site banner
PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   10362 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 27, 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.

3
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

In one of the more anticipated decisions of this term, the Supreme Court (6-3 on ideological lines) has struck down the second Louisiana majority-black district. They did not rule categorically that race may not be used as a factor in redistricting decisions, but they did rule that if a redistricting decision could be explained by a partisan gerrymander rather than a racial one, there was no case.

To satisfy the second and third preconditions—politically cohesive voting by the minority and racial-bloc voting by the majority—the plaintiffs must provide an analysis that controls for party affiliation, showing that voters engage in racial-bloc voting that cannot be explained by partisan affiliation.

In practice, if taken seriously by lower courts, this pretty much destroys nearly all Section 2 Voting Rights Act cases, because of the strong affiliation between blacks and the Democratic Party.

They did not rule categorically that race may not be used as a factor in redistricting decisions, but they did rule that if a redistricting decision could be explained by a partisan gerrymander rather than a racial one, there was no case.

This is like saying that if I ban my employees from wearing turbans during work then I'm not discriminating against Sikh Men, even though Sikh Men are the ones who are going to be hit by the change almost exclusively. All I've done is laundered religious prejudice through an apparently neutral criteria. Shame on the 6 ideological justices.

This is just disparate impact. I agree with Gail / Richard here that any possible standard you can think of has a disparate impact, and that its bad and dumb and makes no sense.

This runs into a very basic question: if a general rule has a disparate impact should you eliminate the general rule.

The historic proposition was that you can have the general rule but allow for reasonable accommodations (eg if you are fired for refusing to work the sabbath, then that isn’t quitting for unemployment purposes but if you claimed every day was the sabbath that would be quitting).

Here, there doesn’t seem to be an easy accommodation.

In order to stop conspiracy theory disparate impact racism you're advocating for explicit racism.

The problem is that races are not equally politically united. It's not a given that any race (besides African-Americans) are going to be for a party to such a degree that a partisan gerrymander is synonymous with a racial one. So you risk essentially rewarding the most polarized groups (presumably the thing we eventually want less of) and/or disenfranchising less polarized people in order to give them representation.

It's not an easy problem. I'd say it's near unavoidable under the current system, like gerrymandering itself. What is the compromise solution here? Some room for partisan gerrymandering except where it causes a racial gerrymander which then, by your own argument, is a partisan gerrymander that necessitates a gerrymander in the other direction?

The solution here would be an arms length neutral body made up of experts from non-political backgrounds which deicdes on districts and isn't subject to the executive in who's on it. A bit like how the Judicial Appointments Comission decides on who to appoint as judges in the UK completely independent from whoever is in government at the time. All the gerrymandered angular districts would disappear in one fell swoop and things would look a lot more reasonable.

Perhaps nice compact districts like this.

Anyway, we lack angels in the form of neutral experts to redistrict us.

My 55% serious solution is to redistrict via random parameters every six years, without any human input.

Precisely. And of course the only acceptably neutral, arms-length body of experts from non-political backgrounds and isn't subject to the executive is the one that I personally select.

It's amazing how many things turn out to work this way.

Would you say the black person who says, "I don't want to be assumed to vote Democrat just because I'm black" is more sympathetic to this SCOTUS decision than one who's fine with that assumption?

The entire idea of section 2 applied this way has always been rather silly, it takes the collectivist view around race that people are better represented as a class based off their skin color rather than their ability to choose based off their own individual beliefs and preferences. There's a lot to complain about with voting, partisan gerrymandering is still messed up both federally and state election wise, the structure of the Senate explicitly having a bunch of low population states over less high population ones, and the electoral college works in a similar way.

But those are problems by changing the very value of a person's representation, by making someone in California have like 10x less say than the same person in Mississippi in Congress and the presidency. It's not an issue because they fail to make the assumption that black people need some explicit maps drawn out for them "as a class".

by making someone in California have like 10x less say than the same person in Mississippi in Congress and the presidency

Yes, and that's a good thing.

If it wasn't, you'd get the problem Canada has where the only relevant voters are all in 3 cities. Naturally, they all vote the same way.

Since consent of the governed isn't equally geographically distributed, and the cities depend on the country for resources and soldiers, this is to ensure the cities mine/colonize the rest of the country in a sustainable manner and not one that doesn't just end up with the country folks shooting up the power lines and oil pipelines (or seceding completely, then waging war at some time in the future).

I think most blocs are cultural in at least some sense. It’s just like anything else. Rural Americans have been conservative for a long time now. Evangelicals in many churches would consider a vote for a democrat to be sinful. Is that a sober analysis of political positions? It’s part of the culture.

As to the ridiculous division of power in the country, honestly I think our current system is too flawed to work. It really seems to solidify the ideas of some blocks over others. Yes the individual voter in a large state is disempowered in the senate, but he’s also overpowered in the House and the presidential elections. California has 54 electoral votes. Pennsylvania has 20+. Those states have outsized influence over national politics. If you lose all of the big population states, you lose. Heck, if you lose the northwest corridor you have an uphill battle, especially if you’re a Republican who won’t have the 54 electoral votes CA brings.

