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PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   26383 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 25, 2023

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now routinely promising to offer positions exclusively to black women is not the same as The only relevant qualification to the Democratic Party

To me it seems that the politically promoted black women are qualified enough at least on paper for the post that they are taking. Feel free to pitch in. They are not taking AAVE speaking black grandmas from the poor working class areas. Although with their stereotypical no bullshit attitude and desire to smack people they may be a welcome addition to the political scene.

This is the fundamental difference between haters and proponents of AA (I’m a hater fwiw). The former believes qualification is relative so that if you limit the pool for a feature that isn’t relative to qualification you are incredibly likely to end up with a worse candidate whereas the latter believes qualification is a line to cross and once crossed it doesn’t matter too much who is picked so tie should go to the minority.

I feel like the recent AA SCOTUS justices support my view but YMMV.

Although with their stereotypical no bullshit attitude and desire to smack people they may be a welcome addition to the political scene.

If Sheila Jackson Lee is any indication, getting to federal congress takes it out of 'em.

They are not taking AAVE speaking black grandmas from the poor working class areas.

Although not as qualified, as you said, on paper, our hypothetical Ebonics Granny from the hood has real life experience and the resultant common sense that would bring a refreshing perspective to either the VP or SCOTUS that Kamala and Ketanji just...don't. And I'd almost-not-joking trust her more as president too, because she might be more likely than Kamala to be aware of just how much she didn't know. All I'm saying is let's hear her out

I agree with this point. If the goal of appointing these people is to enfranchise Black people whose opinions are marginalized in society then I don't see how putting someone who does not at all have the experience of those groups into power accomplishes this. It's like the recent immigrants taking the affirmative action spots in ivy leagues. The disconnect between the purported motivation and the outcome achieved along with the total lack of interest in aligning these things betrays that the motivation is not sincere.

What is the motivation, then? These people don’t literally believe blacks are magic, and affirmative action doesn’t on average do anything except make everything very slightly worse(and piss people off).

If steel manning I think the motivation is something like that there is some value in young disenfranchised black kids seeing that their skin color is not alone an impenetrable barrier. Are their voices actually being heard because a rich lady who happens to be black gets a position? Maybe not. But it's not nothing to know that if they escape poverty they too can aspire to any position.

These people don’t literally believe blacks are magic

Not to be snarky, but are we sure of this?

There does seem to be a lot of magical thinking applied to not just black people but “diversity”. It’s taken for granted that without black people (slavery), America wouldn’t even exist. (“Slaves built America.”) Just look at the purported benefits of diversity. Without diversity we wouldn’t have creativity, innovation, social cohesion, social justice, or equity.

It’s hard to square these claims with reality in any realistic, non-magical way.

I'm quite sure that affirmative action's advocates in academia don't literally believe blacks are magic.

Now to be clear I do think some of the current generation of racial nonsense is driven by anti-white sentiment, either self hating whites or academically inclined resentful minorities. The difference between the two is obvious from their writing styles, and to be fair, most of the people spreading these sentiments are mostly around whites that I don't like very much either(but not because they're white). But that's a different issue and the idea that "white people are incapable of creativity and can only invent things by stealing them from other races" doesn't imply other races are magic, it implies whites are evil and/or defective.

Without diversity we wouldn’t have creativity, innovation, social cohesion, social justice, or equity.

Of those, the last two are literally buzzwords made up to justify diversity, social cohesion may be factually wrong as a benefit of diversity but it doesn't require magic, and creativity and innovation are synonyms which have perfectly plausible explanations for why diversity helps- getting people with different ideas brainstorming leads to new ideas much better than if people think the same.

When I say Bob built my house, I am not saying , I wouldn't have a house otherwise, because I would have employed Fred or Charlie to build it instead. But it wouldn't be exactly the same house.

And if you ask who did build "this" house, Bob is the factually correct answer even if some other house would be here otherwise.

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