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 -
Not very well thought out thought at the moment but I think my counters to this are:
OK but part of this is that most of the white-black wars never even make it into history since it's so quick and one-sided. If you're well-educated, you might know about the Italians losing in Abyssinia, Isandlwana and Haiti's war of independence. They're the interesting exceptions. Usually whites showed up with Maxim guns and dominated so effectively that there wasn't even a war. Thus all of Africa was colonized between about 1850 and 1936.
Consider the two biggest wars in this period. The most stubborn resistance was put up by the Boers (white but outnumbered 5:1), fighting for three years against the British Empire. Whereas the Italians (in their full-scale invasion in 1935) mauled Ethiopia in seven months, despite the latter having rough numerical parity. The British suffered much higher casualties than Italy did too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Italo-Ethiopian_War
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Boer_War
After decolonization, no black African state ever became a major technological/military power like India, South Korea, Japan or China. Or even a middle power like Saudi Arabia or Iran. The strongest black African state is South Africa, which is also the only black state with a significant white population. There's been noticeable deterioration in quality of infrastructure, medical excellence (the country went from pioneering heart surgery to HIV denialism) and crime under black rule.
And we see the same pattern in so much else: STEM Nobels and heavy industry, chess, esports, founding unicorn companies, invention generally, like I mentioned. Not a single STEM Nobel has ever been awarded to a black person.
If you look at the leading companies in the world of high technology, it's disproportionately whites and East Asians that run them.
These are of course legitimate objections, it is indeed hard to define racial groups and thoroughly test such a broad-spanning topic. But the trend is both important and large in magnitude. A simple, imperfect model with some limitations is still an advance on pure blankslatism or question-begging 'oh sub-Saharan Africa is struggling due to lacking the necessary infrastructure'. Why don't they build the infrastructure? They lack the capital? Well why don't they acquire the capital? Bad institutions? Well why are the institutions bad? Other countries manage these issues too.
It all requires a root cause, which is either colonialism (dubious, many countries were colonized, brutalized and exploited for much longer periods of time: Poland, Ireland, Korea, Vietnam, Indonesia, India, Greece, whereas Ethiopia was occupied for only a few years, Liberia never colonized at all) or fundamental inequality of ability, which would explain a lot more.
Uh, Liberia was a settler colony.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link