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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   11231 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 17, 2026

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When people both here and elsewhere say that HBD is true but that society should still treat people as individuals or practice colorblindness, I get really mad. I don't disagree with them, but I still get mad

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!

But I can't express that belief because of how obviously irrational it is. It's a demand for cosmic justice, not a real intellectual rebuttal. Yet I can't help it

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.)

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.

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