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 -
A black/white ethnic split is on the same level of plausibility as a red/blue national divorce (which gets a lot of play in centrish-right circles, e.g. michael anton* wrote an awful 50 pages on in an explicitly dissident right magazine). It's at least a little more plausible, in that kicking out the blacks wouldn't shear every institution, business, or organization in half - but that's pretty faint praise.
Most black people have white friends, and hold no strong animosity against white people. They work at their jobs with white colleagues, have white friends, use products produced by whites, watch TV shows written by whites with white stars, hire white plumbers when their pipes leak, etc. They're also attached to their cities, communities, their physical homes ... all of which physical relocation would tear up. What could possibly interest them in blexit?
And 'racism' continues to decline. Even in 1990, interracial marriage still polled at <50%. Now it's 95%. A "black national anthem", played for the sole purpose of whites accepting blacks more, isn't a portent of anything. Black separation didn't happen after slavery, it didn't happen during segregation, though there were attempts - and racial tensions are now .5% of that. It's not happening.
You can find a few things that, if you squint at the words, support any trend. But for every indicator trending towards black/white separation, a hundred things point the other way. Even (although, realistically, this data is meaningless) measures of geographical racial segregation find integration has increased recently.
* I mean, probably michael anton? Maybe it's a joke I'm not in on? It's really bad. It's just Tom (the republican)'s paragraphs upon paragraphs rebutting Malcolm (the democrat)'s individual sentences of imagined 'libtard whining'.
More options
Context Copy link