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 -
Hey that's not fair, many of us are also obsessed with violent crime rates. That, and how many more decades of complete abject miserable failure on that front it's supposed to take before "anti-racist" views on the subject are considered refuted.
The thing is, reducing violent crime is not that hard. I mean not brining it to zero, but bringing it to a place where it's not an everyday concern to a layperson. It has been done, and it has been undone, and in both cases it not a function of genetics or races or any of that stuff. It's just the question of resources and consistent unyielding enforcement. You just need to catch the criminals and put them in jail and keep them there. You don't need to analyze their genes or skin color to do that. It is true that people who un-do it, very much look at genes and skin color as a justification of why they are not doing the right thing, but there's no reason to uphold their framework and only change the signs. It is possible to toss the whole broken framework altogether and replace it with one that looks at the actual behavior and not genetics. You don't put people in jail for their genes, just for their crimes. If you do that, you don't need any HBD. I mean, you can still do a PhD in theorizing about what causes people to do crime, but practically it doesn't matter - if the criminals are in jail, nobody cares about their biology. Everybody cares that they are in jail.
Until five seconds later when someone accuses you of being the Grand Wizard because the people you locked up were disproportionately black. C'mon now, I know you didn't just fall off the turnip truck.
You are saying "I must be racist because other people are racist, so I need to be exactly like them, but with different sign". No, you don't. You missed all of my point exactly. The people that would accuse you would be racists, but you do not need to build your own racism to defend against them. I just showed you the correct way, and you treat it as some kind of weird nonsense. That's the problem.
Oh okay, when a bunch of wokies paint me as Hitler and try to terminate my career because I colorblindly arrested six times as many black guys, or whatever, I'll just pass them a copy of your post. It'll fill their hearts with a sense of civic virtue and society as a whole will decide that actually it doesn't really want the answer to that question after all. Then, finally, at last, no one will "need" the actual answer and you can quit hearing about HBD.
I'm not sure how this even computes. OK, I understand you are pissed off at the wokes. I am too. They are totally wrong. But then something bizarre happens. I am saying "yes, we should ignore the wokes and arrest as many black guys as commit crimes. And as many white guys as commit crimes". But you say - no, that's not gonna work. You see, the wokes are in the way, so the only way to solve it is to build this theory that treats black people as low quality humans, and somehow introduce it it into all the society, and obsess about wide-populational statistical differences. And when I am asking - well, how exactly that is going to help with arresting the actual criminals and keeping them in jail? You tell me - but the wokes! The wokes!!! The wokes!!! Yes, I know, the wokes. The wokes are bad. The wokes are racist. They are making everything worse. I got that. The part I didn't get is how exactly HBD is helping you here? I am saying the practical way to solve the crime is to put criminals in jail. You are saying it's impossible because the wokes would interfere and thus we need HBD. But how HBD is helping you? Sure, you could start despising black people for their supposed statistical inferiority... and? How that solves anything?
The wokes get their justification by claiming that disparate sentencing alone proves that law enforcement is racist and illegitimate, and having wide public agreement for this because HBD arguments are taboo and can't be uttered in polite society. If HBD became common knowledge, this would stop working.
What is the HBD argument that would defeat "the cops are racist to black men so they police and sentence them harsher in the same situations"?
Now the argument hinges on "cops police and sentence them harsher in the same situations" which you need to demonstrate as true without just pointing to the higher rate of black criminal convictions as direct evidence. This sounds like a much better situation than the one where you can't have an outcome disparity that makes minorities look bad without being blamed of racism. If you can prove that's true then sure, whatever actual thing you dug up is something we can look at as a problem to fix. If you end up getting nothing, then it's back to just arresting people who do crimes.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link