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 -
I don't know how else to tell you that this is not going to happen. There's no constituency for a WASP ethnostate because it's just not a plausible thing to want. There are fifty million African-Americans and I'm sorry, but they aren't going anywhere. The Civil War was probably the last time a mass exodus back to Africa was remotely on the table, and even then it was kind of a laughable idea. They're centuries away from African soil being their land and African culture being their culture and African languages being their language. Talking about sending them all away as "foreigners" is like trying to get the Saxons of England to "regain their national character" and send the Normans home nine hundred years too late (except worse because there are fewer ethnic Normans and it'd be somewhat easier for them to reintegrate into French society if France were willing to take them back). It's just not happening, the boat has sailed.
Recognizing this sheer statement of fact does not necessarily entail that "American means 'man of any race or none in particular'"; you could plausibly argue the line that American means one of a bounded number of specific ethnicities, if you really want. You could say that eg WASPs, Black Americans, and Native Americans (1) are established, centuries-old, distinct subtypes of Americans like Han, Zhuang, Manchus and Miaos are distinct subtypes of Chinese - and that it's still possible to be ethnically non-American by not being part of any one of these groups. A multi-ethnic polity is not necessarily the same thing as a race-blind one. There could be a world where America moves in that direction, it's unlikely but it could happen.
What you're proposing, however, is simply impossible.
1: Please let us not go on a tangent about the term 'Native American'. I just thought it would be less confusing here than any variation on 'Indian'/'Amerindian' insofar as we started out talking about Indian immigrants in the Punjabi sense.
I, in fact, have said exactly this in the past, and it was my one and only AAQC nomination.
I didn't call them American, of course, but I considered those three groups the only ones who I would consider "native," that is, with no where else to go back to.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link