site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 17, 2023

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.

11
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

When racists in the US government diverted vaccines away from white people to black people did that hurt black people? I think it helped them.

Sure. So we should complain about racism, not divert vaccines away from black people instead.

When Harvard gives black people an advantage in admissions does that hurt or help them?

To hear Clarence Thomas tell, it hurts them. But perhaps more importantly, trying to judge "hurt" and "help" in terms of who gets to be a Supreme Court justice or Yale law professor, and who is instead relegated to graduating from a top-10 law school and making millions of dollars as a partner at a top law firm (but who doesn't get to tell her friends she went to Harvard) seems like piss-poor reckoning. It's not as though the Asians "harmed" by Harvard's racism (whites actually appear to benefit very slightly, or at least not be harmed, by Harvard's preferences) are facing a choice between Harvard and never going to college. The real harm is so slight as to be essentially invisible, except for the part where we decide to reject racism on principle instead of on the basis of who gets to have the most desirable status signals. Rejecting racism on principle is good.

If I own a store and exclude people of race X because I think they shoplift a lot and are a net drain on the business then that is racist

It's not racist to see facts. If there is an ethnic propensity for antisocial behavior, there's nothing wrong with taking reasonable action as a result.

...and illegal

Right, you can't just say "because black people are more likely to shoplift, all black people are excluded." Instead you should say "we need to construct a law enforcement system which makes it easier to detain and punish shoplifters." There's nothing racist about that. Oh, sure, an identitarian will say there's something racist about that when it turns out that a bunch of mostly non-white kids are the ones who end up actually doing time, but I am not an identitarian, I'm the one arguing against identitarianism.

To use your example, if I own a business and I think women are worse workers and hire them with a lower starting salary then I'm being sexist.

No, that's wrong! This is exactly my point. To call that sexist is the problem with identitarianism! Pay people whatever you want! As a job creator you don't owe it to anyone to pay a penny more than they are worth! And if they are worth more than that, someone else will pay them more. But if you're sexist, you're at a disadvantage versus others who are gauging merit instead. There are of course inefficiencies in the market, this won't work perfectly, but your responses to me are completely mis-targeted because I'm the one arguing against identitarianism! You're criticizing certain bad social practices and telling me "to combat racism and sexism I have to be racist and sexist" but all you've done is accepted the wrong definitions of racism and sexism. Once you do that, it's just "ingroup versus outgroup" all the way down, you lose the ability to complain persuasively about racial and sexual preferences because you've shown that you want racial and sexual preferences for yourself. A black-hating racist and a white-hating racist are just engaged in a game of power, there's no principle to appeal to, just pure in-group preference. But very often it is cooperation, not competition, that we need to coordinate if we're going to get stag.

Or another example, if I know race X commits crime at a high rate and I find myself walking around an unfamiliar city at night in an area with a lot of X, what should I do? Leaving the area is racist

I cannot emphasize this enough: you are just buying the wrong definition of racist here. If you disagree with left-identitarians, why would you let them define your key terms? This is what makes me crazy about the alt-right: they allow their enemies to set the poles of the debate--and that means they are destined to lose. They have lost the game before they have even begun to fight.

Identitarianism is always going to win in a democracy because embracing identitarianism gives you a bloc of perfectly loyal voters.

I agree that democracy is mostly bad and even the small protections of minority rights built into the U.S. system (Supreme Court, Bill of Rights, the original selection method for senators, the Great Compromise, the electoral college) have been much eroded by identitarianism. Proposing to fight fire with fire, however, too often just ends up getting you burned.

...you can't have race blindness because sooner or later one political party is going to learn that they can win by abandoning it.

This is a different problem, though. You're no longer arguing for "the good kind of racism," now you're arguing against the practice of democracy. Because if political parties can't divide people along racial lines, they will just divide people along some other lines. The blues and the greens of the Roman chariot races are the canonical example, I think.

The United States began as an uneasy alliance between a bunch of "white" abolitionists and a bunch of "white" slavers. Later came Germans (now "white"), Irishmen (now "white"), Chinese immigrants (now "white adjacent" for purposes of college admissions), Hispanics (usually "white" within two or three generations)... Native Americans who don't maintain sufficient blood or cultural purity become "white," many blacks "pass" as "white," the way these lines get drawn is political.

And sure, you can say "I would like these lines to be drawn to my benefit," but then you're just doing the same stupid thing the people you're complaining about (indirectly, in your selection of examples) are doing, in reverse. And intelligence is not reversed stupidity.