doesn't think racism is a good thing.

That is, everyone is free to ignore the Supreme Court unless the court has enough of the executive and downstream bureaucracy on their side to enforce decisions by pointing guns at kids. However, that was part of the bargain of avoiding explicit war, as you pointed out, and the racism we have now hasn't left people quite so radicalized.

I'm ok with headwinds for my kids, they'll be fine either way.

Indeed.

My bigger concern is that Affirmative action et al doesn't actually primarily help the people its meant to help.

Ain't that the truth? Squandering high-minded ideals and not even achieving what it should for those tradeoffs in return. What a moral offense that is!

I am not opposed to helping the less fortunate. I am opposed to enshrining and deifying race the way people have, and creating designated punching bags of society.