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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   34517 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 30, 2023

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A few weeks ago I linked to a discussion in the NYT about affirmative action. The most popular NYT comments were at least weakly supportive of the conservative Supreme Court's coming affirmative action ban.

Here's an NYT story from a few days ago about black New Yorkers being priced out of the city. I'm bolding sentences of interest.

2nd most recommended comment (427 Recommend)

NYC has always been expensive. One thing that was touched on in the article is that families are fleeing the NYC school system. That deserves a closer look by the NYT. It’s not just white families, but also black families. The reforms made by DeBlasio made it impossible for parents to be sure their kids would get a good education. It’s now mostly a lottery system. It was supposed to be more equitable but now provides a path for no one.

4th most recommended comment (338 Recommend)

I can already hear the New York naysayers saying "How can black New Yorkers move to somewhere like Georgia where people are so racist??"

As a former New Yorker who grew up there but has since lived in Texas, southern California, and now small city Georgia, I loved seeing this article. Georgia is the first part of the country that I have lived where I actually see real community and friendly interactions between blacks and whites as the norm rather than exception.

Others chime in with similar stories:

I’m a black woman from Texas but have lived in NYC for about the past decade. In my opinion, my home city in Texas was less racially (and socioeconomically) segregated than NYC. As someone else commented, middle/upper middle class black families were more of a norm rather than an exception where I am from in TX.

What does it take to achieve "friendly interactions between blacks and whites as the norm rather than exception"? What are the success stories of positive race relations (including in a non-American context) that we can learn from? I'm interested in scientific data, commenter anecdote, and everything in between. Let's identify and replicate successes like these.

I can tell you anecdotally I grew up in one of the most color-blind, racially integrated places I've ever seen. I was extremely confused when I left this bubble and discovered that racial tension was still a thing. To me, all that had ended before I was born. Of course, it was a faith-healing cult that was letting kids die of easily preventable diseases on a regular basis, but man, were they progressive racially!

Our church was heavily white (it was located in Indiana, after all), but we had for the area quite a large number of minorities, and a lot of interracial relationships, many of them between indigenous people and missionaries, that sort of thing. Ideologically they were the descendants of Smith Wigglesworth, but culturally most of the people were '70s converts, Jesus Freak hippies, reformed underclass etc.

I can honestly say no adult from that church ever intimated by word or implication that people of different races had any distinctive characteristics or were different in any way but superficially. And all it took to get there was absolute dedication to an insane ideology. I can draw a lesson here. The way to reduce racial tension is to highlight a different distinction, which has its own failure modes. We were an insular cult with a cultural siege mentality, constantly under attack from the nonbelievers and "fake christians". This paranoia drew us together with our fellow travelers, no matter the race because race was just so much less important than doctrinal correctness.

The good news is that racism can be easily eliminated, the bad news is that it is only by creating another ingroup phenomenon that is just as pernicious. You just have to get people to be bigoted on a different axis.

Interesting, I think this theory implies that sports rivalries are helping to make America less racist?

Yes, for several reasons. It's a tribalism outlet, it's a social arena that blacks do disproportionately well on, and it's fair, for some definition of the word. Nobody really cares what color the players are, they're cheering for laundry.

Unironically yes.

I think the basic theory is that sports are largely an outlet for 'bloodless' martial/military conflict and allows different groups to exert 'dominance' over each other without either side fearing extermination.

I bet the effect is especially strong in team sports that have less emphasis on individual star performers and more on the cohesiveness of the whole unit.

What does it take to achieve "friendly interactions between blacks and whites as the norm rather than exception"?

Breaking the consistent association between Race and Class. I hold the occasionally popular Materialist view on racism, that where Race does not intersect with economic class and competition there is no racism despite visual differences in race.* Where individuals of one race are always in a superior or a subordinate role, resentment and oppression build up.

