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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 27, 2026

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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.

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.

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.

No?

Have you ever seen anyone, of any race or class, say “I guess I’m low human capital, time to get on the dole”? Okay, maybe angsty channers. But it’s really not the normal mindset.

Also, this would predict that poor Appalachian whites should vote Dem, which does not appear to have been true for some time.

Have you ever seen anyone, of any race or class, say “I guess I’m low human capital, time to get on the dole”? Okay, maybe angsty channers. But it’s really not the normal mindset.

No! The best part about black scam culture is they think they are geniuses and we are all the idiots for working regular jobs while they can lie and scheme and the only real consequences ever are a low credit score or a felony conviction here or there. And they don't even really internalize thinking about the felony, "oh that was uncle Thad, I'm smarter than him and wont get caught."

Are you trying to imply that this sort of attitude is somehow unique to the black underclass? In my experience it is endemic.

It is certainly not endemic, or at least was not until recently. I went to a majority white, mostly middle class, some high some low, high school with a sizeable Mexican minority population. The activities you describe would never have occurred in any of the classes amongst the white students. And since our school was intellectually segregated, it was also functionally racially segregated, so I don't know what the Mexicans were doing. I did experience some "cheating culture" as I got to engineering school and the racial makeup included more Asians. Cheating culture is bad, but is different from scam culture. None of the engineering students were ever shoplifting with abandon. Perhaps from time to time someone games the food court by bringing a laptop and working there from 9am to 10pm only swiping in once, thats like the biggest scam.

And going back to my hometown, if you were caught by a neighbor using EBT you'd be socially ostracized, the rare section 8 housing person would not be invited to block parties. There were no Learing centers. If you did that you'd be charged with felonies. Heck, the police spent like 6 months investigating a "meth ring" where their seizure was 5 grams hidden under a table at a bar. Where I currently live, 5 grams is barely considered chargeable unless the fellow was picked up doing something else WORSE and the meth charge is just a kicker to get a plea deal.

And the opposite is true in the full on scam culture. These people make facebook videos and tutorials on scamming. The Learing centers all follow a business model propagated from some grey market scam culture NGOs. People sell EBT cards for booze. Its all very different from the normal world of 2000, and scam culture (unlike cheating culture) isn't new. It goes way back to before I was borne. Welfare queens wasn't Reagan slander, it was real life.

Hell, I just was in court. As I was waiting for my order from the clerk the next case was called. Child support case. Male, 20, convicted felon, on pretrial release for domestic violence, somehow drives a Tesla despite no documented employment. On EBT and S8. Female, 19, mother of one (alleged father is the male), currently pregnant (allegedly also his). No documented employment. Lives in a neighborhood where average rents are 3k a month with just herself and the baby. Then I get to leave before things finish. But still. Scam culture is its whole own level.

And going back to my hometown, if you were caught by a neighbor using EBT you'd be socially ostracized, the rare section 8 housing person would not be invited to block parties.

Maybe I am dumb, so these people are on SNAP or something and they're poor so it's automatically assumed they are leeches on society and must be shun?

More that if you can't or won't support yourself, and your friends, family, and church are unwilling to help you, you're almost certainly some kind of fuckup likely to cause problems for others.