Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
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Notes -
That was the mainstream position prior to circa 1960; Western white people Could Do No Wrong, and everyone else was seen as half-beast. Then people realised that that view wasn't entirely accurate, assumed¹ that the opposite of a false claim must be the truth², and adopted the position that people of colour Could Do No Wrong, and white people were half-demon.
The truth of the matter is that cultures both in and out of the 'western' cluster have done both good and bad things.
"There are very few black or white hats in history; most are in the charcoal or slate range." --A. J. Jacobs, The Know-It-All
¹...and do you know what happens when you ass u me?
²"A car with a broken engine cannot drive backward at 200 mph, even if the engine is really really broken." --E. Yudkowsky
That’s not what happened in the 60s. There was a movement that actively sought to make Western culture seem worse than it was through propaganda. The entire civil rights movement was based on the idea that White people were acting irrationally for not wanting to be around a group that was more violent and disordered, for instance. And when reality gets in the way of someone’s preconditioned beliefs, they are more apt to doubt reality rather than their social conditioning, which we see in all manner of political topics. Somebody raised to believe that everyone is absolutely equal will look at racial crime data across three continents and adjusted for income and conclude that reality is wrong, and their media-driven conditioning is correct. That’s just how conditioning works.
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