I grew up in a well off rural-exurban area. Vastly white, but with a good sprinkling of Asians and a few Blacks and Hispanics. There was relatively little racism in any serious way. People were, of course, holding bad attitudes or making bad jokes, but there wasn't tension. Most of the Black kids I knew growing up were just as middle class as the white or Asian kids. I'd imagine most of the really rich people I knew were white, and that I knew few poor Asians, if I counted it up. But it wasn't predictable enough to worry about. Humans are bad at percentages, a slight change in likelihood won't really create dangerous stereotypes, it takes serious hit-you-in-the-face obviousness.

Then I moved to NYC, and for the first time I felt racial tension. And the reason to me was obvious. At home the odds of any given waitress/janitor/bus driver/cop/criminal being White were overwhelmingly high, and their odds of being Black/Hispanic/Asian was low enough as to be essentially even with the odds of any passerby or customer being whatever race. In NYC, in so many places, the customers were overwhelmingly White and Asian while the staff were overwhelmingly Black and Hispanic. The men walking to Wall Street jobs were overwhelmingly white, the bums laying on the street begging them for change were overwhelmingly Black. The cops were largely white, the criminals largely black.

The difference might be subtle, just a few percentage points in reality, but it changes the feel significantly. The association of Black=poor=service industry poisons people. Atlanta is known for having a large Black middle and upper class. So that's where I would see the difference.

*And, necessarily, eventually no race at all thanks to assimilation. The amalgamation of the varied European immigrants into a more or less heterogenous "white" category in America resulted over time from a lack of economic discrimination between Italians, WASPs, Irish, Germans, etc. Jews being the major notable exception.

I've felt this, coming from a mediocre rural area in Greater Appalachia (where both the top and the bottom were white and the black people I knew were in similar circumstances to myself; they mostly lived in modest houses like my family did, not in trailers or mansions) to an old Southern port city. The racial inequality there was very in-your-face along with the juxtaposition of dilapidated shotgun shacks being all but adjacent to million dollar historic mansions. It was deeply jarring and remorse-inducing (as was witnessing the poverty of the Black Belt, a region depopulated by the Great Migrations and which is probably about as bad and forgotten about as native reservations or the worst that Appalachia has to offer).

By contrast, IMO successful integration happened mostly in the New South. It's still a little weird due to the fact that underclass blacks tend to live in inner city apartments while underclass whites tend to live in trailers out in the country but once you get above that level (and ignore the mostly white elite, which are as out of view to the middle as the underclass) you get working and middle class white and black people who interact and get along with each other well on a day to day basis and as /u/faceh puts it, there's more shared culture and experience papering things over than there is racial divide. We all want our kids to go to good schools and do well, we all want nice houses and fancy cars or trucks, we love Jesus (but are imperfect sinners), and want our football team of choice to win.

I think it happens for a few reasons.

  1. Car cities naturally separate out a lot of the interactions with the poors. So you just don’t see them.

  2. Superstar cities have huge filters for intelligence

  3. A lot of middle class left. So you only have the poors with free housing and the gap between them and the superstars is a lot more than middle class people elsewhere.

So big cities still have some 90 average IQ blacks but then wall st has 140 average IQ autistics. Much different than elsewhere where weaker filters in middle class Houston would nudge out lower IQ blacks and select for a little higher and the white populations superstars are gone.

I'll throw in a couple other theories:

-- Small predominantly white towns like mine simply never produce a predictive effect for being white. If I'm in, say, Japan I can figure that another white person is going to have more in common with me than the average person on the street. Hell, in Japan if I saw a Black guy in a Phillies hat we definitely have a ton in common by the Local average. At the PA farm show, shared skin color isn't predictive of anything in common at all, above the average of attendees. I've commented before on a similar phenomenon in my own life; due to high school class selection and selective college attendance, for a long time I was statistically more likely to have a lot in common with a random Asian kid my own age than a random white kid.

-- Southern towns benefit from a heritage of formal segregation. Segregation was morally bad and reflected negative attitudes, but it produced local Black elites and leaders in a way you didn't see in the North. This relates to the theory that the primary victims of affirmative action are Black communities. The talented tenth, the natural leaders, are plucked out of the projects and sent to Harvard and given make work diversity jobs at law firms and investment banks. This prevents them from going to HBCUs or starting businesses in their home neighborhoods.

