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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 3, 2024

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No, I agree, white people don't owe brown people that much. Personally I subscribe to a school of thought that injustices older than, say, 40-50 years belong to the past and not the present; we can do more good focusing on the present. For example the idea of reparations for slavery is absurd and also not practical. If an injustice is obvious and inflicted within, say, 20 years, I think there should always be some sort of reckoning. I bring up the longer-past to more criticize the general idea that if your group is happy, it's okay to ignore others who are suffering. And to mention that success of one group is rarely some sort of idealist world where they did it all by themselves. It's not uncommon, at least, for some exploitation to be going on as the cost. (I'm not saying this is always the case!)

What I do believe is that yes, successful people and successful groups and successful societies alike have a moral, religious, and human imperative to not just like in their own bubbles of prosperity, but to uplift others, be they less fortunate or even in some cases undeserving. I also think that to strive for the elusive goal of equality is admirable. Perhaps we do not share those values. But I think they are human values, not some luxury. Humankind as a species only got where it did due to networks of mutual trust rather than pure unadulterated selfishness, which allowed "greater than the sum of its parts" effects, so I would argue these values are actually fairly universal.

The assumption that white children turn out intolerant, ignorant or sheltered if not raised in proximity to browns is racist.

White children ALL kids turn out intolerant, ignorant or sheltered ignorant in practical terms, and sheltered in many terms if not raised in proximity to browns if not deliberately exposed to other "cultures" (ill-defined I know), races, income levels, ability levels, religion, to name a few. Simply being told about how these things exist is not enough for true, meaningful, and ultimately helpful understanding (to the kid for their future and being a well-rounded, high-quality, moral human being) . I'll admit that careful parenting and good influences, etc. can get you probably 75% of the way there for some of these, but not all. That's an important point. Fish being unaware of water and all that. That's the context here. I'm not saying that you need to deliberately sacrifice your child's well-being for social justice as a broad concept. I'm advocating for parents to carefully consider the unseen costs of homogeneity, to think about their child's whole future, and to point out that if enough people think this way we can obtain greater "justice and equity" without doing anything particularly controversial.

Success in school is an admixture of teacher quality, parental support, extracurricular support, teaching approaches, appropriate disciplinary schemes; the backgrounds of the attendees is a big factor but harder to directly control. Generally speaking, it's downstream of economic and geographical trends. Weighing these factors and coming up with a better way to achieve fairness is still a tricky question I don't yet have a full answer to. But objecting to the relatively banal original idea I proposed, which was simply that inequality might lessen if people valued diversity more in selection of where to live, and attacking it as the underpinnings of some sort of nefarious liberal plan to stuff apparently perfect, innocent, destined for success white kids into inner city schools where they are doomed to a life of bullying and misfortune is a complete mischaracterization of so many things it's hard to know where to start. I hope this clarifies some.

Then we do not agree as white people do not owe brown people anything. What they do give is an act of kindness that is comparatively very rarely reciprocated.

I agree humans should help one another. Which is why I find your position so distasteful. You don't want to help white children. You want to risk their wellbeing. We can all be equal in squalor. That doesn't mean its good.

As for human values, what white people are doing and have been doing are not human values. China isn't opening its borders. India doesn't care for equal rights. Africa doesn't care for LGBTQ+ or whatever. The places on earth that engage in what you call human values are white. Humankind as a species only got where it is today because white people pushed it there. Ending perpetual conquest, ending slavery, sharing technology, pushing for an end to unnecessary suffering. The rest of the world was dragged kicking and screaming away from their barbarism and is only kept from it, still kicking and screaming, through the implementation of neo-imperial financial coercion and threat of force.

Children in general do not turn out intolerant, ignorant or sheltered if raised in homogenous schools. It's in fact easier to be tolerant of the things that are so far away from you that they practically do not exist. Children raised in homogenous schools miss out on nothing that's worth the increase in risk.

What you offer parents is a coercive bargain. You promise them total equality and an end to racism in return for placing their children in worse environments. The problem with this bargain is that your end of it is a lie. The only thing that happens is that white children become worse off whilst brown children continue being who they are, good and bad. We know your end is a lie because it, like every progressive humanist effort, has been tried and subsequently failed.

You as a person, like so many others, can not functionally understand this, for whatever reason. So you continue chasing the promise of equality and eternal salvation through whatever means you can imagine. People like you have already cost billions if not trillions in your futile efforts. White people have paid for all of it, and here you come asking for more in the name of humanity, equality and all the rest. Listen, white people already did all of this. They are doing it even today. It doesn't work. None of it works. What do you think progressives have been doing for the past 60 years?

'Success in school' is meaningless. Every teacher could pass every student with no issue by just doing what is already being done and dropping the standards so the browns can pass. What actually matters is peoples ability to interact with modern societies. That means the ability to read and understand, having the capacity for low time preference behavior and the ability to implement mathematics into practice. School outside of these things is not meaningful in the modern context. So long as a majority of the children get a grasp on these things, society can continue to function properly. The problem is that no one knows how to get the children that don't grasp these things to grasp it. It doesn't matter if they're white or brown. No one knows how to meaningfully raise IQ scores or lower a persons time preference.

Taking children and placing them in environments where they are more likely to get bullied is not banal. Arguing in favor of this by abstracting away from reality is not honest. You should take some time to reflect on what you are proposing in practice. Because there are many more values people hold to than just the imperative to help those in need. And your particular emotional proclivities in no way trump those who differ.