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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 11, 2024

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Race: The stereotype that African Americans are less educated is not true.

It bothers me that I have no problem imagining a woke asserting that this stereotype is false, and then in the next breath asserting that lower rates of educational attainment among African-Americans is one of many metrics demonstrating the extent to which the US is still a systemically racist country. It should not be possible for a mentally sane person to simultaneously believe "owing to systemic racism, African-Americans have lower rates of educational attainment than white Americans" and "the notion that African-Americans are less educated than white Americans is a false and harmful stereotype".

Like, if you believe that African-Americans are less likely to get an education because of racist policies or teachers or how assessment procedures, that directly implies that African-Americans are less educated than white Americans! The latter "stereotype" cannot be false without completely invalidating the former assertion.

Related: https://jessesingal.substack.com/p/if-you-believe-in-structural-racism-16c

Psychiatry is all about normalcy. If the people saying that have power over you, it's an evidence that you are less sane than them.