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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   22415 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 9, 2026

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My opinion is that US schools do a really bad job of teaching the civil rights protests of the 1960s era. A lot of people unironically believe that Rosa Parks was just some random nice lady who was too tired to change seats on the bus that day, and that MLK Jr assembled a group of purely peaceful protestors who shamed the evil whites into doing the right thing. The reality is... a lot more complicated.

  • Southerners had been feeling profoundly divided about segregation for a long time
  • Rosa Parks was the chosen representative of the NAACP. She had a long career of activism, and carefully planned her protest to be as sympathetic as possible to the middle class whites of the area. There had been numerous failed attempts before her to do the same thing.
  • MLK Jr was arrested and went to jail, something which he fully expected and was prepared for. However, he urged his supporters to act tactically and strategically, not in random mob violence. He drew a clear divide between forceful activism like the Boston Tea Party, which had a clear purpose, and random individual action, which does not. Ironically, MLK Jr is probably just too intelligent for modern political activists to understand.

A lot of people unironically believe that Rosa Parks was just some random nice lady who was too tired to change seats on the bus that day

FWIW I didn't learn until well into adulthood that Rosa Parks was a setup. Which is kind of a shame, because it would have been interesting to learn that civil rights activists wanted to mount a legal challenge to bus segregation; that they found a sympathetic plaintiff; and they planned the whole incident.

I don't see that this would undermine the curriculum, but apparently the ideologues who put together our class materials wanted to deify Rosa Parks and the civil rights leadership to the maximum extent feasible.

Learning that a good chunk of the civil rights movement was basically one big astroturf pushed by New York financiers might have young, impressionable minds seriously questioning things like 'official narrative' or how easy it is to twist history.

Nevermind everything else that was happening around that time period.

And we can't have that, now, can we?

Furthermore they should teach that other countries have wide spread use of public transit and even wealthy people use it. Meanwhile in the US Rosa Parks made public transit a last resort option for those too poor to care about being stabbed.

The US is not unique in this regard, even among developed Western nations. There are parts of Dublin where public bus drivers simply won't stop because the risk of being assaulted by the (white, native) underclass is too high.

Meanwhile in the US Rosa Parks made public transit a last resort option for those too poor to care about being stabbed.

Do you believe that the thing keeping people from being stabbed on public transit was that blacks had to give up their seats to whites when the bus was full?

It's kinda connected. The particular regulation isn't, but the practice that ultimately developed that having and enforcing a policy of removing disruptive people who are minority members would result in painful legal action whereas just letting shit happen wouldn't, was.

The desegregated subway was safe for years. Progressives didn't like it, but it was safe despite equal policing.

The radical policy of putting criminals in jail without segregating the bus would have permitted Montgomery to have avoided the bus boycott entirely.

Sure, but they were segregationists; it wasn't about crime.

Sure, but they were segregationists; it wasn't about crime.

Seems like a remarkable coincidence, dontcha think? That the people being segregated just happened to have a murder rate that was 5-10 times higher than the majority population?

Saying 'they were segregationists' seems close to saying they were murderists.

Sure, but they were segregationists; it wasn't about crime.

Come to think of it, what was the point of separating blacks and whites? It's easy to think of Southern segregationists as moustache-twirling villains who wanted little beyond stigmatizing blacks and keeping them down, but perhaps there was an actual practical reason for this type of segregation?

To have an exploitable, dehumanized underclass? I get that overlaps a bit with stigmatizing them and keeping them down, but that was the core reason they were brought over in the first place: coerced labor. It’s also the central reason for literally the only time a significant chunk of this country rose in rebellion: because they believed that system was under threat, and they were willing to kill hundreds of thousands of people to preserve it. And a big portion of that formerly rebellious chunk then passed and vigorously supported laws designed explicitly to keep that underclass in an excluded and subordinate state long after formal slavery ended.

Sometimes people just do awful things to other people because it materially benefits them, and they and their ancestors build all sorts of moral, cultural, and legal justifications for why it’s okay, actually. I don't see why that's so hard to believe. People have literally been doing some version of this for as long as there have been people.

Labour in the postbellum south was generally very cheap, with no shortage of poor whites doing the exact same jobs as blacks.

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My grandparents who remembered those days were very clear that the reason was to prevent blacks and whites from interbreeding. Nobody cared if black and white men mingled, although they usually didn't. Black and white women worked alongside each other regularly. But southern states briefly experimented with segregating their high schools by gender after brown v board. Racial vitriol was strongest for black men mixing with white women.

Might have been, but class consciousness has been part of the human experience for a long time, so it could have been just that with a racial class marker.

Well, and yet none of the other countries with more broad-based usage of public transport physically segregate minority riders. If you want to argue that the US is unique because segregated seating became a civil rights issue and this resulted in an overcorrection preventing more justified action against minorities on public transport, then it seems as fair to say that "Rosa Parks made public transport a last resort option" as it is to go one step up the causal chain and say "segregation made public transport a last resort option".

