site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 11, 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.

5
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Interesting, I think this is an Anglo thing? In the US Asian Indians are the top earning ethnicity, even wealthier than jewish ethnicity, and many tech CEO/managers are Indian. And in the UK the Tories get the Hindu vote, because they are richer than Muslim Pakistanis, and Rishi Sunak (who is upper class himself) was Prime Minister. Doesn’t this give social status? In Central Europe I think the stereotype is mildly positive/exotic, but there are not many Indians around.

Indian Americans have a higher median income because of being exclusively urban people in mega towns, their median incomes compared to other ethnicities in the same environments is the same.

Yeah, Pakistanis align with other Muslims and British Indians are people who I suspect are far more cautious than American ones due to smaller population sizes.

I don't think so, Indian guys have a terrible image unfortunately due to various reasons, at least around girls. You also have a decent amount of variation, so you can have people who can be fairly dark with very southern features (look up rajendran) to someone slightly paler (Shiney Ahuja). Most people are on the left hand side.

India came about due to aryans and dravidians, so lighter skin, hair, height, not very southern features are quite prized here, people blame the brits for this but that's just false. In south Indian movies, the actresses are mostly girls who are from the north and don't look like the locals at all, in the north, the actresses are still from the north but still don't look like the locals at all.