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.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I don't think Kanye is talking about just black people, although I think it's truer of them than most. He's saying the same thing black conservatives have been saying for decades, that blame whitey, blame slavery, blame whatever you like, the real thing holding down black people today is a culture of apathy which tells them living on the edge of poverty is as good as they can get. That it doesn't matter that you live in the ghetto if you have a gaudy platinum chain on your neck. That sure, your daughter is going to end up raising the baby she just learned about alone, because her boyfriend is going to get himself arrested or shot, but you made do in that situation and so will she.
To whom? Do you think it's unimportant to a guy whose ancestors experienced it? Do you think he said it flippantly? I think if he said it the same way black conservatives usually say it it would have been ignored like it usually is.
It is a response to force, but it is also a jedi mind trick. Black people on some plantations outnumbered whites. But they were kept in line anyway. Not with brutality, with the white man's greatest tool - decorum. As I said, slaves who believed that was where they belonged. That is mental slavery. Slave morality if you like.
And I don't have any problem with that? The point is that what he actually, explicitly said is banal at best or stupid.
Kaepernick was also trying to make a similar sort of point. What a shame that he felt the need to use slavery eh?
You run into this with Kaepernick too where people defend him because he's attacking a group they like or they like what they believe is under his figurative speech I feel that the people defending both Kaepernick and Kanye are defending what they see as a nugget of a point in their ramblings and absurd comparisons.
I don't even disagree with many of those potential nuggets (empires do have systems to assimilate people and make them accept it, apathy is a thing, we today have been sapped of a certain amount of...I dunno, feeling of control over the destiny of our civilizations?). But that's not what Kanye said.
At the time of Spartacus there was a huge glut of slaves. They rebelled. How did that go? Nat Turner rebelled. How did that go? Plenty of peasants around, yet often peasant revolts ended horribly.
The fact that any order comes up with social systems to take up some of the work of force doesn't mean that force isn't lurking, isn't a dominant consideration in people's minds or that force isn't actually effective.
This is giving me "why didn't they just pull themselves up by their bootstraps?"
I think it is.
Perhaps this is necessary context. This is from New Slaves, on the album Yeezus -
He's not saying "they only like us when we are rich", he's saying they distract us from the pursuit of freedom with material possessions and with racial prejudice, pitting us against each other so we don't notice them pulling our strings.
He's said similar things in interviews with people like Joe Rogan (and I thought Candace Owens too, but I can't find any interviews between them, google just shows me a billion opinion pieces bitching about the both of them.)
Exactly. You don't need to whip them every day because they have been mentally enslaved, the fear of the whip, of lynching and brutality keeps them in line. Even after slavery was abolished. The first step in freeing yourself from mental slavery is to say "I would rather die free than live as a slave" and to mean it.
You keep calling it banal, but you aren't explaining why. If it's so obvious and unoriginal, why is everyone flipping out? Why are you explaining exactly what he means as if it is somehow a rebuttal of what he said?
It is a God damned fucking atrocity that black people were so terrorised and brutalised by slavers that it has instilled such a horrible and depressive mindset into them, but agency is agency - you can only be given so much freedom, primarily you have to take it for yourself. And when someone is beaten down so much that they accept living in poverty, they need to be shocked into action, because gentle sympathy just excuses them from trying.
Like Bill Cosby said, it is the soft bigotry of lowered expectations. And we do it to everybody living around the poverty line these days. I don't know if you are dismissing it as "stupid" and "bootstraps" because you are enslaved or because living in poverty is too alien for you to understand and you think middle class sensibilities should be respected at all times, but I strongly disagree.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link