All of these countries are much poorer than the US and people who can afford to drive usually prefer that. There's precious few examples of places where driving is a realistic option and it isn't preferred to busses.

with more broad-based usage of public transport physically segregate minority riders

I'm pretty skeptical that the southern USA is the only society to segregate like that. Enough African states on functional Apartheid or superduper demographically-driven class systems in trains and whatnot.

Well, and yet none of the other countries with more broad-based usage of public transport physically segregate minority riders. If you want to argue that the US is unique because segregated seating became a civil rights issue and this resulted in an overcorrection preventing more justified action against minorities on public transport

Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. Though obviously it wasn't just segregated seating; it was segregated everything, voting rights, etc.

If you want to argue that the US is unique because segregated seating became a civil rights issue and this resulted in an overcorrection preventing more justified action against minorities on public transport, then it seems as fair to say that "Rosa Parks made public transport a last resort option" as it is to go one step up the causal chain and say "segregation made public transport a last resort option".

No, because that's attributing actions done by the civil rights activists (enshrining black people as a privileged group) to actions done by their opponents. It's basically the bully's "Look what you made me do".

I dunno about that take. I feel pretty confident that Montgomery, Alabama did not have great public transit in the 1940s. I also think history classes should stick to teaching history instead of opining on the quality of public transit in different countries in modern times.

It would be interesting to find some statistics on public transit use by race in Southern cities, year by year, from 1945 onward. Plus Chicago and DC for never-segregated controls.

I continued to enjoy Chicago public transportation well into the 2000s, and will probably visit and take my kids on it. There are just certain park and ride places not to park at, because your car will get stolen, but that's true in the Southwest too (which was never segregated).

My opinion is that US schools do a really bad job of teaching the civil rights protests

Is there any topic where current US schools do a good job of teaching?

It is certainly not basic reading, writing and arithmetic.

And even when the system really tries, the effects are not great. See one historical event that TPTB consider crucially important for everyone to know, event that is taught not only in schools from the earliest age, but also in popular media and entertainment.

Despite all this effort, the result is glass about half empty. Not encouraging sign about the system's capability.

I think the public education system does a fine job at catechizing the basics of Holocaustianity; it happened, it was the worst thing ever, and the most important thing in the world is making sure it never happens again. Expecting normies to remember a number or a date is... too much. They don't remember that about anything, not even the things they care about.

As a proud techie-identifying person, I've never bothered remembering constants. You can look those up.

US schools actually do do a very fine job of teaching, comparisons are just compiled on the basis of comparing scores between poor black kids in the inner cities and the kids of the Japanese elite so the education system can pitch a bigger fit about 'inadequate resources'.

This, plus selection bias. Outside of the nordics, there are plenty of working class Euro kids who just don't go to school after 8th - 10th grade. And for the year they do attend, it's just several hours of goofing off before they can continue to goof off in their neighborhoods.

The U.S. has all kinds of truancy and mandatory education laws that vary by state and level of enforcement.

If school attendance was actually totally optional all the way through, I believe that by 9th grade or so, the U.S. would have far and away the top median scores of all nations.

Is there any topic where current US schools do a good job of teaching?

Metric system. Kids in school know what 9mm are.

One of the problems with teaching US history - it is really hard to not turn the pupils into white supremacists or just flat out patriots. Do you guys have any idea how fucking awesome USA is before Vietnam or Clinton - depending on how generous you want to be.

But can they tell if 9mm is bigger or smaller than .40 S&W and by how much?

In the better Red Tribe schools, of course. In Blue Tribe schools, maybe but not because of anything they learned in schools (maybe videogames). In underclass schools, oh yes, definitely, it's of practical importance.

I think they do a decent job of teaching older history. It's just, they start at the back and work forwards, so they run out of time with the postwar 20th century stuff at the very end of the school year. Plus all the obvious culture war angles to it.

I think they do a decent job of teaching older history. It's just, they start at the back and work forwards, so they run out of time with the postwar 20th century stuff at the very end of the school year. Plus all the obvious culture war angles to it.

I wouldn't think so, based on my schooling. Even 20 years ago my textbooks were laden with pointless anecdotes about some random black woman who knitted some socks for Brits occupying New York in 1777. And other such things.

And it was highly teacher dependent. My Middle School teacher was a stodgy old WASP lady that fought to get out of the union and legitimately loved teaching American history in a mildly pro-American way (and if you are even neutral it comes off as wildly pro-America because the country did so many insanely awesome things for 2 centuries). My APUSH teacher lamented he could only use Howard Zinn as a supplement instead of a primary textbook and was openly disdainful of America's legacy, and taught accordingly.

All the way through high school (graduated in 1985) history classes stopped at 1945.

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