site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022

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.

106
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I'm really skeptical that your comminity is 98% white.

Without doxxing myself, the latest census I saw for my town -- in 2019, as I recall -- has us at 96.something% White.

OP probably does not live anywhere near me, but outside of major cities and border territories, there remain a lot of very White communities. It's not terribly hard to believe he might live in one.

If you live in a community that is 95%+ white, there are probably some deeper structural forces at play here. After all America is only 60% white. I don't think OP has a responsibility to just recruit more members of color, but there's might be some other reason why his community doesn't have very many minorities.

Don't be shy, what are the structural forces? Don't mind the downvotes.

I had 0-1 black kid in my elementary school classes. Due to history, I saw more Natives. As I grew up, I saw more people of different races. Today, my city is more diverse than ever. I don't think we got less racist. I think that it's as simple as this: historically the place was settled by whites, and eventually the town became economically attractive to outsiders of any race.

I agree with you in a literal sense but I'm not sure I agree with the connotations of your comment. In particular, I think discrimination plays a relatively small role in explaining the variation in racial diversity in the US. And in the cases where discrimination does matter it is often the case that areas with more historical discrimination have more racial diversity (e.g. areas with a history of slavery tend to have more Black people today).

I think that latitude explains a fairly large portion of the variation in racial diversity in America and degree of urbanization accounts for much of the rest. First, latitude: slaves were originally highly concentrated in the south and so Black people today are still concentrated there. Also Latino immigrants are naturally concentrated in the South. Second, degree of urbanization: it is much easier for immigrants to find jobs in big urban centers rather than rural areas, both because there are more types of jobs and higher turnover. Also jobs in rural areas are more likely to be seasonal and thus less likely to lead to permanent residence. Also it is easier for immigrant communities to form in urban areas due to higher population density and this has a snowball effect.

There is at least one way in which historical discrimination played a big role in the low levels of racial diversity in some parts of the US: the collapse of Native American populations caused by war, disease, etc. But given that no state has a very large population of Native Americans today, I don't think this explains much of the variation in racial diversity.