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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   12342 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 17, 2026

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Because what I want to say in response is that that isn't good enough because your premise was supposed to wrong! The edifice that was used to justify anti-blackness for centuries was supposed to be completely discredited, put into the dustbin of history. You can’t enslave, discriminate, oppress, and demean a people based on the assumption that they’re inferior and then…turn out to be right. That’s not fair!

I just think we're quick to forget. Abraham Lincoln was essentially in the group you criticize, he didn't think black people would turn out as capable as white people, but he didn't think they should be slaves.

Even if black people have an average IQ of 85, we would still predict there to be an IQ 145 black person in the United States who is not an outlier (he's perfectly on the bell curve.) Why should he be treated like a murderer, thief or criminal before he has actually committed a crime? Why should he not be allowed to live in a nice suburb if he can afford to live there? Why should he not have a colorblind chance of getting into a school based on his own hard work?

I really do think that a lot of the emotions people feel around 13/50 statistics are about as irrational as the women who would rather encounter a bear than a man when walking in the wilderness. Some men are rapists, but that doesn't mean that an average man is particularly likely to rape you. So too, some black people are violent criminals, but it doesn't mean that the average black person is particularly likely to commit a violet crime against you (especially when you're talking something like a college or professional environment which is more likely to be pulling from the upper end of the distribution of black people.)

Why should he not be allowed to live in a nice suburb if he can afford to live there? Why should he not have a colorblind chance of getting into a school based on his own hard work?

Because that requires also keeping around all the others of his race, who might be a burden on society as a whole.

I mean, in the United States, ADOS African Americans are here to stay, and there's not really a good alternative. We're not going to deport them all to Liberia or something, and if a president started doing that (or worse), I would consider that a cure worse than the disease.

Why isn't the de facto segregation of some people being able to live in expensive suburbs and some people being unable to live in expensive suburbs enough for you? It operates with the cold efficiency of capitalism, instead of requiring any actual interpersonal discrimination on anyone's parts. And the police actually do a good job policing suburbs, so it will be harder for any malefactor to step a toe out of line, white or black.

really do think that a lot of the emotions people feel around 13/50 statistics are about as irrational as the women who would rather encounter a bear than a man when walking in the wilderness. Some men are rapists, but that doesn't mean that an average man is particularly likely to rape you. So too, some black people are violent criminals, but it doesn't mean that the average black person is particularly likely to commit a violet crime against you (especially when you're talking something like a college or professional environment which is more likely to be pulling from the upper end of the distribution of black people.)

I wrote a comment about this a while back, but we do allow some discrimination on the social level based on this very fact. Uber has a feature that basically allows for women to select only women drivers, this is justified under the guise of womens safety. Whats stopping someone from making the same argument based on race if HDB is true?

Abraham Lincoln was essentially in the group you criticize, he didn't think black people would turn out as capable as white people, but he didn't think they should be slaves

Or, to hear it from the great man himself (slightly adjusted by Teddy Roosevelt):

I think the authors of the Declaration of Independence intended to include all men, but they did not mean to declare all men equal in all respects. They did not mean to say all men were equal in color, size, intellect, moral development or social capacity. They defined with tolerable distinctness in what they did consider all men created equal-equal in certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. This they said, and this they meant. They did not mean to assert the obvious untruth that all were actually enjoying that equality, or yet that they were about to confer it immediately upon them. They meant to set up a standard maxim for free society which should be familiar to all - constantly looked to, constantly labored for, and, even though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated, and thereby constantly spreading and deepening its influence, and augmenting the happiness and value of life to all people, everywhere.

@Chi_Wara - I'm putting this additional response here, but I'm really responding to a post you made 2 years ago, since it relates to this discussion.

I view it as nothing short of tragic that a people who suffered so much due to being viewed as inferior, who struggled for so long to be viewed as equals and treated with dignity, who endured all kinds of injustices in the hope that we would overcome...only for science to prove that it was fruitless all along. It's so dispiriting the possibility that all the problems in our community: crime, poverty, ignorance, are intransient. How are you supposed to deal with that without becoming utterly nihilistic?

I don't think we can close the book on any of those things. There are definitely factors that make some of these things worse that can potentially be mitigated with the right social interventions. Drugs and alcohol really do make black communities worse, increasing violent crime and potentially reducing black IQ (in the case of certain drugs.) The War on Drugs might have been misguided, and harm reduction might have been misguided, but there is a world of social interventions we could try that might improve the situation and have more black people clean and off drugs, and gainfully and lawfully employed.

As far as poverty goes, a rising tide raises all boats. If groceries get cheaper in the US, they get cheaper for black people as well. If entertainment or consumer goods get cheaper in the US, they get cheaper for black people as well. Nothing about the situation suggests that black poverty is intransigent.

And as far as ignorance goes, I think we should be trying to achieve ultrahumanism: every human as capable and free as he or she reasonably can be in society, each person achieving their own individualized highest potential. The potentials might be different for a 115 IQ black man and an 85 IQ black man, but there's no reason to assume that we can't arrange society in a way that educates them both to the limits of their abilities, and successfully integrates them as valued members of the community, doing whatever job they are best suited for. And take heart, if the singularity ever happens, all humans will be basically obsolete anyways, whether smart or dumb, and the plight of an 85 IQ black man, and a 175 IQ Asian man will likely be one and the same.

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