site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 20, 2023

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.

15
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Isn't this without the slant, the relationship between a walmart greeter / janitor and a well paid lawyer or software dev? The former are much poorer and less-well-regarded than the latter - much moreso than the difference between a 'median black' and 'median white' - but they 'accept' that, whether by skill or maybe social class, their place is lower. At least in the same sense a black student's is."

Black children in families making 200K have the same SAT scores as those born in families making 20K. A child born in the top 1% who is Black (a very rare thing), has the same criminality rate as a 40 percentile who is white. The bottom 50% of Blacks have the same criminality rate as the bottom 1% of Whites by income (again using global not intra-race percentiles). With this in mind let's address your following question.

How does it (accepting the existence of inequality) harm a poor black person much moreso than it does a poor white person?

In an entirely fair society, it is concievable that a poor white janitor or his children might one day have the potential to become something more. The same cannot be said for a black Janitor, and in fact his job might actually merit taking by a black secretary or nurse.

Even unsourced graphs from racist blogs show that, at any IQ level, the number of blacks at it is either less than or decently close to the number of whites. This doesn't demonstrate 'categorical' differences. Sure, regression to the mean means a 90IQ black's probably a bit 'genetically' worse than a 90IQ white, but not that much. A white and black that've sorted into similar skill brackets don't have that much difference in potential. And compared to someone who makes 300k/year, the difference is difficult to notice. I don't see what your stats add to that picture.

To the original points, being a 'low-IQ black' isn't worse than being a low-IQ white, of which there are many.

And, if you (speaking generally) are a 130IQ white talking to a bunch of 125IQ whites, isn't there something odd about drawing a line between a 90IQ black and a 100IQ white?