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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 29, 2024

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First, thank you for participating here as a self-identified progressive. Good luck, hope you enjoy your time.

It would appear that this decision made by the AP wasn't just something they decided out-of-the-blue.

It's very easy to rewrite the AP's style decision as incredibly anti-black racist without actually changing its reasoning: "After a period of review, we found that white people are just too diverse to comprehend as a single group. Black people, on the other hand, are basically all the same no matter where they're from or what their culture is. They are defined primarily by their melanin and whether or not white people (an undefined group) have been racist against them."

It's wildly racist against basically everyone, and manages to center white people in the process of of supposedly supporting black people. It's blatantly absurd and narcissistic.

When arguments are made in favor of Black for the group also known as Americans Descendants of Slavery, as a culturally-distinct group from African-Americans being either new immigrants or those with recently immigrated ancestry, that makes sense. On similar grounds White could make sense as a term for us pan-European mutts with no connection to ancestral lands. Personally, I'd prefer both groups just be "American," but the powers that be don't seem too happy with that. But Black as a term that spans from an American whose ancestors were forced here 300 years ago, and somebody like Mswati III? Balderdash.