site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 1, 2024

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.

6
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Right, but the point is that anyone at the time who made an HBD argument using that as evidence was laughably wrong.

Strong disagree. What happened here, I think, is that there were several decades of brutal selection in an environment with a much weaker social safety net. Some substantial portion of the 'worst' Irish (etc.) simply failed to reproduce, and the ones left over are, naturally, closer to the Hajnali average. Plus intermarriage.

As for Italians, 'Italian' is not a race and Italy as a nation is a pretty new idea. Northern Italians are white. Southern Italians are something else. And to this day you'll see huge disparities between the two, modulo the same process as befell the Irish above. C.f. the Hajnal Line.

See also, http://www.anechoicmedia.org/blog/european_politics/

In short, it's a good takedown of the default, overconfident narrative of American migrant assimilation. If your idea of 20th century immigration is wretched refuse coming ashore, moving their way up, and merging economically and politically into the uniform White America we know today, that pretty much didn't happen. By most measures, identifiable European ancestries are still differentiated within America, and in ways that parallel their differences in Europe. The story of white America, then, is less one of assimilation, and more of selection bias and attrition.

European races were and are different from each other in important ways, as breeds of dog or any other animal subspecies differ. This extends to all areas of life.

And yes, we can bring in large numbers of high-IQ non-Hajnalis and they will be perfectly capable of keeping their noses clean and contributing productively to society. But do they want to live in the same sort of society we do?