Electorally I think it’s past time to allow each congressional and senatorial district to issue its own electors. State by state winner takes all overpowers the large states too much in national policy.

What does "overpowered" mean? Populous states explicitly punch below their weight relative to their actual proportion of the electorate in all federal elections. The US already has a number of countermajoritarian and outright minoritarian institutions, and the argument is that actually we need the federal government to be less representative?

Electorally I think it’s past time to allow each congressional and senatorial district to issue its own electors. State by state winner takes all overpowers the large states too much in national policy.

Why not just have a direct popular vote for President? Or abolish the Presidency and have Congress select the chief executive?

I do think electoral votes ought to go by district with the overall state popular vote winner getting the bonus 2 votes.

by making someone in California have like 10x less say than the same person in Mississippi in Congress and the presidency

The Senate does not represent people, it represents States. You may think that States do not deserve representation at all, but that's a different argument. California and Mississippi are equally represented in the Senate, as intended. The people of California and Mississippi are more-or-less equally represented in the House, mostly as intended except we need 3-10x as many seats as we do now. At least they're equally treated in their gargantuan districts.

I am very fond of Alito's framing in the summary:

The key concept is “less opportunity than other members of the electorate,” which sets a baseline against which to as sess the opportunity of minority voters. That baseline—the oppor tunity that any given group of voters has to elect their candidate of choice—depends on the voting preferences of other voters in the dis trict. For example, in a district where most voters prefer Democratic candidates, a Republican voter in that district will have a low chance of securing the election of his or her preferred candidate. The roster of voters who end up in a given district depends, in turn, on the district ing criteria the State uses to draw a legislative map. Thus, the “oppor tunity” of these “members of the electorate” to contribute their votes to a winning cause is whatever opportunity results from the application of the State’s combination of permissible districting criteria. That is what a randomly selected individual voter and group of voters can ex pect regarding their opportunity to elect their preferred candidate. Under §2, a minority voter is entitled to nothing less and nothing more. Pp. 19–22.

Why are Southern black voters so uniformly aligned with the Democratic Party? Did something happen? I was led to understand that race relations in the South were actually great and reports of interracial discord were Yankee propaganda.

Sarcasm is unbecoming. Speak plainly.

If nothing else, I would argue that the people who are racist against blacks are more likely to be found in the Republican Party and less likely to be actively criticized. In addition, if the Republican Party keeps discriminating against them as a group for the reason that they are usually Dem, it doesn't exactly endear them to the Republicans even if said discrimination would go away if they became solidly Republican.

Race relations in the South are pretty good, they're about as good as they are anywhere in the country, which ranks with the best in the world.

Mainly, they do it because it works. Blacks exercise inordinate power in the Democratic party, and probably will into the immediate future even as their relative power is eroded by immigration. Republicans are mostly too scared to actually campaign for Blacks -- Trump's appearances at say the National Association of Black Journalists was so remarkable because it was so unusual. Moreover, the Democratic Party offers Black voters visible patronage and money and public works that Republicans mostly don't want to give. And if that isn't sufficient explanation, it probably is the case that urban city political machines harvest black voters to vote at rates and percentages higher than what they might otherwise naturally produce.

A part of me would love to see Republicans run a race- and gender-swapped version of the Harris campaign's "He'll never know who you voted for" ad targeting Black men.

Speaking of that campaign, it’s pretty crazy how abortion just completely dropped off the map as a hot topic immediately after the election was over.

HBD can completely explain this. If you have lower ability than your community then you will vote for more redistribution. The prior system could be 100% fair in a meritocratic way, but because you have less human capital you would prefer more free stuff from the government even if it means more taxes (which you largely don’t pay).

It’s mostly just because they are poor and compete poorly in a free market/meritocratic environment. You don’t need racism to explain this result.

If you have lower ability than your community then you will vote for more redistribution.

Not necessarily. As long as you believe there is a good chance for you to become rich, that is often enough to justify voting against it. Whether your odds are actually good is an entirely different matter. People who are poorly off don't necessarily run on cold logic, and even if they do, they may be unable to see how redistribution helps them more than it hurts.

If you have lower ability than your community then you will vote for more redistribution.

Support for socialism increases with education and SES, no?

My understanding is that it is more a Urban vs Rural issue than a race issue, with the current status quo being that the urban populations of cities like Atlanta and Charlotte are distributed across congressional districts in such a way that it allows the Democrats to be competitive across multiple seats. Where as in an alternate map where the urban core was one district and the surrounding suburbs to the east and west were two others, the Democrats would essentially gain a "safe" seat at the expense of no longer being competitive in the others.

See this proposed map that has been making the rounds on X.

https://x.com/NewsWire_US/status/1978495533229428823/photo/1

That doesn't answer the question of why Southern black voters are so strongly aligned with the Democratic Party. Or why Southern white voters are so strongly aligned with the Republican Party - e.g. in 2023 Brandon Presely got 22% of the white vote in MS, which was an exceptionally good performance (Biden got 17% in 2020 and Obama got even less in 2012).

