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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 7, 2023

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Like look, a lot of the distinguishing cultural markers for African Americans are stupid and destructive, but they do exist in a way that distinguishes African Americans as a whole from other Americans in a way that doesn’t for white Americans.

I'm not American, but I don't buy this at all. You talk about Gerrymandering, but there is clearly a 'just so' line drawn about what groups are allowed to assert a cultural identity and those that are not. Whites cannot, but Blacks can. For nebulous ill defined reasons that are seemingly asserted to prevent any defence against attacks against Whites as a whole.

If Whites aren't an ethnic group, why is the identification of and assault on them and their flaws largely uncontested in the overton window?

Part of that is surely that the vast majority of American blacks belong to a single ethnic group- African Americans- whereas there is no similarly dominant group for white Americans. And almost all "black cultural" celebrations are really just African American culture, which is far more similar to other American groups than to, eg, Nigerian culture, to the extent that American English uses "he's black" to mean "he's a member of the African American ethnic group" and would say "he's African/from Africa" to refer to a Nigerian as opposed to "he's black".

I agree that anti-white racism exists, but I don't think you really grasp how fringey the sorts of pan-Africanist ideas that would be used to back up "blacks can assert a cultural identity and whites cannot" are. American whites are a collection of different ethnic groups, some of them larger and some of them smaller, and most of them can assert a cultural identity. It's deplorable that southern whites aren't allowed to be proud of their heritage, but it's not really something that applies to, say, midwestern Germans.