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PaperclipPerfector  30d ago (text post)   25122 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 1, 2024

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The problem with this line of reasoning is that it ignores the reality on the ground. You can talk all you want about some theoretical shared history and kinship among whoever he considers white people, but it has little tangible effect on my everyday life. Compare me to an American black person — we speak the same language, share similar religions (i.e. we're both Christian), consume similar pop culture, eat the same food, etc.Why should I feel more of a sense of kinship with a Finn? He speaks a different language, has never been to my country, let alone my city, has no sense of shared civic responsibility, no sense of my country's history, and he's probably never even eaten peanut butter before. If a random black guy from Pittsburgh ends up in my living room, I guarantee I'll be able to relate to him better than a random guy from Finland with whom all I really share is skin color and the fact that our ancestors emigrated from central Asia some time in the distant past. At the very least, the black guy isn't going to complain when I offer him Miller High Life. This article is nothing more than the author trying to fabricate an intellectual justification for his own irrational prejudices.

Move a Finn to America and within 5 years he'll fit in. When he has kids you won't be able to tell them apart from anybody else. Move a black person to America and 400 years later they're culture is still wildly divergent and they have different outcomes from white Americans on every measure you could think of.

Anyway I think you're overestimating how much in common you have with black people. Try sending your kid to a 90% black school and ask them how easy it is to fit in because everyone eats peanut butter.

With Europeans you have deep similarities and superficial differences, with other races you have deep differences and superficial similarity.

Anyway I think you're overestimating how much in common you have with black people. Try sending your kid to a 90% black school and ask them how easy it is to fit in because everyone eats peanut butter.

I think this says more about black schools than about black people in general.

I went to schools that weren't 90% black, but were more black than white.

I think you don't know what you're talking about. The kids self-segregated, except for the lightest-skinned, nerdiest black kids, who ran with the whites and asians.

No-one is disputing this. I think the point is rather that, if you dropped 30 Romanians or Finns into this school, they would probably self-segregate together as well, at least as strongly as the American students of different races.

I'm not following. The difference between white schools and black schools is the people that go there.

400 years

Of which well over 200 were spent in chattel slavery, and the following century as a legal underclass.

Try sending your kid to a 90% black school and ask them how easy it is to fit in because everyone eats peanut butter

I suspect it would be substantially easier to fit in than doing so in a school in rural Romania.

Will we reach a point where slavery is far enough in the past that blacks and whites will be the same then? People have been predicting that for a long time. When do you expect the process to be complete?

That rather depends on what happens in the future. History casts a long shadow. While you can undo slavery, if you create a enormous racial underclass you can't expect to wipe away three centuries of that history in a short amount of time. I don't just mean this in a 'systemic racism' way, but also in the broader cultural heritage of slavery - thinking here of Ogbu, 'acting white' etc.

If these differences are inherent though, how have swathes of African-Americans been able to become - in all but colour - indistinguishable from their white neighbours, friends and colleagues? Until very recently, the black-white wealth gap was on a long-term downward trend. The crime/imprisonment gap is also on a downward trend.

Not in the white deep south where I'm from.

Sure, but you'll just all think he's from Minnnesota.

Move a black person to America and 400 years later they're

...dead?

But out of their descendants the ones that can integrate quickly stop 'being black' through intermixing.

Not 'acting white' is a matter of survival for the genes associated with melanin and other visible traits that define the 'African-American' phenotype.

...dead?

As opposed to the blacks who stay in Africa?

Not 'acting white' is a matter of survival for the genes associated with melanin and other visible traits that define the 'African-American' phenotype.

Doesn't the same go for white people in America? By that logic, "whiteness" - ie. not even being able to specify a fractional non-white ancestor on a college entry form - really does provide evidence for inherent racism. (Though admittedly with lower probability.)

By that logic, "whiteness" - ie. not even being able to specify a fractional non-white ancestor on a college entry form - really does provide evidence for inherent racism.

Racism is not absolute. There is always a way for the darkest of population to integrate 'white' society. Just ask Thomas Jefferson.

I don't see anything wrong with racism in itself. Paradoxically, it seems that the only way to have a black upper-class is for racism to openly be an upper-class value.

It appears to me that as long as the ambitious and capable blacks are forced to adopt white upper-class values to belong, they will have to pay lip-service to anti-racism, which leads to their descendants miscegenating, and the dilution of their 'black' lineage into the 'white' one.

Therefore to achieve true racial equity, we would need more racism, not less.

Would you send your child on an exchange trip to live with the American black, like you might to Finland? OK, realistically you wouldn't torture your child with a language that isn't even Indo-European and the freezing cold. But my point stands - there are significant differences. Do you want to swap everyone in your community for Finns or US blacks?

If race is such a non-issue, why do Americans tend to cluster up so much? The Bronx used to be renowned for how boring and peaceful it was, back when it was predominantly 'ethnic' white. People were leaving their doors open at night for fresh air. Then blacks moved in, whites moved out. Crime shot up. People were burning down houses to get the insurance - not a conventional business strategy. Same thing happened in Detroit, in certain parts of Chicago.

