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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   28281 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 4, 2024

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The dominant strain of the left and the white-identity right believe fervently in the inescapable importance of racial identity

If you and @HlynkaCG want to talk about the white-identity right I beg you, just call them that. There is nothing inherently tied to HBD belief that implies the importance of racial identity. That you think I'm a white identarian is exhibit A that your understanding of the whole topic is deranged.

HBD and white identarian are not synonyms. One is a belief about the cause of statistical outcomes and the other is ideological movement. If you assumed that HBD was true are you actually saying that you'd be committed to white identarianism? Surely not right? The only thing holding you back from pushing for ethno states isn't the really quite difficult to defend belief that there is no variance in average aptitudes between races? Can you actually say that? Say "If I were convinced that there was a statistical difference in outcomes between racial groups I think ethno states would be a good idea".

If you're not willing to say that please stop putting those words in my mouth.

If you think white identitarians and progressives are distinct, what differences in policy, action or outcome do you see as relevant? Is it something beyond which specific racial groupings should be favored and which oppressed?

I have long argued for race blindness. HBD is simply true and its truth is useful in counter arguing against the belief that different outcomes are caused by racial discrimination. I know this cannot be the first time you're seeing this position, why do you keep ignoring it?

That you think I'm a white identarian is exhibit A that your understanding of the whole topic is deranged.

I don't think you're a white identitarian.

There is nothing inherently tied to HBD belief that implies the importance of racial identity.

No, there isn't, at least at the raw, verified facts level of "there are significant, persistent, well-verified differences in population-level IQ between demographic clusters that map pretty well onto the normal understanding of races."

And yet, I see people who I'm quite confident would not self-ID as white identitarian, people who I would not argue are white identitarian, people who have been democrat-voting progressives most of their lives but who now have grown progressive-sceptical, lamenting that Red Tribers have "wasted" political capital preventing poor black women from aborting their babies, because HBD. I don't believe that perspective is coming out of what people commonly understand as "the Right", and I certainly don't believe it's coming from the zeitgeist of Red Tribe. It's a fundamentally Blue Tribe perspective, a progressive perspective, an Enlightenment perspective. And it's pretty trivial to see how integrating HBD into their worldview got them from a normie-progressive viewpoint to what most normie progressives would consider an abomination without ever leaving the general Progressive worldview-space.

Likewise, "IQ is of paramount importance" isn't part of raw-facts-HBD, but it is an assumption that most of the HBD proponents I've talked to and seen have held, and I, like Hlynka, am pretty confident that it's disastrously wrong. Again, this is distinct from white identitarian ideology, but it's likewise not coming from Red Tribe, and is pretty clearly the product of a fundamentally Blue/Prog/Enlightened perspective.

If you assumed that HBD was true are you actually saying that you'd be committed to white identarianism?

I am pretty sure raw-facts-HBD is true, and I am certainly not committed to white identitarianism. But neither am I on board with HBD-as-a-worldview, which I think ranges from highly questionable to disastrously wrong, depending on how far people take it.

If you're not willing to say that please stop putting those words in my mouth.

I am not interested in putting words in your mouth. I am interested in critiquing HBD-as-a-worldview, among other things. I am entirely willing to take you at your word that your aim is race blindness. I think this is true for a lot of people who believe raw-facts-HBD. It is noticeably less true for the HBD-as-worldview set.

HBD is simply true and its truth is useful in counter arguing against the belief that different outcomes are caused by racial discrimination.

I disagree quite strongly that it is useful for counter-arguing against disparate outcomes as proof of discrimination, but laying out the argument isn't something I'm going to start at this late hour.

I'm tempted to go point by point but am on mobile today so I'll be brief. There needs to be a way to describe the truth value of HBD without the baggage of the vile hateful racists and you describing the vile worldview with a portmanteau containing the word is not helpful. We cannot be this afraid of the truth. It's beneath us.

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