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 -
To be very brief: the fuck?
No, seriously, I invite you to find any evidence of me arguing that the caste system is "natural" and "correct". Please. Take all the time you need.
I am incredibly impressed by the sheer chutzpah on display here. Apparently I've moved to the UK, and want to move to the States to "raise thier status amongst thier peers back home"? That's news to me. I should take notes.
Anyone who knows me would find your accusations laughable. Anyone who doesn't know me should at least check before saying something this remarkably, fractally incorrect.
It's astounding that you can read that whole-ass essay and decide that this isn't a working description of me. I really want to know the chain of logic that lead you to that conclusion.
To be painfully specific:
It would be too much to hope for an apology from you, so I'll settle for receipts.
I agree that this is a factor, but I do find it funny how many Indians I know who are in the 'upper middle caste' and will go absolutely berserk about scheduled castes and whatnot taking their opportunities inside India. Then three breaths later will go on about how the Western society they moved to is biased against them and that white people should roll over and move out the way since they've had it so fantastic for so long. Which isn't necessarily a massive contingent of people, I just had a housemate for a year in Australia who was the daughter of an Indian Air Force General and granddaughter of some mid-tier nobility who owned 10 cinemas throughout Hyderabad, and would go on about this stuff endlessly. Especially galling when the majority of anglo-Australians she was deriding as privileged were multi-generational peasant/working-class descent.
It's broadly funny to me how a lot of Indian migrants have an incredibly-honed awareness of how to play bureaucratic affirmative action games (since they need to be great at them to get anywhere inside India, and if I were in their position I'd 100% do the same thing), are critical of how big they are inside India and then immediately try to install themselves as a scheduled caste in the West. Which I'm not accusing you specifically of doing, but I just find it endlessly amusing.
This is incorrect, I'm afraid. You can't use that kind of identity politics to get ahead the way you can in the States. When do you get the tangible benefits in the form of reservations and quotas for being lower caste? When you have a certificate from the government that says your ancestors were lower caste.
Can you get a fake one? Technically yes, but you'd be spending a lot of money on bribes, and you'd be rather screwed if you were caught. I don't know anyone who did this, though I'm sure it does happen (as I always say, India is a big country, with many Indians).
No, the sad reality of it is that the kind of person you spoke to learned to play that game in the States, or were intelligent and unprincipled enough to be well prepared before they got there.
I mean more in the sense that 'my average Indian friend has a way-keener understanding of admission/job hunting to be a game that you need to play to eke every possible point out of due to the system in place in India' than necessarily 'they were able to squeeze stuff into existence inside of India on the basis of caste'. I remember seeing my Hyderabadi helping another friend apply for jobs in Australia, and the sheer incisive effort they put into optimizing every part of the resume and process for somebody who barely spoke English was impressive, but also did a huge amount to explain to me why Indians are very good jobgetters
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Like i said, i initially held my tongue because i understood how my statement could be read as uncharitable or antagonistic. It was not my intention to offend you, and if did i apologize.
That said, can you see how someone might come away from the your post with the impression that you believe that demographics determine individual outcomes more than quality of schooling? If so, do you understand how such a claim is going to be read by a lot of Americans?
That is an utter non-apology after serious, unfounded accusations.
"It was not my intention to offend you, and if did i apologize." Your intent is not my primary concern. The factuality (or lack thereof) of what you said about me is. An acknowledgement that your accusations are baseless would be an improvement. If you wish to persist in that mischaracterization, then provide evidence in proportion to how inflammatory it is. In this case, a simple search on the index for this site should suffice.
I am not sure what linking to an ancient press release from GW Bush is supposed to help with. It's a 2006 address about Republican outreach to African American voters, the Voting Rights Act, HBCU funding, and the legacy of slavery. It does not mention Indian immigrants, the caste system, or any framework for distinguishing "good" from "opportunistic" immigrants.
It certainly doesn't help with misrepresenting me as having made claims I have literally never made, and then not walking them back.
Look around, my man. Do you see any of the other Americans in this forum full of Americans accusing me of endorsing the Indian caste system? No? Not surprising at all.
You have the gall to make a clear Motte-and-Bailey argument on the Motte? You didn't "intend" to be offensive, but 'oh, some readers might come away with that impression'. I wasn't born yesterday.
Would you agree with the statement that demographic factors determine individual outcomes more than quality of schooling?
If so, i would argue that my accusations are far from baseless.
Please recall that i very purposefully side stepped the question of whether the caste system was "good", to focus on whether it was a "correct" or "natural" way to organize society. I never claimed you liked or "endorsed" it. Please also recall that in that in the line I quoted you implied that the US also has a caste system and that it is simply less legible.
The link was to George Bush's famous speech about "the bigotry of low expectations", which is the first thing that is going to come to a lot of Americans' minds if when they hear someone trying to argue that some demographics are just bad at stuff.
You've offered three rationales for the original accusations in three consecutive replies. First they stood on their own. When I asked for evidence, none came. Then it became "some readers might come away with that impression," which is the motte-and-bailey I already called you on. Now: if I agree to a proposition you've just invented, the accusations were "far from baseless."
This is what bad faith looks like when it's trying oh-so-hard to stay within the realm of what won't be moderated on this forum. Impressive work, law school must have helped.
Pick a position. Defend it properly. Or retract. Don't waste my time by manufacturing new justifications until one of them sticks.
The "demographic factors determine individual outcomes" question is empirical, and the real answer is "it depends." For caste-correlated outcomes in India specifically, I think genetics likely plays some role. I said so openly upthread. That is a descriptive claim about how the world is. Endorsing caste as "natural" and "correct" is a prescriptive claim about how the world should be. These are not the same thing and you're not getting away with laundering one into the other through sleight of hand.
