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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 30, 2024

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You know, my ancestors were shock infantry in the civil war, or at least that’s what the elders claim. I haven’t checked the documentation because no one does; some people claim to have been descended from no name officers, some from elite enlisted. You can probably guess at many of the differences between the families making these claims.

That is to say, this world is way more familiar to me than the previous article. It’s no secret that most non-blacks in the US tend to have a sharply negative opinion of black culture as it actually exists. That goes for respectable progressive types as well- there’s a YouTube channel I occasionally enjoy, ‘Criminal Lawyer Reacts’ of a progressive defense lawyer reacting to rap videos. He’s horrified in all the ways you’d expect a good progressive to be horrified by the content of drill and makes frequent exhortations to his viewers to try to mentor these young any-word-but-one-starting-with-n out of dysfunctional black culture. 'It's the culture' is a thing he says.

Now, obviously, I'm not in a frat. But wanting to exclude black-acting negros from your circle of intimates(which fraternities at least claim to be) is definitely a thing. We can argue about HBD and dysfunctional culture and whatever til we're blue in the face but duh, modern ADOS culture is one of a handful that's just uniquely bad. And this kid is complaining about not being able to live close enough to it in a conformist environment? Like duh you don't want your people taking their cues from nigs anymore than you would want them copying gypsies or something. Confederate nostalgia excludes the blacks much more effectively than cruder forms of racism.

Obviously, this is exacerbated by the whitest blacks leaving the community- the culture gets worse as good influences leave. But I don't know that ADOS culture broadly is salvageable.

That is to say, this world is way more familiar to me than the previous article.

They're the same article, about the same people. Originally I had this as one long comment but there were two obviously different things I wanted to talk about, and lacking a third it just got confusing.

But wanting to exclude black-acting negros from your circle of intimates(which fraternities at least claim to be) is definitely a thing.

I feel like excluding is too strong a word, though I guess not-including and excluding are synonymous. Because the complaint isn't (here) that they are actively hating anyone, it's simply we don't want to invite them to live in our house designed to be a place for similar guys with similar interests to hang out. I know it's old hat to point out, but it's a remarkable microcosm of how differently these things are viewed: a white guy rushing the Divine Nine would be pilloried as a racist for showing up looking white, and pilloried as an even bigger racist if he defended it by claiming that he was culturally black.

invite them to live in our house designed to be a place for similar guys with similar interests to hang out

Isn't the whole point of the guy that he grew up around these kinds of white guys and he is a similar guy with similar interests?

a white guy rushing the Divine Nine would be pilloried as a racist for showing up looking white

Not a perfect comparison, but some HBCUs have been quite successful at recruiting non-Black students, even though they've suffered the same sort of "taking of the talented tenth" that the Divine Nine have mentioned in OP. Not saying that I can't see it going this way, but I don't think it's strictly inevitable.

a white guy rushing the Divine Nine would be pilloried as a racist for showing up looking white

Would he? This actually doesn’t seem plausible to me at all. I think he would just be seen as either A) a troll, and criticized as such, or B) an eccentric and/or naïf, and treated with amused curiosity by the members of the fraternities. They would just quickly dismiss him, and nobody would even pretend he has any power to dispute it or claim discrimination or anything like that.