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 -
As another user alluded to, and as Steve Sailer has written about, part of what appears to be holding back American white kids from excelling at basketball is that they are attending school alongside blacks, who mature more quickly. A white kid trying to get into basketball in middle or high school is likely to be substantially less physically developed than his black peers of the same age - shorter, less muscular, less physically confident - and this is likely to be highly discouraging and could lead to bullying. Whereas if the same kid had been surrounded by whites who were at the same stage of physical development, he would have stuck with the game long enough to develop fundamental skills and confidence while waiting for his body to catch up developmentally.
Cooper Flagg, currently the top high-school basketball recruit in the country, grew up in rural Maine, far from black kids, which very likely helped him to develop his talents without being put in a disadvantageous position during his formative athletic years. Had he grown up in Atlanta instead, he’d probably have switched sports at an early age, or abandoned athletics entirely.
South Slavs (and Balts), besides being on average quite tall and strong, similarly spend their formative athletic years surrounded by peers who can be expected to develop physically at basically the same rates, creating far less stratified talent/athletic distributions and encouraging them to stick with the sport longer, especially since there are few if any other major sports competing for the same pool of athletes. None of them is going to switch to gridiron football or baseball.
Regarding racial distributions in the NFL, I would dispute your claim that the skillsets of WRs and TEs are virtually identical. TEs are, as a rule, nearly always significantly slower than WRs, especially when it comes to short-burst speed. Genetic differences in the density of fast-twitch muscle would be sufficient to explain most of the racial differences between the positions. Combine that with whatever factors causing the significant overrepresentation of white players at the offensive line positions potentially also spilling over into affecting racial differences in the blocking part of the TE position, and I think you can justify pretty much the entirety of the racial differences without appealing to racism on the part of coaches/recruiters.
This seems unlikely given the rate at which white kids make it to NCAA teams. 70% of NBA players are African American (10% land in "other" which I suspect may include a lot of biracial American kids and Black Africans), while only 53% of NCAA players are African American. It's unlikely that white kids who just needed a little boost to make it to the NBA couldn't make it to some college team, and it is unlikely that they're still "maturing" in college. I guess there theoretically could be a bunch of white kids who just never pursued the sport at all, but that seems unlikely.
RE: TEs
Two thoughts about Travis Kelce
A) Travis is basically a wide receiver at this point. He blocks marginally more than your average wide receiver, but he's not in there to block Micah Parsons he's in there as a pass catcher. He's the number one pass catching option on a division champion team, and if theoretically he was only allowed to line up outside no one can doubt that he would be a better pass catching option that at least half the wide receivers in the league. What's notable about this is that it is common with really great Tight Ends to end up like that near the end of their career, but first they have to spend two to four years playing as primarily or 50/50 blocking. There is no reason to think that he gained speed or agility in that time. Effectively, Kelce (and Gronkowski and Ertz and Goedert) had to earn the right to catch the football by blocking defensive ends and linebackers for years.
B) Travis Kelce has a brother, Jason. In high school, Jason played running back, and Travis played quarterback. Scroll midway through this article for high school yearbook photos. They look similar in build. Once they reached college, their bodies diverged. Jason moved to the offensive line while Travis moved to tight end. The changes in their bodies were not genetic, they were the result of intentional decisions made by each brother to change their body to meet the needs of their assigned position. Jason Kelce decided he didn't need to be as fast, he needed to be bigger and stronger. If Travis Kelce had been assigned to play wide receiver, he would be building his body to be faster. Now presumably they were assigned different positions because of some slight inherent differences in their bodies, but the differences would be much smaller if they didn't train for different positions. This applies to all positions: Travis Kelce might never be as fast as AJ Brown and AJ Brown might never be as good a blocker, but if Kelce trained for speed and Brown trained to block they'd be closer.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link