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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 26, 2024

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Unfortunately the dissident right doesn't really have realistic political solutions besides the Sam Hyde "just kill em" semi-irony that I can't see ever catching on in the US. Although it's irritating to hear so many bad arguments and poor evidence trotted out to defend progressivism, dealing with multi-ethnic societies is hard. If you don't support mass deportations of citizens or mass murder then you need to advocate for policies that work within a society as multiethnic as the one you're in. Maybe that means racial spoils systems a la Singapore or South Africa.

That being said, I don't think raceblindness is actually as politically untenable as Greene implies. If you poll people, most don't support affirmative action or other racial spoils-type policies. Moreover, I think it needs to be emphasized that there's only one ethnic group driving these politics in the US, and they're quite a small minority (although obviously they have many sympathizers). I don't think abandoning colorblindness just to placate blacks or cut down on race riots necessarily follows, if the truth about group differences that so many liberal elites supposedly know but don't say were publicly acknowledged, imo black advocacy would start to be perceived less like equality or even equity and more as the unmitigated black self-interest that I see it as. If this happened, these policies would become politically untenable, and raceblindness might make a comeback. France has a large ethnic-minority underclass and manages to maintain raceblindness (although obviously it isn't a paradise over there). I think raceblindness can be viable in the US, and if you have ethical or other reasons to prefer it it's not unreasonable to, although obviously in the current political climate it's impossible. People who want raceblindness need to be pointing to how ineffective all the effort and resources poured into closing the achievement gap has been, they need to point out that black underrepresentation isn't because of anti-black racism and that prioritizing diverse candidates means hiring less qualified candidates. These are common talking points online, if they go mainstream it could change politics drastically. As Greene says, these things are already sometimes admitted in private by educated people. These sorts of public taboos can collapse pretty quickly (although they can also persist for a long time).

I quite enjoyed this essay, I think Greene is right about centrist liberals not (publicly) acknowledging the actual consequences of what they're advocating for, and maybe not even being willing to live with those consequences. I think his proposed solutions are pretty undercooked though, if I were his editor I would probably just remove that part of the essay.

Moreover, I think it needs to be emphasized that there's only one ethnic group driving these politics in the US, and they're quite a small minority (although obviously they have many sympathizers).

And it’s not even all of them; blacks don’t have majority support for affirmative action despite massively benefitting from it.

racial spoils system a la Singapore

Did you mean Malaysia? Singapore rather famously does not have racial preferences enshrined in the law, modulo a couple of ceremonial quirks such as Malay being the “national language”.

There are legal requirements that the slate of parliamentary candidates for each electoral district must be racially representative, and that public housing estates must have a minimum level of diversity among residents. But I would hardly call that a “spoils system”, as it doesn’t privilege any one race above others.

I was referring to the political affirmative action, but you're right in that it's nowhere near S. Africa and probably is less "spoils"-y than the US in some ways. I think you understate it though, they literally only allowed Malay candidates to run for president in 2017. Most in the US would balk at that sort of blatant ethnic discrimination, which is why we have memes like "one of many factors".

Unfortunately the dissident right doesn't really have realistic political solutions besides the Sam Hyde "just kill em" semi-irony that I can't see ever catching on in the US.

I mean, I could put that right back at Greene. He doesn't really have a solution besides "And then people start dying, but at least we won't be racist"

That being said, I don't think raceblindness is actually as politically untenable as Greene implies. If you poll people, most don't support affirmative action or other racial spoils-type policies.

Maybe, but the people polled probably believe they can have their cake and eat it too. Greene at least grapples with the cold, hard fact that the average African American IQ is significantly lower than everyone else in America, and they have the outcomes to match if you took a cohort of any other skin color with the same IQ. Most people against affirmative action have probably have no awareness of this fact, it's so heavily repressed, and simply believe affirmative action isn't necessary anymore because we've "fixed" the problem.