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 -
I’d argue there are a massive amount of people in the west who would benefit if hbd became widely accepted.
It’s actually one of my main arguments for supporting affirmative action at elite schools. It provides a rational for Harvard to let in black students with lower scores. Since the college trains a large part of the elites it’s necessary for a percentage of the school to be black so that the John Kerry’s, Bush’s, et al who will govern the community have exposure to black voices. Even if due to hbd blacks won’t be presidents often the president still needs to understand the community and govern them. This argument escapes the logic of using affirmative action to undue “structural racism” but instead shows the needs of elite education. Perhaps, Harvard doesn’t need to be 14% black but it certainly needs a significant black community. I doubt Bush interacts with many blacks especially as equals on his ranch.
Furthermore, right now we spend a ton of money trying to educate the black community so they can go into successful careers and undo past “racism”. If people accept that inequality won’t be solved with more education or better “programs” suddenly a lot of money would be freed up to just give lower ability people direct cash.
If I’m a lower IQ person I think I’d prefer $4k a year to buy some consumer goods and have no one just me for it because well I’m low IQ and untrainable for the upper class than have the government spend $30k a year trying to make me an accountant. I’m bored at school anyway. And a cheaper $10k a year education that makes me semi functional and checks every year sounds great.
I'm not sure this is true. Democracy is weird. Being president doesn't require exceptional intelligence. Looking at our last 5 presidents (Clinton, bush, Obama, trump, Biden) none of them had stellar test scores. I think Obama was the host of the 5 but even then his LSAT was below average for Harvard law
More options
Context Copy link
I'm not sure how elites having exposure to rich Nigerians during their college years is going to help them govern African-Americans later on.
Slave-descended Americans are vanishingly rare at Harvard.
"If we were to count the number of [Generational African American] students at Harvard who were descended from enslaved people, came from low-income backgrounds, first-generation, four grandparents descended from enslaved people, I feel like that number would be so low — like, maybe one person."
And of course, actual African-Americans are just one group that is basically non-existent at elite universities.
What percentage of Harvard is white, working-class, non-legacy, non-athlete? I'm sure there are examples. But it's extremely rare. Along with slave-descended blacks, this group is incredibly underrepresented at Harvard.
Is Barack Obama not African American? I’m not saying you need to go pull anything you can out of Baltimore or the southside of Chicago. I had a wealthy black neighbor who ran a mutual fund his kid went to Stanford. Tilting the scales a bit to get the upper middle class or current elites seems fine.
I know it’s a meme that they just pull upper class internationals to meet their quota. They should bring in internationals at elite schools but I’m not sure how far this goes from meme to literally 13% of Harvards 14% black population is an African prince. They shouldn’t do that. But those types should exists at elite schools too. Something like 5% American black mostly upper class with 1% the best you find lower class and 2% international would seem fine for making a place like Harvard a broad community.
The whole Nigerian thing doesn’t make sense to me. It’s population is only 5x the size of Americans African population, not biracial, and I doubt there schools are as good as ours so I have trouble seeing how so many of them could be qualified above the domestic population.
No, Barack Obama is not a central example of an African American.
As you probably know, Barack Obama is biracial, with a black father and a white mother. His father was not descended from slaves, nor was he present in Barack's life. Barack Obama was raised in white culture. As are many of the black people at Harvard.
Harvard practices a racial essentialism that would make a KKK member proud. The 1/8th black adopted son of two white hedge fund managers is black in their eyes. Eminem, on the other hand, would be considered white.
That said, I'm perhaps a little out of my depth here. I read a couple articles about Harvard's black students. The quote about nearly ZERO students at Harvard having 4 slave-descended grandparents really struck me as crazy, considering that almost all African-Americans would be in that category. The black student at Harvard is not a central example of an African-American, even an extremely successful one.
But I would welcome actual data about what percentage of Harvard's "black" students have at least one grandparent descended from slaves.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link