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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   31417 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 24, 2023

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I started writing a post for the culture war thread, and it got longer than I thought it would so I ended up just posting it as its own thread. I know some people don't always see those threads, so I thought I'd post a link here. I'm open to discussing it in either location:

https://www.themotte.org/post/604/the-case-for-ignoring-race

The Case for Ignoring Race

There are two arguments I want to push forward. The first is about ignoring race in your personal life. Ignoring your own race, and ignoring the race of others around you. And the second argument is to ignore race in the policy space. Ignoring race in college admissions, immigration, crime, etc. I also don't want to make the case that only white people should ignore race. I think it is generally beneficial for everyone to ignore race, but I'm guessing that most of the racial identitarians (people who place great importance on racial identity) that are here on themotte are white racial identitarians.

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Summary

Race is clearly a thing that exists. Genetic differences exist across races. The simplest proof is in people's skin pigmentation. However, genetics doesn't have to dictate anyone's destiny. Genetics can be barriers to unlimited possibilities, but your final place within a large set of possibilities is up to you.

And because race and genetics do not fully dictate who a person is, those characteristics do not provide good information about an individual that isn't obtainable in a myriad of other more reliable ways.

There are many variations on a joke about a race blind man refusing to cross the street as a black youth is walking towards him, he then gets mugged by the black youth. In more recent times the joke is often subverted to turn the race expectations on their head. Anyways, it is a good example for my purposes. Let us break the situation down:

Context - Walking down a dark street at night in a bad section of town. Age - young, teen to late twenties. A time when humans are often physically at their peak, and a time when males are more prone to violence. Gender - male, as mentioned above more prone to violence and physicality. Clothes - You are often left to paint the picture for yourself in the joke. But imagine a dark hoody and well worn jeans. Demeanor - fixated at you, arrogant walk, one hand holding something in their hoody pocket. At this point, without race ever being a factor, you can make an informed decision that interacting with this person is a bad idea. If you can't tell their race, and then are suddenly able to see it at the last moment, no result should change the informed decision you already made.

I won't make the very strong claim that Race is never a useful deciding factor...

It doesn't take very many changes, nor does it take rare or unusual changes to make race highly salient. Let's take it outside of the dark street in a bad section of town; should I be more concerned by a black guy than a white guy that fits this description on Michigan Avenue in Chicago? I think so. Let's remove the demeanor and neighborhood, but hold all else constant - would you feel more threatened by a young black man than a young Asian man in a hoodie? Let's keep everything the same, but flip the gender - are black women more threatening than women of Hmong descent? Let's change almost everything and update to a guy in his 40s approaching me in a grocery store parking lot - surely you'd think race is at least somewhat informative on how this interaction is likely to go?

Basically, I think you stacked the deck to be as substantially bad of a situation as possible and followed up with, "well, a white guy that fits all of the worst characteristics you can think of is bad too". Sure. Fair. I would definitely avoid a threatening looking Chinese guy with a weapon in a neighborhood known for Triad gang activity. I'm also a lot less likely to encounter that than the various black permutations, to the point where 6.6% my state is black and they account for 67% of my state's murders. On the grocery store example above, where I'm unlikely to be targeted for violence, I can guess with a high degree of certainty that the black guy is going to be asking me for money.

Now, perhaps morally I should elect to hear that guy out either way, maybe he really does just need $10 for a can of gas, but it surely informs my decision-making process.

I don't know that any of what you said really changes based on race, though, at least from a practical perspective. Yeah, black guy approaching me in a grocery store parking lot is probably going to ask me for money. But I can't think of many situations where I white guy doing the same thing doesn't end the same way.

Even the canonical example of an urban looking black guy being treated suspiciously for walking around a white suburban neighborhood at night doesn't make sense when you think about it. Yeah, black people commit more crime in general. But most of that crime isn't committed in white suburbs. Disaffected urban youth who want to rob houses aren't likely to drive 45 minutes to an unfamiliar neighborhood where they'd be about as inconspicuous as a brontosaurus at a time when the home is all but guaranteed to be occupied. The modal burglary takes place in the middle of a weekday by a guy driving a panel van who doesn't linger too long. But no one ever reports those guys as suspicious because they're so inconspicuous.

Yeah, my priors are that a black guy approaching me in a parking lot wants money for a gas can and a white guy could be doing that, or could be trying to sell me amway, with a distant possibility he’s a jehova’s witness. Not a huge difference either way.

Or he's me, and he wasn't paying attention on the way in and has been wandering around for the last ten minutes trying to find the entrance to the shops, and since you have shopping he assumes you can point him in the right direction.

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