Hell, in Japan if I saw a Black guy in a Phillies hat we definitely have a ton in common by the Local average.

Extremely salient point here.

Southern towns benefit from a heritage of formal segregation. Segregation was morally bad and reflected negative attitudes, but it produced local Black elites and leaders in a way you didn't see in the North.

Also here, and these are like inverses of each other but making the same argument.

When faced with an extremely conformist/homogeneous overculture, your choices are to adapt to conform as closely as you can and try not to stand out much... or carve out a subculture for yourself with others who share some degree of similarity to you and separate your identity as a group from the overculture.

Right now in the U.S., the overculture is the left-liberal cathedral.

For the post-civil war South, the overculture would have been 'white' culture, and enforced segregation prevented most blacks from assimilating, so as you say their only option was to form parallel institutions with black leaders arising to positions of prominence within that subculture.

And for better or worse, now the overculture not only allows assimilation, but it actively plucks the best and brightest of the undercultures so the undercultures are robbed of possible leaders and innovators.

deleted

I'll second this, as someone who moved from Texas to Chicago the levels of racial segregation, and as you said even to the job level, is shocking. It is not an exageration to say that 90% of security roles are filled by black people, the majority of the people obviously sleeping on the sidewalk are black. It really does contribute to racial animosity.

What does it take to achieve "friendly interactions between blacks and whites as the norm rather than exception"

Maybe take a look at the military? I'm given to understand that the military has been very good at suppressing or eliminating race as a social divisor.

My own experience in the US Air Force also supports this, at least as far as friendly interactions between races being the norm.

Interestingly enough there was still a pretty high level of race separation in the career fields, with the career fields requiring lower test scores on the ASVAB seemingly having a higher proportion of black people (weapons troops, services (cooks, gym workers, etc), security forces, etc) vs the career fields requiring higher test scores seeming to have a higher proportion of white people (avionics, intelligence, linguist). Officers also tend to be higher proportion white/asian due to the college degree requirement.

Despite this separation the interactions between races in my time in were overall friendly, with more frequent interaction and joking about racial differences than what I have seen now in the general civilian population.

Is that actually true? My impression is that the military still has a fair amount of cliquishness which is often based on race, but that blacks and red tribe whites generally get along fairly well when ruled over by a third party that doesn’t specifically hate either of them and the military selects very strongly for task oriented sorts that are most interested in getting shit done.

The Veterans advocacy group at my company was once told that they didn't have enough diversity on their executive board. Their response was something to the effect of "What are you talking about? We've got both kinds of people, veterans and civilians."

That ruled over part might run into trouble in a peace time military, where the career oriented cya culture, rotation-based assignments and the political considerations of making it to general grade can lead to many of the same types of pointy-haired bosses supporting the current thing and leaving before their poor decisions come home to roost succeeding while task orienteds burn out or get up-or-outed.

Well the veterans I talked to were in under bush or early Obama, so less current thing bs.

It is absolutely true. Racism is virtually nonexistent in the military. Especially compared to academia and the kinds of NIMBY upper class blue communities who believe immigration is a good thing, so long as it doesn’t impact them.

Sexism is a different story.

Racism is virtually nonexistent in the military.

Depends on what you mean by that. If you mean there is very little actual race-hate, absolutely. But soldiers are some of the most inveterate users of racial slurs in a ball-busting way. So if your metric is "used a racial slur", then the military is hilariously racist. If we mean some deep-seated bigotry against other races, it's a rounding error.

One outlier I've observed is the attitudes of service members towards the populations of hostile nations they are occupying. The only person that I've heard IRL unironically discussing the merits of genocide, was an active duty service member pondering whether it might be morally correct to glass the middle east, due to the pervasiveness of human rights abuses he had witnessed while stationed there.

I suppose this is technically Jingoism rather than racism, but it definitely bled into his domestic views eg. immigration from Arabic countries.

