site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 23, 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.

6
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Nothing wrong happened to black Americans. Let’s think about the stats America imported something like 400k black slaves. Today we have 47.2 million black Americans. The richest black people in the world are American.

It’s literally one of the most successful ethnic communities in the entire world.

Anyone in Africa who had a choice between getting enslaved or not for the long turn evolutionary success of his gene pool would choose enslavement.

Nothing wrong happened to black Americans.

Do you mean this distributively (slavery involved no wrong actions against black Americans) or collectively (as a class, black Americans were benefited by slavery)?

Fair critique

Nothing wrong happened to black Americans

Typical motte and bailey. Sentence that by most people would be interpreted as "nothing wrong happened to individual black Americans" but if called out you can insist that you just mean that "in general, blacks as a group are doing better than they were 400 years ago".

I've read some of your other posts and based on that I am guessing that probably when you are in an objective sort of mood, you're not stupid enough to actually believe "nothing wrong happened to black Americans".

If the same thing had happened to your ethnic group that happened to the enslaved Africans, there is approximately a 99.99999999% chance that you would not be writing something like what you wrote about blacks about your own ethnic group on an alternate history version of The Motte.

Fair critique. Honestly just wanted to play the other side especially when you said Japanese could legitimately tear down FDR statues.

Had a drink or two last night and and I do lose some nuance then. Sure I can’t say nothing wrong happened. But there’s also obviously something that was going on in America that slavery wasn’t that bad. I guess I don’t like agreeing with the left that America is some rotten and evil place and the worst thing America did created a thriving community.

100% guarantee if it happened to my people I would take the same view. I’m autistic enough and lacking in social desirability bias to get there.

Also I don’t think comparing to Latvians or Poles with Russian figures is fair. They suffered genocide which American slavery didn’t. And there’s no argument those communities are better off. Even cultural genocide didn’t happen as during the institution of slavery and after they ended up creating a globally recognized culture. One could argue the second most globally influential culture behind the broader American culture.

As an occasional drunk-poster myself, I can sympathize. I usually lose a lot of nuance when I'm drunk.

Regarding the Latvian/Pole comparison, the thing is yes they suffered genocide to some degree, but I doubt that the number of people who were killed by the USSR's political repressions in those places is statistically very different as a percentage from the number of blacks who died in various ways as a result of slavery (overworked, killed while trying to escape, etc.).

The USSR also did not destroy Latvian and Polish culture any more significantly than American slavery destroyed the culture of the slaves, when you look at it from the slaves' perspective. Yes, the practice of slavery did not destroy the African cultures that the slaves were originally from, but from the perspective of the enslaved subset, it was a near-total cultural erasure.

As brutal as the USSR was, it is not like pre-USSR Latvian and Polish cultures got destroyed.

Black American culture is thriving in many ways, and is certainly globally recognized, but I think this is because black Americans' most popular cultural products, such as athletic performance and music, are ones in which black Americans as a group are just better at creating really popular things than Poles and Latvians are, and also have the benefit of using English, one of the world's most widely known languages, and having access to the US' pop media marketing and distribution machine, the strongest in world history. Sure, there is no globally famous Polish version of Michael Jackson or Michael Jordan, but I don't think this is caused by what the USSR did to Poland.

but if called out you can insist that you just mean that "in general, blacks as a group are doing better than they were 400 years ago".

Not just 400 years ago. Better than they would have, if Europeans never interacted with them.

Not that I agree with him, but I'm not a consequentialist / utilitarian.

Make sure to remember that when a custodian AI provides you with your cattle cage and reassures you that your gene pool will live on for millennia, in identical cages.