In Australia we have the exact same thing with our local indigenous population. Sky-high rates of violence, poverty, drug addiction (petrol can be a drug if you really try) and welfare use. Right now we're having this drama over a youth curfew in Alice Springs, where the usual suspects are complaining that it doesn't fix the structural problems. They're right - the youths switched to being violent in the suburbs in a perfect display of incentives. Meanwhile the local police are getting reamed for having a mock awards ceremony where they gave out 'Coon of the year award' awarded to the 'person who has displayed outstanding lack of excellence in the area of personal hygiene or feral behaviour' and presented the winner with a club captured from some patrol. They can tell, they just know that there are significant differences between black and white. They're taught not to do this, they have incentives not to do this but they can't resist what their own eyes, ears and noses tell them.

I don't want to send my child to a school full of Chinese kids because they'll probably torture him with excessive homework and academic competitiveness. With blacks, the torture can be more literal. You can read 'Letter from a Mom About School' for an example:

The assault on the school bus was so horrifying for her that she literally soiled herself in fear. She dared to tell a group of black kids on the bus to stop hitting a younger white child in the head and to leave him alone. For that, she was attacked, taken down to the floor of the bus, and stomped on.

She had a footprint on her forehead and when I took her to the urgent care, she had a sprained neck and was covered in bruises. When I took the medical records and photos taken by the doctor to the school and demanded that something be done, I was told that because an ambulance was not needed, it was not considered an assault.

I asked my daughter what the bus driver did while all this was going on, and she said nothing. When I contacted the school, I was told that the bus driver (who was black) had not reported the attack.

The result of the school’s investigation was to subsequently suspend my daughter for the same amount of days as the perpetrators because one of them had a scratch on his leg (where she tried to get away from the attack.)

It goes on and on, Colin Flaherty writes books of this stuff. Crime statistics are made of this stuff. A casual glance at certain cities and countries tells us this stuff. Some populations are just not suited to civilization, just as others are.

In Australia we have the exact same thing with our local indigenous population.

Don’t that indigenous population, much like indigenous Anglos in England, have a right to ‘their’ homeland per Johnson, though? After all, according to the OP, he says:

First, your rights are not obligations. A right is simply an option that you can choose to exercise or not. The obligation pertains to others, who are obliged to get out of your way.

So, do white Australians have to “get out of the way” of natives? The indigeneity ethnat argument isn’t really compatible with settler colonies. The better argument is the Churchillian one, which explicitly allows the natural right of conquest with reference to settler colonies. The problem for ethnonationalists is that it means that their right is not intrinsic, and that if they lose their defeat was probably just.

For example, Jews believed they had a ‘right’ (and destiny) to eventually reclaim Jerusalem for 2,000 years. But it was ultimately material reality that ensured it happened. Of course the Israelis today have a “right” to an ethnostate, but it is a temporal right built on economics, military strength and the relationships built by the Jewish diaspora over centuries, not one based on the claim in the book.

What is the usual (imagined, of course) response to the aboriginal man who demands all non-natives leave Australia? “Well come and take it mate, and if you win it’s yours”, at least if my more conservative Australian acquaintances are to be believed. The police officers can notice, but they also notice that Johnson is incorrect, there is no right to an ethnostate, only the ability to impose one with sufficient credibility and authority.

Lastly, Australian aboriginals aren’t black and are highly genetically and phenotypically distinct from both African and European populations; Africans and Europeans are much more genetically close than either population is to indigenous Australians and Papuans.

Lastly, Australian aboriginals aren’t black and are highly genetically and phenotypically distinct from both African and European populations; Africans and Europeans are much more genetically close than either population is to indigenous Australians and Papuans.

My understanding is that it's close. Yes, there's Denisovan admixture in Aboriginals (previously I thought that that was also in East Asians and thus ruled out as relevant, but I checked in response to this and there's far less of it in Asians), but (sub-Saharan) Africans don't have Neanderthal admixture and have much-longer isolation as far as the H.s.s. part goes.

The Khoisan are likely still more genetically isolated depending on source, but the majority of sub-Saharan Africans aren’t.

Don’t that indigenous population, much like indigenous Anglos in England, have a right to ‘their’ homeland per Johnson, though?

I think he says yes?

But I am also willing to cheer on less optimal forms of ethnonationalism, even petty, chauvinistic, and Left-wing ethnonationalisms, especially if they take the form of separatist movements trying to break up multiethnic states.

It doesn't really make sense either, as you say. Weapons > rights. Rather like the NAP, isn't it! What good is a principle if an armed band come over with the intent of taking all your stuff? You need your own armed band: professional soldiers and a state apparatus to smooth things out.

Would you send your child on an exchange trip to live with the American black, like you might to Finland? OK, realistically you wouldn't torture your child with a language that isn't even Indo-European and the freezing cold.

TBF most of us would probably just talk to him in English all the time, and if the exchange happened in the summer, it wouldn't be that cold. ("The Finnish summer is short but comparatively snowless", as the local joke goes.)

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