site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 20, 2026

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.

5
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

The last time I participated in this community I was in November. When as part of some discussion about how DnD had gone woke or something, /u/RandomRanger posted a very long comment where, to paraphrase, he said that black people were an inferior stupid race who bring crime and dysfunction wherever we go and that in order to stop the west from being "overrun" with blacks, white racists would need to "block" us in a way the didn't account for "international law" and "human rights". I replied calling him a cracker bitch and was temp-banned by the mods.

Now I know my outburst was against the rules, it was uncivil, I was reacting with anger, and I knew at the time I'd get banned for it. But I don't know, when I see someone essentially laying out a justification for bringing back slavery, how am I supposed to respond, as a black person? Am I expected to lay out some "well have you considered..."-ass intellectual rebuttal, Am I supposed to beg and plead for my own rights? "No sir, Please sir, I'm one of da good ones see!" I'm sorry but I don't have the patience for that

When made my first comment here where expressed profound distress over the possibly that HBD is real. I got a lot of responses along the lines of "well, what's it matter to you? you're an individual and population level statistics don't apply to you." I never thought that they applied to me. But when people in this community use HBD and crime statistics to argue that things Jim Crow and Apartheid were good and just and maybe should even be brought back THAT FUCKING AFFECTS ME. I'M BLACK

I remember another person asked me if I sincerely related to black underclass criminals and no I obviously don't but I relate to people like Toussaint Louverture, Malcolm X, Steve Biko. The intelligent black men who dedicated their lives to fighting the people who wanted to keep us in eternal subjugation for all the same goddamn reasons. And when I read what RandomRanger says about how society ought to forcefully disempower black people for the sake of having a "civilized" country. I'm reminded of the poem written by Claude McKay during Red Summer when white supremacists were terrorizing black people across America:

If we must die, let it be not like hogs Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot, While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs, Making their mock at our accursed lot.

If we must die, O let us nobly die, So that our precious blood may not be shed In vain; then even the monsters we defy Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!

O kinsmen! we must meet the common foe! Though far outnumbered let us show us brave And for their thousand blows deal one deathblow! What though before us lies the open grave?

Like men we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack, Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!

So bring it on! I don't care if we won't win but I'll FIGHT LIKE HELL for my people and if I die I know I'll have died a proud black man who stood for dignity instead of cowering negro who submitted to slavery. I'LL NEVER BE ACCEPT BEING A SLAVE!!!

  • -14

See this is an important and valuable post. He knows my ideas are a threat to him. He's not interested in abstract logic or the interests of other ethnic groups. Nobody could ever persuade him to give up power or his co-ethnics position for the sake of some universal value or the interests of others. The thought would never enter his mind. He would much rather fight and die than lose power. He doesn't spare a sentence to justify his case based on universal values (besides the value that blacks deserve more), he holds the very idea of justifying in contempt. Why should he need to justify his ethnic group's position?

He sees a threat to the power of his ethnic group and he rails against it as hard as he can. Because losing power is innately bad. Anything that reduces the power of blacks obviously threatens him, even if it's a random person deep down in the comments of a tiny internet forum speaking with people who either already agree or despise the idea. The interests of other groups? Totally irrelevant.

Likewise he appeals so deftly to the mythology that's been so painstakingly established, like I want blacks enslaved again. Who thinks blacks would add value as slaves? Machinery would do a much better job. But it's a great uniting narrative.

This is politics in action, that's the core of it fundamentally. You get power for you and yours, any threats to your power you identify and rail against. You unite your allies against the threat with myths, songs, poems and culture.

The guy who doesn't even proofread his final dramatic statement 'I'LL NEVER BE ACCEPT BEING A SLAVE!!!' has given us a masterclass in how normal people, non-WEIRD, non hyper-intellectual people actually see things, how things actually work. First-rate post that many here could learn valuable lessons from.

This is how and why schools give blacks all these bonus marks for admission, why Biden promised to appoint a black woman to the supreme court, why there are all these subsidies and contracts for nominally black businesses that then subcontract to whites when work is needed, why there is affirmative action in hiring, why there is an outcry when blacks are shot by police and why the AP style guide capitalizes Black and not white. It's a highly effective political strategy when left uncountered.

You say all that as if "not being disenfranchised, particularly within the country they're very much not first-generation immigrants in" is an interest that's so uncommon and morally unreasonable for a group to hold that it can only be viewed with amused dispassion. "Look how politically effective their strategy is, asserting that they won't be second class!".

Yeah, it's insanely politically effective.

That's why they have all these special privileges, why they have these holy words that only blacks can use. If a white says the word, many consider it a justification for violence. A company hires too many whites, that apparently means blacks can sue them or get cushy jobs there to restore balance.

They shriek about not being slaves or having to sit at the back of the bus 70 years ago. Now, feeling emboldened, we see all these videos of blacks making massive scenes on public transport, playing the knockout game, pushing people onto the rails in subway stations, threatening and leering and occasionally murdering white people like Iryna.

Some black drug dealer gets choked under arrest or dies of fent and it's a global event of massive significance, all this evil racism. A black ties up and beats a 3 year old white girl to death and nobody could care less, this is apparently trivial news of no racial significance.

https://www.wesh.com/article/man-arrested-for-death-3-year-old-child-marion-county/70432617

They enjoy being treated like noblemen in some feudal backwater and shriek about being oppressed or how they might be treated as second-class in the future, it's a comical inversion of reality. Meanwhile the people who are being treated as second-class, who are being spat at and harassed in the present are often defending them or oh so careful to say they're not racist or prejudiced.

Is it morally unreasonable for a group to assert that they will not be second class citizens?

It's unreasonable to do so while victimizing other groups at hugely disproportionate rates and getting preferential treatment across society.

In each of my posts I bring up examples in the present of how whites are being treated badly in favour of blacks. What argument do you think I'm making with those points?

Is a particular black man responsible for a proportion of other black men victimizing someone or having gotten preferential treatment, that he should not argue for the bottom line of not being made into a second class citizen because of what the others did?

I think you're making the argument that currently, the powers that be are overly protective of the bad blacks in the way that they are not of bad whites. I agree with that assessment.