site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 7, 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.

9
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I wonder how hard it is to predict who will marry interracially.

I ran into an old acquaintance the other day and was surprised to find out he married a black woman. Not surprised because he was a raging racist or something. It's just that in our social circles it's still a bit of an unusual thing to do. Looking back, there was nothing about this guy that said "yes, this is precisely the kind of dude who would marry a black woman."

Maybe the big ML models used by dating services are able to identify people more likely to "marry out" than the average user. Either way, it's clear some humans do, and some absolutely never would. What's behind it? Is it genetic? A particular upbringing?

I'm not even sure why I'm so interested in this question, but I am.

Nerdy shy guys obviously very disproportionately marry East and Southeast Asian women. I've thought about this and in most cases (based on speaking to and knowing a few of these couples) I think it's because these men don't approach women, but Asian mothers flip a switch when their daughters are 25 and say "you need to get married now", and cajole said daughters into approaching a nice, shy seeming, tall guy who looks like he has his shit together. I don't think this is bad behavior at all (and white mothers could probably do the same thing), but I've often been amused (and impressed) at how forward Chinese or Chinese-American women I've met are with men they want to date. A lot of these white guys have never been approached by a pretty-ish girl (or maybe any girl) and so fall into relationships that lead to marriage and kids.

White guys with black wives are more interesting. I've known quite a few (it seems much more common in the UK than the US). I'd say they often fall into three categories.

  1. The first is possibly-slightly-xenophilic ambitious white guy with FOB or otherwise 1st generation African woman. Often both professionals, ambitious, academic. One couple I know like this are two doctors, another a lawyer and a banker. Often the woman has a history of only dating white guys, at least since she moved to the West. I think affluent African parents are more relaxed about their kids marrying white than many Asian (especially South Asian) and Arab/North African parents, possibly for cultural and religious (they're usually Christian) reasons.

  2. The second category is the 'cool' white guy with a largely black friend group. He's a DJ, works in arts or advertising, has some creative role, definitely loves rap and hiphop, prides himself on being invited to the cookout. Goes to largely black clubs and bars on weekends. May have a crustpunk/trustpunk vibe, very into BLM. Charitably, he's simply around a lot of black people and so is obviously likely to date black women, less charitably he thinks it's a form of assimilation into the black culture he so admires and/or a fetish. Maybe it's all of the above.

  3. The last category is the 'nerdy husband of nerdy middle-class black girl' category. There are a lot of black nerds but ime they very rarely date each other. Black cottagecore anime girlies have skinny, tall white glasses boyfriends with scruffy beards, and black super smash bros anime D&D guys have short, sometimes chubby, white or asian girlfriends. The only black nerd couple I've ever met were both Africans who studied in a very white European city together. I was worried about a black friend of mine because the guy she was dating had a low-key reputation for being a Sam Hyde fan and casual racist, but they're now married and he seems to worship the ground she walks on, so maybe she changed him.

As they say: Never ask a man his wage, a woman her age, or a white supremicist the race of his girlfriend.