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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   4490 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 5, 2023

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Has anyone read a good non-mainstream or little-known well-regarded hypothesis as to why the black family collapsed in the mid 20th century? Not necessarily looking for a Jared Taylor-tier piece, but I'm open to arguments the mainstream would consider taboo, such as questioning our liberal principles.

I don't know what qualifies as mainstream to you. McWhorter has long beaten the drum of HipHop culture and its precedents uniquely harming Black youths; his argument being that the cultural credit given to Black kids for being "authentically" Black promotes and perpetuates cultural stereotypes. He argues that white kids consume rap with a degree of ironic distance knowing it is a fantasy, as I cannot be a Black gangbanger any more than I can be an Elf in Tolkien. Black kids experience this popular form of fantasy as the authentic Black self to strive for.

There is also the argument, made forcefully by Clarence Thomas and simply by Sean Turner here with respect to HBCUs, that affirmative action in the mainstream/white community harms the Black community by siphoning off its leaders. Whites skim off the talented tenth and leave the rest to rot without their own natural leaders. Talented Blacks get diversity handout jobs at Goldman or Cravath or some federal department rather than building business in the community, talented Black students go to Harvard to be mediocre instead of being on campus leaders at Howard, attractive and accomplished Black men marry white women. Integration, and the popular fetishizing of diversity and Black inclusion, served to undermine rather than build the Black community. It took a thousand years of ghettoes in Poland and Ukraine to build the Yiddish community, Blacks never got that chance.

McWhorter has a regular New York Times column and Clarence Thomas is a Supreme Court Justice. They're about as mainstream as one can get even if their views are unpopular in many circles. By "mainstream" I'd say at minimum would never appear in the Times as a legitimate counterview.

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