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ZorbaTHut  1yr ago (text post)   35343 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 26, 2022

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Epistemic status: half-baked hypothesis

The whites who support this do not consider themselves threatened because they believe they're the "default race" in the Western culture. I don't think they're too far from truth, either. Defaults do not get explicitly favored, except by those who really care specifically about white people. (Whether they get implicitly favored or not is out of scope of this post).

Like in my example from my other reply to this, for a white progressive to support whites explicitly (for a straight progressive to support straights, for a male progressive to support males... etc) is, at best, as weird and unneccessary as it is for a business to welcome "Regular Unremarkable Customers" as opposed to "Customers with Dogs/Children Welcome". Even if you don't believe the white straight male is the root of all evil, you consider the white straight male default enough that he isn't worth any special mention. At worst, doing so is a sign of fragility and nefarious identitarian tendencies. "You already are the default, and you want the privileges of being Special on top of that?"

Is the mindset of considering "let others get theirs once you got yours" a virtue that alien?

Whenever antiracist academics write papers about white being the default (I've heard this idea before), I get the feeling that this fact stings them and they don't like it and wish it to change.

Either I am wrong, and they're perfectly happy that white should be the default, or they are malicious and "you are a default so you don't need privileges" is not meant in good-faith.

Is "wishing it to change" malicious? Your message about their intentions is unclear.

What I didn't explain explicitly, and maybe I should have, is that if someone wants "white is the default" to change, surely the best way to do that is to stop treating white like a default, and start treating it like a coalition just like Blacks and asians, which would mean letting explicitly pro-White groups perform their activism. After all, a future where "white is not the default" is a future with explicit pro-white interest groups.

Since what we see in real life is people saying, "but whites are the default! You can't perform pro-white activism!" it shows that "but whites are the default" is said with this face.

The current setup of minority-focused interest groups seem to be mostly about changing the distribution of resources, not about changing "the idea of default."

which would mean letting explicitly pro-White groups perform their activism. After all, a future where "white is not the default" is a future with explicit pro-white interest groups.

The future is not now, though, and what would be normal in the future is not applicable now. Your logical trap is no less dishonest than what you're trying to accuse them of.

The issue of "the ideal world is not like the journey toward the ideal world", or in other words "perfect is the enemy of good" isn't new.

No, it means that when activists tear down pro-white activism they can't use the reasoning "but white is the default!" which is the lens that you originally brought up.

An honest (and I hope more frequent) reason to reject pro-white activism is "white people already have it good":

  1. It is falsifiable once the ideal future is obtained, if in case white people no longer have it good.

  2. It is falsifiable today, if in case white people currently do not have it good.

  3. It treats white people as a legitimate coalition instead of the default.

I did not spring a logical trap, I'm just pointing out dishonesty. The thing activists do currently is not (a) changing what the default is, the thing they are doing is (b) diverting resources and no amount of doing (b) will ever lead to (a).

We can totally treat white people as a legitimate coalition while simultaneously noticing that they don't need activism, but few argue this, because it would require data.

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