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Is this not just the empirical reality we observe? Black test scores remain low despite decades of effort and millions of dollars thrown at the problem, but the incidence rate of people cutting off their own genitals has skyrocketed in the last 10 years.
Yes, and you can explain that as either a) the government is really bad at getting black kids to study and really good at convincing them to chop off their genitals or b) the state isn't actually very influential over either and culture/genetics is the driving force in both cases.
It feels like we took a wrong turn somewhere.
First I don't see why you introduced a distinction between state and culture. The single flat nature vs nurture distinction you started with is fine.
Second I don't understand why you're discounting the idea that some things are driven primarily by nature, and others are driven primarily by nurture. Different things can be different, it doesn't have to be all one or the other.
When something doesn't change for a long time despite lots of effort to change it, that's evidence that biological factors are at work. When something changes very rapidly, that's evidence that social factors are at work. Seems pretty straightforward to me.
I think in both cases there's a mix of nature and nurture going on, but the scale can lean more heavily towards one side or the other in different cases.
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Or the government isn't magic. They can only perform the possible.
Getting black kids to want to perform better, possible.
Getting kids to want to cut their dicks off, possible.
Getting black kids to actually perform better, not possible.
This is borderline consensus building, and well over the line of needing to bring evidence in proportion to the inflammatoriness of your claim. Don't post like this, please.
It wasn't my intent to suggest that everyone already agrees. I wouldn't have thought this claim was particularly inflamitory. What sort of evidence would you like to see that government is only able to perform the possible?
Primaprimaprima response to Ecgtheow that
Is an accurate description of our concensus reality.
Ecgtheow response (a can be true, I'm not sure I'd call it government but I dont think the semantics are important here. For (b the state's influence, not sure I'd call it the state, is substantial but grounded in the possible. Genetics / heritability rule outcomes, while TPTB can influence / move desirability / attempts.
In the same way I'm confident there are interventions that would increase attempts at the SAT, ACT, ASVAB, etc., but those interventions are unlikely to drive attainment for those attempts.
This allows genetics / HBD to be the driving force for attainment / success, while explaining the outcomes we see in other areas (genital chopping).
You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. With the right marketing and community (intervention) you can induce people to try. With the application of science and technology and a rubric that helps recontextualize what a 'silk purse' is. Perhaps some nuspeak to paper over the obvious defeciencies. Some under this program would produce an ersatz nuspeak 'silk purse'. Chineese silk producers are unmoved.
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I think it's possible. It just requires indoctrinating them into the culture which The Experts (TM) currently consider "white supremacist". And this is not something that will be done, especially as making black kids perform better would mean also making them and their kid middle class, with middle class voting patterns. And who needs that trouble? Certainly not people who are now in power in places where there are a lot of black kids. They already have the votes locked in, thankyouverymuch, and they don't need to mess with a working system.
Wasn't that the plan through the the mid - late 90's? Then it was called academic excellence, or fundamental education something, something.
The cohort of non-responders was too dark and the culture of academic excellence was identified as white supremacist as the performance of the cohort of responders was too light or asian.
That there's a ready made voting block of is a bonus. That TPTB have not been as successful pushing globohomo here is a little interesting. But this is a cohort of non-responders.
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I don't know that the "high-low coalition vs. the middle" concept applies to your assertion, though. Surely the counterargument is that black people and families will be loyal to the party whose policies gave their children better opportunities, i.e. delivering tangible progress?
I don't know. I suppose if I was an East Coast machine politician who was never in any real danger of losing to an R candidate, I like to think I'd have enough electoral free reign to do what I thought would objectively improve things for my constituents.
Delivering an "opportunity" is not the same thing as delivering "tangible progress." An "opportunity" can be failed, and if you actually buy into the fairness of the opportunity, the failing actually is an insult - you weren't good enough to measure up! The person who gave you the opportunity only gave you an insult! Screw opportunity; you have a grievance - you don't deserve an opportunity to be told "haha you suck", you deserve the actual prize!
I submit that this is a far better match for what we're seeing with regard to, e.g. increasingly-explicit hiring quotas, racially-based benefits and payments programs, medical preferences, and the corresponding attacks on and decline in color-blind casting, merit-based examinations, grading, honors programs, etc.
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It's hard to reason about current parties while assuming they would behave in a way that current parties would never do. If Democrats would implement "western culture" values, they wouldn't be Democrats anymore - at least not the Democrats we have known for 2 or 3 generations. Would prospective black middle class stay with them then? Who knows, that's a huge unknown. But it is known that black permanent welfare class reliably votes for current Democrats, so why risk it? It's not like they'd get tired of being permanent welfare class and revolt - if they were capable of figuring this out, that'd happen decades ago. Right now they are all in on state-sanctioned racism as a way out of the hole. Which would work about as great as projects worked as a solution for housing problem.
You could. Or you could do things that ensure your party is in power for another generation and you personally and everybody you choose to become multimillionaires and generally get near-royalty status, including being virtually untouchable to law enforcement (if you keep within certain - very wide - bounds and do not get into a fight with a more powerful royalty). Sure, there might be saints among them, but even if those pop out, people surrounding them would explain to them quickly what are the costs of rocking the boat.
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