That's not bigotry, that's just reality. It's one thing to hear stories, it's another to watch what goes on with your own eyes. I'd put it to you that anyone who had to do that job would come out hating whoever he thought were the people responsible. Part of this is just the dynamics of war, we have to dehumanize the opposition a bit to do our jobs. But the other is just that the middle east is so incredibly fucked up. And it's not one or two people, it's everyone. That's why some of us are a bit leery of bringing over people who have been socialized to beat women and rape anything that can be held down.

Well, it was virtually nonexistent in the military. The DEI crowd are doing their level best to pump those numbers up as high and fast as possible. The recent controversy over the recommended reading list for officers is one example that made it out of the filter bubble.

I don't have first hand knowledge - I'm a fatass with over-protective PMC parents who wouldn't have dreamed of letting me join up - but I've never talked to an active duty military person or recent-vintage vet who made a big deal out of race issues. And I recall reading various pieces, books, etc. that claim that the military is good at turning racially- and culturally-disparate people all into good little green automata. But YMMV, and of course first-hand knowledge would be appreciated if anyone wants to chime in.

And I recall reading various pieces, books, etc. that claim that the military is good at turning racially- and culturally-disparate people all into good little green automata. But YMMV, and of course first-hand knowledge would be appreciated if anyone wants to chime in.

I admittedly bristle at being characterized as "good little green automata", but overall, I'd say this is accurate. The infamous line from Full Metal Jacket about how there is no bigotry in the Marine Corps because Marines treat everyone as being equally worthless, was pretty on point. For my part I used to tell my new recruits that "you're here because the US DoD considers you expendable". "Ethnic Tension" in the military happens more between branches and specialties than between races. Army vs Navy, Air Wingers vs Ops guys, Ops guys vs Grunts, and so on.

Though sadly, there seems to have been some efforts to change this in recent years all in the name of "reform" and increasing "inclusiveness". As someone who came up through and subsequently participated in the pipeline I find that latter bit rather galling. A major component of forging individuals into a unit, and breeding esprit de corps is fostering a sense of exclusiveness. You gotta earn those stripes.

No offense was intended, Hlynka -it was a poor choice of words. Thanks for your input.

It's all good. ;) It's not like I was particularly offended or anything.

Everyone I’ve talked to who was enlisted says the military was basically a continuation of high school with all the cliquishness, and although you’re right that racial tension is usually not part of the story there’s often an implication that the blacks mostly flock together, as they do in civilian life(and often other ethnically distinctive groups common in the military, like Puerto Ricans, Cajuns, etc), and that unit based loyalties are strongest for combat troops and usually don’t quite supplant ethnic or personal cliquishness outside of the infantry and special forces.

I served in a multi-ethnic non-US country as a reservist in the infantry. I can't remember any racial cliquishness either in boot camp or my unit. Basically everyone's race was 'green' and they were largely mission orientated.

Bootcamp at the time was identical for reservists and regulars, so when I went through we had mostly regulars with a minority of reservists. All of the infantry guys (before going through corps specific training) were switched on, but I remember a lot of the other enlisted guys being absolute idiots. I think they actually assigned people that tested higher to combat corps (with the exception of technical corps such as signals or intelligence).

Wouldn't surprise me if this had downstream impacts on interracial cohesion.

What does it take to achieve "friendly interactions between blacks and whites as the norm rather than exception"?

Speaking from a longish life living in the south, in generally diverse areas.

I attended a high school that was 8% white, with the vast majority being black and Hispanic. I was never targeted with racial animosity and I can unironically say I had multiple black (and Hispanic, and Irish, and Pakistani, and Iranian, and Chinese, as it happens) friends. Worst thing that happened to me was getting my gym shorts stolen once. It was jarring but wasn't what I would call a hate crime.

So largely this is observation over time of situations where racial harmony was prevalent, and a few where it was less so.

On the one hand, having multiple things in common with another person that isn't race allows one to forge a relationship that is MUTUALLY BENEFICIAL.

Sharing a favored sports team, or a hobby, a favored hunting/fishing spot, or musical tastes. Now you're bonded with someone over some shared experience which breeds immediate empathy and camaraderie.

