site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 16, 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.

10
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I also did a double take. California is the land of the great white hope, which makes the browning of the imminent horde that much worse.

It was 90+% white as late as the 70s.

This says that California was only 76% non-Hispanic white in 1970. It is wrong?

Duplicating a comment (how do you tag users?):

In the US "White" includes most Hispanics (besides Arabs). Every branch of my family's been in California since the 1920s, when they came from New Mexico. They spoke English and Spanish for 4 generations before the move, and more since. If you look at the employee roaster for Hughes Aircraft Company's engineers in 1959, half the names are Alvarez, Vasquez etc. The same for a high school marching band in 1942...

While the 80s and 90s saw a massive influx of Mexicans, the "Whites" in the bullet belt aren't who you're thinking of. I have a few generations of family in aerospace and their work photos aren't super white. By the late 70s, you get the children and wives of executed Vietnamese judges, many doctors, electrical engineers etc. coming. Within a few years, they appear on department pictures and cards.

how do you tag users?

@veqq (u/veqq points at Reddit)

It is a question for open border advocates. One argument against immigration is that it imports voters who will vote in a way that leads to bad government.

Isn’t California a real world example of that change?

I used the website below, which gets data from the census bureau, to see how much of California was white in 1975. 87.6%--because the 1975 data does not include Hispanic as a category.

https://usafacts.org/data/topics/people-society/population-and-demographics/our-changing-population/state/california/?endDate=2021-01-01&startDate=1975-01-01

One of the major problems of the whole categorization system (as documented by David Bernstein at Volokh Conspiracy) is that Hispanic is basically a non-category. Hispanic just means, "sort of associated with Spanish" in practice, and most "Hispanic" Californians and Texans were European genetically for the vast majority of US history.

Am I going mad? Because it looks like the 2021 data doesn't distinguish hispanic from white either, so in 2021 the state was 71.1% white.

That seems strange, I'd expect the census bureau to want more information than "black, white or other?" But on the other hand, if hispanics are white enough for the census bureau, why do they need to be distinguished?

Try narrowing the years to something like 2010—2023 and Hispanic will populate. I don't know what year the census bureau started asking people if they were Hispanic (I'm pretty sure the US Census is actually where the word "Hispanic" was invented) but the charts on that website will stop showing that data as soon as you include any years where the question wasn't asked.

I hope that makes you feel less crazy—although many people go mad for reasons that have nothing to do with the Census Bureau. I'm not qualified to rule those out for you.

The Census Bureau considered Hispanic to be an ethnicity, not a race. Hence, one can be white and Hispanic (Ted Cruz) as well as black and Hispanic (eg many Cuban-American baseball players).

Hence, the Census Bureau reports that California is currently almost 71% "white alone" but only 34% "white alone, not Hispanic or Latino."