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.

White Flight atleast in Chicago is assumed to have occurred between 1950-1970 with the peak in the 1960’s. America building only “non-walkable” cities would be just after white flight had been completed so a 1980 date fits with the timeline. Wikipedia tells me in 1900 only 20% of blacks in the South lived in cities and >90% of blacks live in the South.

I am confused by why you would question my claims by saying blacks have been here since the 17th century? They literally were not in cities or out of the South in large numbers until the 1950’s. Before the 1970’s we had explicit segregation laws. Timeline wise American cities being unwalkable in the 1980’s fits with black migration patterns and the end of segregation.

In the 1970’s 80% of blacks now lived in cities. By your own timeline the very next decade was when America quit making urban walkable cities.

You can disagree with my claim that blacks caused the end of urban America but you can’t disagree with my claim that the timelines agree.

You’re specifically and categorically claiming that blacks ruin civilization, including the commons. That’d mean that they’ve been ruining everything around themselves in North America ever since they started arriving there, that every urban environment where they have been present should have been unwalkable from the start. Which, I argue, is not the case, because the transformation of US urban cores to unwalkable wastelands was a complex and decades-long process that had multiple causes, many of them unrelated to the issue of race. I’d tie this to another suggestion of mine, namely that we can make the same argument about the causes of white flight.

Also, I doubt there were segregation laws banning blacks from walkable urban areas altogether.

Less than 10% of blacks lived in urban environments before 1910 and virtually zero outside the South.

I am quite confused and feel like you are being ridiculous. The civil rights act wasn’t passed until 1964. So you could just arrest blacks for being in the wrong place before then.

So yes when you can take extreme mitigation (by modern standards) then blacks didn’t ruin nearly all urban environments in the US.

Many would also claim the urban environments began to fall apart before the 1980 date you chose. White flight was earlier.

I feel like you’re trying to force me into a ridiculous claim that a black person in Alabama was ruining Chicago. Black people didn’t show up in Chicago until later. And then Chicago lost the Southside in a handful of decades.