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PaperclipPerfector  10d ago (text post)   35715 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 20, 2025

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How are you not even responding to the point I am making you have directly quoted? You can say you don't know what a Black is for the purpose of advocacy, or an Asian is, or what a Jew is. But literally nobody asks that in the face of somebody advocating for those groups. Racial identity is ultimately a political tool, and as such it is functional even with a relatively small portion of ambiguous cases. The ambiguous cases do not stop the ethnic advocacy of any other group of people.

Half-Asians feeling alienated is not a good reason for not having White Advocacy.

Yeah, there's a sort of isolated demand for rigor when it comes to defining "white" in online discussions about hypothetical white advocacy, or just advocacy for less anti-white rhetoric and policies.

In contrast, in real world or hypothetical discourse about giving more racial preferences to blacks and latinos, there's substantially more of a "I know it when I see it" and "let's not let the perfect be the enemy of the good" vibe (to the extent such considerations come up at all), an all-gas-no-brakes attitude as to not slow things down by getting bogged down by corner cases and implementation details.

Some of it may be due to constituency, that the type of people willing to discuss—much less advocate for—the interests of white people are cognitively different on average than those who advocate for the interests of blacks and latinos, at least descriptively in the current cultural milieu.

The entire idea of White Advocacy doesn't sit well with people because of the propaganda they've been exposed to their entire lives. So the smarter among them try to dress up that feeling with arguments deconstructing what it means to be White. So they believe their opposition to White Advocacy lies in ambiguity of the concept or rational argument, rather than acknowledging it actually is something they were taught to believe their entire lives- that advocating for White people is a moral wrong and advocating for Jews and non-White people is a moral good.

It doesn't sit well with people not because of "the propaganda" but because identity politics of all stripes is deeply unpopular outside the professional managerial class and (in the US at least) remains closely associated with Marxism and Europe. Two things that are also less than popular.

Identity politics in the popular zietgiest is seen as an ideology for losers who wouldn't make the cut in a honest meritocracy, hence the popular epithet of "Didn't Earn It" applied to all DEI hires.

The way the identitarian right presents itself does them no favors either. What incentive would a sincere American white supremacist straight out of the movies have to associate with low testosterone edgelords chanting "your body my choice" and non-binary cat-girls from Ontario writing Hitler apologia. How does aligning with such losers and degenerates do more to secure a future for his children than aligning with MAGA?

The example I provided addresses at least part of it directly - I don't know what an Asian is for the purpose of advocacy and I think this has been an obstacle for Asian-Americans that would prefer less discrimination against them.

I don't know what an Asian is for the purpose of advocacy and I think this has been an obstacle for Asian-Americans that would prefer less discrimination against them.

And yet we have a Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus. And a Congressional Black Caucus. And a Congressional Hispanic Caucus. And a Congressional Native American Caucus. And of course innumerable Jewish advocacy groups. And while all of those are expressions of racial identity formulating political power, you stand on the sidelines pretending to not know what an Asian is. That's your right, but you are wrong to imply that these challenges to are unique to White identity.

And if you admit they are not unique to it, then you've failed to demonstrate why it's politically not possible if it's so politically effective in these other cases.

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