At a core this is just basic human tribalism, but instantiated in a way that ignores people's physical characteristics or even political ideology, and so allows for co-existence in happy peace, assuming that everyone feels treated fairly by the system. People will get WAY more worked up over a rivalry between College Football teams than they will over racial tensions, by and large.

What does a middle class white liberal in New York actually have in common with a middle or lower-class African American? I'd doubt they share taste in music, the white liberal probably isn't much of a sports fan, and I'd guess there's minimal crossover in hobbies. What's the groundwork for creating a harmonious interaction betwixt them? I know many New Yorkers view "living in New York" as a cultural touchstone. I honestly can't say how strong that is.

On the other hand, the culture of the south honestly does view race as a secondary concern to the overall need to be polite, helpful, and optimistic. I'd guess this traces to religiosity among other things, and basically results in an underlying assumption that everyone you interact with is going to be friendly, and thus you should default to friendliness until given reason not to. This is where the reputation for neighborliness in the South comes from, ultimately. If your first interaction with the neighbors is a friendly one, then the respective races of you and the neighbors won't even come up as a consideration. Indeed, it wouldn't be 'polite' to make a direct acknowledgement of it. You wouldn't ask a black dude who his favorite rapper is, just because he's black. Of course, if you're deeper into the friendship with someone, the comfort level might actually allow you to use race-based insult humor with them, when it's all in good fun.

And on the gripping hand, the South is more fundamentally tied to the "American" identity than your average white liberal is, I'd wager. History of rebellion notwithstanding, Southern culture is very directly tied to the agricultural land, the geographical features, and the people who occupy the actual territory that makes up the U.S. although maybe less so to the government that lays claim to said territory. Perhaps it is a less 'enlightened' perspective than one which views humanity/earthlings as a whole and becomes less relevant with time as globalization dissolves territorial boundaries to a greater or lesser extent. But When you're deeply rooted to the land itself, then you can have a stronger connection with others who are also so rooted, and your group can feel that you're more authentically 'American' than people who live in cities and have minimal knowledge of/connection to the greater geography of the country.

So this all rolls into a situation where the people are much more likely to focus on what unites them than what sets them apart, and they're sort of culturally opposed to interpersonal animosity when it can be avoided, and has very little reason to single out race as a central part of their identity.

For my part, having grown up in the South makes me feel pretty uncomfortable in situations where people are actively choosing to center their identity on their race and drive a discussion (for some values of that term) about racial disparities and how to rectify them. My phrasing there is deliberate, as it applies to white supremacists AND hardcore lefty intersectionalists.

When I find myself in such a situation, my instinct is to say "bless your hearts, y'all have a good day" and just leave.

Anyhow, if you want a more scholarly take on this, I can say Thomas Sowell has done some strong writing on this topic:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Rednecks_and_White_Liberals

https://www.basicbooks.com/titles/thomas-sowell/intellectuals-and-race/9780465058723/

My guess is that rent control and public / subsidized housing in places like NYC make the de facto, mostly organic segregation that would normally keep groups separate and mostly invisible to one another much more visible. That is to say, my guess is (never having lived there) that I don't think NYC is much more segregated, it just looks like it because people can see the other side.

As a toy example, imagine a city laid out in a line from richest to poorest. Everyone would probably have a lot in common with their neighbours, and the racial mix would mostly change slowly across space. Now if we wrap that line into a circle, suddenly this city looks super racially segregated and inhumane where the ends meet! Anyways just a hypothesis.

Actually sun belt cities(Atlanta, Dallas, Phoenix) are way less segregated than older cities in the north, mostly because they’re built more recently and have more recent mobility, both for economic reasons.

I think we might agree? I'm saying that it's rent control and public / subsidized housing that make the difference. In my vague understanding, Atlanta, Dallas, and Phoenix have much less of this than old metros like NYC.

This kind of sounds like a rising tide lifting all boats. Blue collar Texans and Georgians have seen sustained economic growth compared to New York, so blacks(who are overwhelmingly blue collar) are much more likely to be middle class.

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