You now want credit for "very purposefully side stepping" whether caste is good, in order to focus on whether it's "correct" or "natural." Please examine what you've just said. "Correct" is straightforwardly normative. "Natural," deployed in defense of a social arrangement under attack, is also normative. You picked loaded words, fired them at me, and are now claiming a neutral reading was always available. Nope.
You're claiming I implied "the US also has a caste system." That paragraph is about American pre-med admissions and the difference between rank-ordered exam grinds and "holistic" admissions weighted with extracurriculars. The "it" in "more legible and crueler about it" refers to the selection function of education, which I had just spent several thousand words describing. Reading "caste" into a sentence about MCAT prep is a failure of your reading comprehension. It does even worse as an argument.
You found a phrase that sounded adjacent to something you wanted to say, linked it without explanation, and are now reverse-engineering a rationale rather than concede the link wasn't doing what you needed it to.
Yeah. Right. Being against Indian affirmative action or the US focus on "holistic" admission criteria is "the soft bigotry of low expectations". Sorry, I'd say it's the opposite. Eschewing explicit AA or putting primacy on standardized testing, without lowering the bar for certain demographics? That is called having the same expectations of everyone. Words have meanings, whether you like them or not.
Now, I specify (with rapidly diminishing patience): you made specific claims about my views and my motivations. That I see caste as "natural" and "correct." That my emigration is opportunistic. That I am chasing status among peers back home. Three replies in, you have produced zero quotes from me supporting any of these and have shifted the goalposts twice without retracting an inch. Substantiate the claims with what I actually wrote, or withdraw them. I am not here to argue whichever question you'd prefer to be answering instead.
I am not offering you different rationales I am trying to walk you through a chain of reasoning step by step, link by link.
When taken together, your comments in @Gaashk's thread on Freddie DeBoer and your top level post here appear to be arguing that what school you go to and how well you do in it doesn't really matter, and that instead we (as society) should pay more attention to demographic factors.
The obvious question that comes to mind is "Why pay attention to demographic factors at all?" the obvious answer that comes to mind is "As a means of predicting (and thus potentially manipulate) individual outcomes".
Now If "demographic factors determine individual outcomes" And "we want to predict (or potentially manipulate) individual outcomes" Than "It is rational to discriminate on the basis of such factors".
If "It is rational to discriminate on the basis of demographic factors" Than We have just established the "correctness" of instituting some sort of demographic caste system from first principles.
Again, please note that at no point have I made any statement regarding whether said system is "Good" "Moral" "Just" or even "Desirable". "Correct" is not a normative word, it is a descriptive one. If I wanted to make a normative statement I would not be using words like "Correct" and "Incorrect" I would be using words like "Right" and "Wrong".
Is there a step in the above chain of logic that you feel is in error? If so, which step?
Meanwhile "The Bigotry of Low Expectations" isn't something that I just pulled out of a hat. It's been a recurring GoP talking point for over a decade. It is most commonly deployed in opposition to Affirmative Action, and declining educational standards. The "bigotry" in question being the unstated assumption that some demographics simply can not compete on a level playing field. Ask @FCfromSSC if you don't believe me.
Blue Team: Students today just don't have the attention spans to read the classics, we need to revise our expectations.
Red Team: Students today would be able to read the classics just fine if you actually tried teaching them to read.
You made specific factual claims about my views and motivations across four replies now. You have produced no quotes from me supporting any of them. The syllogism you've finally offered, even if it worked, would not establish that I "see caste as natural and correct," that my emigration is "opportunistic," or that I'm "chasing status among peers back home." Those were the accusations. They remain unsubstantiated.
Even granting some form of statistical discrimination as efficient on some specific measure, a caste system is not just any discrimination.
Why? Because it's hereditary, hierarchical, totalizing across social, economic, marital, and religious domains, and self-perpetuating across generations independent of individual merit. That is literally what caste means.
You're skipped roughly the entire content of what makes a caste system a caste system, and now you're calling the missing steps "from first principles." Perhaps you'd like to examine my debate with @2rafa where I advocate for meritocracy as pure as can be feasible? I'd like to see you reconcile that with accusations of casteism. Group differences, even if real, require additional values being injected to decide what to do about them. Balanced standardized testing would be the strongest form of Bayesian evidence against any accusations of inferiority wrt background. I'm all for it.
"Correct" not being normative? Pure sophistry, poor sophistry. Calling a social arrangement "correct" is necessarily a judgment that it is a proper way to organize society. There is no descriptive sense in which a social system itself can be "correct" or "incorrect." You can describe whether it exists, whether it produces certain outcomes, whether participants endorse it. The moment you call the system itself "correct," you have endorsed it as proper. And worse? This isn't just something you're doing yourself, it's something you've accused me of doing.
I'm out. I've asked for receipts multiple times. You've produced none, and have instead built impressively rickety scaffolding around the original claims while refusing to retract a word of them. Anyone reading this thread can decide for themselves what that pattern indicates. I have an exam to study for.
You accused me of "making baseless accusations", I tried to explain to you the reasoning behind (IE the basis) of my accusation, and you didn't try to refute any of my reasoning. You just reasserted that I was making making baseless accusations.
If you weren't looking for a better school or a better job why did you leave India? Why do you want to move to the US?
You say "Calling a social arrangement "correct" is necessarily a judgment that it is a proper way to organize society." and my reply to that is that for every complex problem there is a solution that is both "clearly correct" in the sense that it would remove the problem and also very "clearly wrong" in the normative sense. Maybe that's the disconnect.
I'm reading the "as can be feasible" qualifier as a major red-flag but I'd be interested in a 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