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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   34539 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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