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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   27035 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 2, 2026

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but they start from the unassailable premise that there cannot be legitimate reasons why a meritocratic test would show a racial or gender skew

Only when it's a skew that affects groups they care about.

If we went solely by disparate impact, based on the numbers we would need to assume that cops are several orders of magnitude more sexist (against men) than they are racist (against blacks). But I haven't seen a single DEI proponent arguing that we need to eradicate female privilege in arrests/prison sentencing/etc. The right has no problem with saying that men are inherently more likely to engage in criminal behavior than women, the DEI/blank slatist/etc. camp doesn't really have an answer to this.

Also Native Americans per capita commit more crime than blacks in certain categories, with similarly high arrest/imprisonment rates. And while the DEI crowd will argue that Natives are discriminated against, I don't see it claimed that the discrimination is to a greater extent than that faced by blacks. Discrimination against blacks actually gets almost all of the airtime.

Only when it's a skew that affects groups they care about.

They aren't optimizing for explanatory power but for political power; they still earnestly believe everything they say. Accusing them of inconsistency is like accusing a tiger of not fighting fair--it's just a misunderstanding of what you are dealing with. They are not playing the "game" of mutual pursuit of truth by rational discussion, and so they are not bound by the rules of that game. When they appeal to those rules in an argument, it is merely for a strategic advantage. They do not apply those rules because they believe in them, but because you do.

Sure, but as fun as going "On the Demons and Their Lies by Frieren the Slayer" might be, my side still needs to win elections.

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