site banner
PaperclipPerfector  10d ago (text post)   29583 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 21, 2024

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

8
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Thanks for the citation. It's a bit of a rough read, being a working paper (which also means it has not fully gone through peer review), but if I read it correctly, Table 5 suggests that with sufficient controls, diversity drives down other races' birth rates by at least about as much and in many cases more (Blacks, East Asians) than those of Whites. This makes your gloss of it rather tendentious. Who is being genocided here again?

(Assuming the rest of the paper is sound, I would take it as evidence for a more general point along the lines of "diversity drives down birthrates".)

diversity drives down other races' birth rates by at least about as much and in many cases more (Blacks, East Asians) than those of Whites.

Who is being genocided here again?

The ones who are being subjected to migration in their homelands. Niger isn't getting diverse, and neither are India or China even if Nigerians or Indians or Chinese are also negatively affected by diversity.

The ones who are being subjected to migration in their homelands.

But White people's homeland is not America. The Native Americans then would have been ethnically cleansed by us. But if it has to be our homeland to count then we have no claim to be upset about people moving to the US. Leave that to the natives.

I am a Native American.

If you want to weep tears for the Sioux, or the Blackfoot, or some other tribe, then go ahead and name them, but they are not, and have never been, American.

Ok, but what that means is that homeland is mutable. If America is your homeland it is also the homeland of African-Americans, and Jewish-Americans and so on and so forth. Haitians can become Americans just as your ancestors did. That's the logical problem here. Either homeland is immutable which is consistent but means America is not your homeland, or it is mutable and all homeland means is who has the power to move there and live there.

There's nothing inconsistent. My ancestors conquered this continent, and won it through blood and sweat, and bequeathed it to their progeny. Not Haitians. Not Jews. The American people experienced an ethnogenesis on this continent, and it is our homeland. Not the African-Americans, or Jewish-Americans, or any other kind of hyphenated American, either, for anyone who says he is an American but also something else is no American at all.

But some of those who conquered the continent were Jews however, and there were Jews in America before it was America, so why don't they count? They were there before the nation was born, and bequeathed their part to their progeny, just as your ancestors did. What logic lets in your ancestors and not yours? Sure, white Europeans made up the bulk of settlers, but their were others. There were free Africans in the colonies as early as 1625, would their descendants not be just as American as you? And certainly African slaves were putting their blood and sweat into the continent before it was a nation.

What rule excludes descendants of Jews and Africans who worked to tame the continent prior to the nation being formed but includes only Europeans? Even if there are fewer of them, don't they have an equal claim?

Any man who says he is American and something else is no American at all. Jews have, for thousands of years, maintained themselves within but separate from the nations in which they live and people therein. It is not I asserting they are not American, it is they, I am simply noticing it and agreeing.

I didn't always think this way about blacks, but then they emphatically told me otherwise, and so I take them at their word.

But that's kind of the point isn't it? Not all Jews or all black people agree they aren't American, certainly not by your definition. There is no-one who can speak for all black people in America, for you to take their word that they don't see themselves as American. Who is the "they" that told you otherwise? And does that mean that if I as a white person assert we are not Americans but rather Europeans, I should be taken to be speaking for you?

You see how that is a problem?

White people's homeland is not America

For how many years must a people inhabit a location before that location counts as that people's "homeland"? I'm thinking that a timespan of 200 years sounds quite reasonable. Even 100 years or 50 years could be argued for.

Entirely fair. But then America is also the homeland of lots of Asian people and black people and Jewish people and even Haitians and the like. If it is just a matter of time, then everywhere is just a potential homeland for whoever moves there, which I think KMC rejects as he doesn't believe people can really become American. That's the logical hole in his argument I am pointing at.

If he believes America is now the homeland for white Americans, it must also be the homeland for all the other ethnicities, like African-Americans etc. But he explicitly does not think that hyphenated Americans are real Americans.

I do not consider African-Americans to be foreigners, but neither do I consider them American. The only other group I do not consider foreign are the various tribal peoples, but similarly I do not consider them American.

Asians are all foreign, and so are the Castizos. Of course they are neither of them American.

Why does it matter for purposes of determining whether a "genocide" of Indians is going on whether an Indian woman is made to have fewer children in India, or whether she is shipped to the US and then made to have fewer children there? Would you consider it less genocidal of US Whites if the same numbers (so something like 100 million?) that is currently enticed to move into diverse US cities and goes on to have lower TFR there instead were enticed to move to India and died childless over there?

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats