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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   29092 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 18, 2023

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I came across today a movie trailer today which is/was The American Society of Magical Negroes. It really showed me how much the elite black class is grifting. The story apparently revolves around black people using magical powers to keep white people from chimping out and attacking black people. I'm not going to sit here and say black don't have grievances in America and against whites, but I don't think this whole type of thinking helps blacks. It makes it clear to me (and many other instances obviously) that the black elite and black academics define themselves against whiteness. Like they can't imagine blackness without white people in America. An America with no racism against blacks isn't possible to them, and the DEI and all that kind of stuff is necessary to keep them safe. This leaves many kinds of positions for more or less grifting that are basically only open to blacks and leave them a position to cry about racism and also benefit from it handsomely in terms of salary.

Working in Silicon Valley has given me the opportunity to work with a bunch of Nigerians that make insane salaries and live luxurious lifestyles. One thing I've noticed from them is that they don't think about the black/white distinction the same way. At my current company, the director of security is a Nigerian and half of the staff is Nigerian. Obviously they are hiring their own ethnics at a preferable rate, but I haven't seen one of them be part of the "Black at XYZ Company" groups or really care about that. They actually seem to be pretty happy with the current state of affairs in the US an have integrated pretty well.

I'm going to sound like a boomer conservative here, but it seems to me black elites in America seem obsessed with keeping the race divide front and center and their bloated salaries are a direct benefit to them. I don't think that black performance or lack thereof has anything to do with racism. I've never met a single normie person that is anti-black and hates them. I myself am pretty racist and HBD minded and I don't hate blacks at all. I find ghetto criminal blacks to be a nuisance and I don't like that, but even I would have to admit the vast majority of blacks are just normal people who want to live their lives and be happy. When I lived in Chicago, other than a few really unsafe areas I didn't mind walking around majority black neighborhoods.

It seems to me that there is an elite black class that was raised on the Civil Rights movement that can't move on. Their world view of racism is hopelessly outdated and most people would be fine hiring blacks and living near them. However, as currently constructed there is an elite black class that wants the status quo because they benefit from it Being a civil rights activist and a socila justice advocate is beneficial for these people instead of telling blacks they can succeed or fail on their own merits and to just be normal Americans.

As a non-American, the blacks have no one to blame but themselves. No, I am not being unnecessarily harsh on them or anything of that sort. Why the fuck does someone have to "make it out of the hood"? Just literally walk out of the hood. There are for hire signs everywhere and just start working a minimum wage job. Done, you're out of the hood! If you are not braindead, sit for the SAT, and then go to community college -> a state university, student loans are a thing, right?

If a group of people can't make it in the US of all places, there is NOTHING, NOTHING you can do for them.

And of course, grifters gonna grift. Is their grifting feeding the cycle? Probably, but its probably a coup complete problem at this point.

Why the fuck does someone have to "make it out of the hood"? Just literally walk out of the hood.

I don’t disagree, but it’s important to remember that Trumpists seethed when Kevin Williamson suggested that poor whites in shithole parts of the US do the same thing and said their suffering was their fault if they didn’t.

Many poor people can move for more opportunity but choose not to.

Trumpists are the same as hood Blacks. They are populists who lack principles, their policy positions are motivated by the wellbeing of their group and not society as a whole. Majority low IQ stock both of them.

However one is paraded as massive sociopolitical issue whilst the other is not, so perception/discussion will be downstream of that.

They are populists who lack principles, their policy positions are motivated by the wellbeing of their group and not society as a whole.

I wish the sorts of characters you're referring to in these groups were motivated by the wellbeing of their group(s), because that's at least a perspective you can negotiate with. If that is their motivation, they're observably doing a terrible job of promoting it. Instead, I think Hanania gets it right in describing them as an oppositional culture.

Thereby showing that what's going on here is not a "black" problem but a "pampered westerner" problem. The US is legitimately the easiest place in the world to "make it big", and no, Europe isn't better, there is less inequality but the upper ceiling is so much lower that it's legitimiately harder to get paid the same amount in PPP dollars there than in the US.

there is less inequality but the upper ceiling is so much lower that it's legitimiately harder to get paid the same amount in PPP dollars there than in the US.

Why do you say "but" when those are the same thing?

There is less inequality in Indonesia than the US, but it's much harder to get paid US$30,000 PPP adjusted in Indonesia than the US.

Whereas if it were easier, higher achievers would tend to earn more, increasing inequality. What am I missing?

Not necessarily. Consider two societies. In A people either earn $100k or $50k or $20k, each is equally likely. In B people either earn $150k or $160k and each is equally likely. In this case everyone in B earns more than everyone in A, even though B has a lot lower inequality and it is a lot easier to make $160k in society B than society A, despite A having greater inequality.

You can also have the opposite situation, Consider B' where everyone either earns 15k or 16k except for one person who makes $50k. B' has basically the same level of inequality as B (if the population size is large, the single person making 50k won't change total inequality by much) and this level is lower than the level of inequality in A. However it's still a lot easier to make at least $50k in A (2/3rds of the population does it) compared to B' (only one person does it), despite B' having lower inequality.

I have underestimated the complexity of the question and your preparedness to consider it in detail. I idly wonder whether there are any real-world circumstances that would make those distributions likely, but I'm not willing to press the point.

I think the point is that western societies have enough of a de facto floor that inequality is mostly driven by the ease of reaching an upper middle class salary.

The UK is particularly bad here. At this point I’m no longer shocked by how much American friends make compared to British friends in similar jobs, often 2-3 times as much.

Thankfully high finance is one of the few places where we still have our compensation tied to US levels instead of UK wages. The tax rates and what we get in return for what we put in (less than what a normal earner gets) still make me seethe with rage though.

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