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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 28, 2025

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You're going to have to spell it out. The Smithsonian poster correctly noted some things about white culture (or rather, certain white cultures), but implied that their value were arbitrary. They got jeered at because the people jeering thought some ofthe things on the posters were good things for non-arbitrary reasons, and ascribing their value to "whiteness" was ridiculous.

FCfromSSCs complaint is simply about indoctrination. There doesn't seem to be much relationship.

Maybe the Smithsonian poster was the wrong example, but the tone and content of the comment I replied to struck me, at least, very much the mirror of a Kendi or DiAngelo. To moderately change the quote:

[white] people make [white] institutions, which in turn generate a consensus reality wherein [Whiteness] is obviously true and correct, with contrary facts elided or buried.

Googling for "interlocking system of control" shows at least one notable book from 1982 (The Highest Stage of White Supremacy by John W. Cell) that uses exactly that phrase to describe white supremacy:

A complex, interlocking system of control that regulated the lives and to some extent the minds of millions of people on both sides of the color line. [...] The principal function of the segregationist ideology was to soften class and ethnic antagonisms among whites, subordinating internal conflicts to the unifying conception of race.

I'm willing to take the original comment in good faith, but it really seems like it's perilously close to becoming the tribalism I take it as literally arguing against: "[outgroup] has rigged the system to keep [ingroup] down!" is, while in both cases probably true to some extent, is a meme I don't think is helpful in most circumstances.