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 think there may be some conflation of foreign born / immigrant status and ethnicity in that argument.

I suspect many of the native born women bearing babies in France are not ethnically French. I'm not sure there are good statistics on this in France.

The nearest thing to a statistic like that is share of sickle cell anemia screening. It wasn't looking good for the ethnically French more than a decade ago.

Why does that matter when native born women are french by nationality and birth? Wouldn't that result in their children being fully assimilated into french culture as they are 3rd generation french citizens by this point and generally 3rd to 4th gen is when the complete cultural assimilation period is complete?

The assimilation hasn't worked much better in France than Sweden or Belgium, the Netherlands, etc.

If assimilation was working I'd expect Mohammed to be a much less popular baby name.

Eh. If all the Mohammed's behave culturally french and are 3rd generation french citizens then they are french. Naming conventions live on far longer than all other cultural habits. Just look at the surname Smith for example.

Immigrants that are keen to integrate will change their names to take common names in their new countries, this is not a new phenomenon. Many European immigrants to the US changed the names to sound more American.

Nisei had predominantly western names. Living in Germany I met several Korean Karl-Heinz, choosing names native to their new country was a way to integrate and embrace the culture.

Saïd Kouachi and Chérif Kou were both born in France, their assimilation seems to have been incomplete. The same can be said for Mohammad Sidique Khan, Shehzad Tanweer, Hasib Mir Hussain in England.

Integration and assimilation is no longer the stated goal, that was modern. Post-modern is decidedly more multicultural.

Agreed with your last sentence. Idk, names change over centuries. Pretty sure most South Koreans in US would still be having Korean names but be American in every other way.

It's less a I am identifying with my cultural group thing and more a fuck it, I was born in America, whatever name I got is an American name now as well.

Again, not saying you are wrong, just saying you could probably find better metrics for level of assimilation than first name preference.

Better metrics likely do exist, would you expect Mohamed to be #19 for French boys in 2019?

Koreans I'd expect to integrate and assimilate better regardless of name, than the ancestral groups currently causing problems in Europe. I'd attribute this to Koreans experience with civilization, while many recent immigrants to Europe do not originate from groups with similar experience.

The popularity of "Mohammed" is not really a particularly good metric at all, since it's far and away more popular a name in Muslim communities than any single given name is in non-Muslim communities. Also, I've occasionally seen statistics like this treat all variations of "Mohammed" (Mohamed, Mahmud etc) as the same name but not do the same for, for instance, John, Jon, Ian, Johann, Jan, Jean, Sean, Ivan and Juan.

would you expect Mohamed to be #19 for French boys in 2019?

I mean by 19th ranked name for all you know you are on the name used by 1% or 0.1%. That honestly doesn't sound so bad.

Assuming the most extreme case of all names being equally popular, Mohammad would be the name of 5.2% of men. Still a vast minority.

Also all the refugees Europe took.

The upper classes irrespective of cultural background tend to integrate better. Maybe just stop taking in poor people.