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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 9, 2024

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It's not like norm violations can only be answered by either mirroring the norm violation or by doing nothing at all. To have any chance of maintaining norms of mutual disarmament, such as the former uneasy liberal "colour-blindness" consensus, one needs to find a way to punish norm violators in a way that signals that one is still interested in maintaining the norm, and that the punishment can be withdrawn if the norm violation stops. In this concrete case, this would amount to punishing left-wing racial interest groups while taking care to not be directly seen as benefitting right-wing ones.

For example, I don't know, commit to always refuse to hire/admit enthusiastic racial spoils beneficiaries (DEI committee members, people who lived in racial program houses in college, ...) if alternative candidates of the same race who refuse/renounce them are available? (Keep the actual underlying quota to be legally safe or at least force courts to opine on whether you are allowed to specifically discriminate against the incumbent political group.)

It's not like norm violations can only be answered by either mirroring the norm violation or by doing nothing at all.

In the absence of an enforcing authority, there often aren't better choices. If you want to bring the other side to the table, you can't let them have the benefits of you following the norm without the cost of them following it.

For example, I don't know, commit to always refuse to hire/admit enthusiastic racial spoils beneficiaries (DEI committee m embers, people who lived in racial program houses in college, ...) if alternative candidates of the same race who refuse/renounce them are available?

This is an obviously impractical suggestion; you'll just get punished for racism if you do it, and even if that weren't true, to be effective you'd already have to have coordinated with others of the same interest.