(It must also be noted that the Deep South has a large rural black population - appealing to rural/urban splits doesn't resolve the problem)

That doesn't answer the question of why Southern black voters are so strongly aligned with the Democratic Party. Or why Southern white voters are so strongly aligned with the Republican Party

Both are explained by Democratic policy preferences being to favor blacks and disfavor whites.

I mean, blacks shifted to overwhelmingly supporting the Democratic Party well before the Civil Rights movement and the supposed "party switch". 75% of blacks voted for FDR in 1936, for example. The charitable view is that blacks migrating to cities etc. supported the dems because they had greater support for unions and worker's rights etc. A less charitable view is that blacks supported dems because they saw it as a way to get handouts from the government.

Or, as Lyndon B. Johnson (allegedly) said about his welfare initiatives: "I'll have them niggers voting Democratic for the next two hundred years." (Even if Johnson didn't actually say that, he is confirmed to have used "nigger" on several occasions).

75% of blacks voted for FDR in 1936, for example.

Wiki claims "two-thirds of black voters", not much more than his 60.8% of voters as a whole. You have to cut down demographics more finely to get to "76 percent of Blacks in northern cities" specifically.

The charitable view is that blacks migrating to cities etc. supported the dems because they had greater support for unions and worker's rights etc. A less charitable view is that blacks supported dems because they saw it as a way to get handouts from the government.

Neither of these views is logically inconsistent with the corrected numbers, but Bayes would note that our relative credence in the view with "migrating to cities" in it should increase after we learn that the data shows an effect specifically focused on migrant-targeted cities. (you'd otherwise think "Northern" would push in the other direction; Southerners also went 76% for LBJ)

I don’t get why LBJ would say that but I am not a politician. Do you want power or do you want to improve America? Pulling in 85% of the black vote helps the Democrats. But you would still need to view your policies as good on their own or modestly bad but their votes will give you power to do other things you think are good.

And sure I probably answered my own question. He either likes being politically powerful or thought it was a good trade off.

But you would still need to view your policies as good

I've never met any politician who sincerely believed that their proposed policies has to be "good" in and of themselves. Not trying to be insulting to you personally, but believing that anything more than 1% of politicians (especially at the national level) care about doing good with their power is a quokka belief.

Trump of course is narcissistic and an egomaniac and has used government to enrich himself but I still believe he desires to work for me and wants to leave a legacy of America as a better place. So yes I believe more than 1% of politicians have good intentions.

Is LBJ using the word particularly notable? He was born in 1908. My dad was born in the late 40s and the word was regularly used in school rhymes and whatnot in his youth, so the overton window was still well over that way throughout most of LBJ's life

Not necessarily, but it weighs a bit in favor of the alleged quote being real. Or rather it's points against people eho think the use of the word makes the quote more likely to be fake.

LBJ was notoriously foul-mouthed, and definitely would have used the n-word. But as with Trump, it's easy to make up a plausible "LBJ-sounding" quote.

Whether he said it or not, the prediction contained within that someone made looks pretty true for the 60-year period anyway.

This is something anyone can answer, but I'll ask a different question: why does no other ethnic group align at even remotely the same level?

Anti-black racism is sui generis in the United States, especially in the South. Racism, xenophobia, and other forms of bigotry generally push minorities left, but this is, for the most part, garden variety discrimination that you find everywhere to some degree. It wasn't that long ago that ~1/3rd of the US was run by explicit white supremacists and rendered black Americans explicitly second-class citizens (on top of a raft of informal but no less severe forms of discrimination). One of the consequences of prolonged, intensive discrimination was to forge African-Americans into a much more cohesive, organized identity group than pretty much anyone else.

By contrast, "White", "Hispanic", or "Asian" are much more weakly operational groups containing subsets that do not see themselves as having shared interests, e.g. you could probably justify dividing white voters regionally and Hispanic/Asian voters by country of ancestral origin.

generally push minorities left

For certain narrow, idiosyncratic definitions of "left," at least.

The average Black Southerner cares very little for many Democratic-aligned social endeavors, for example, but not to an extent that they'll vote against them, either.

are much more weakly operational groups containing subsets that do not see themselves as having shared interests

Given the organized project of generating Black (capitalization here intended to signify ADOS, not the NYT's bullshit) identity, there's also been the parallel and ongoing project demonizing any creation of white shared interests as such.

It'll be interesting to see if Asians group more or shift over the next several years as the parties realign somewhat. One could see they'd be more consistently Democratic as the "higher education" party, but inter-minority discrimination issues weaken that somewhat.

Jews and Muslims are not that far off. The same way, which has been presenting a dilemma for the Democrats... which they seem to be resolving in favor of Muslims.

AFAIK a lot of Black voting organizational infrastructure tends to come through the churches, and being able to tap into a religious network when trying to get people out and voting is always going to make things a lot easier than doing it with other groups that don't have as strong a community gathering point.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats