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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 19, 2024

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The argument in a nutshell is: HBD -- they are poor because they are stupid; whereas the mainstream position is that they are stupid because they are poor and discriminated against both presently and historically.

I don't think that's the mainstream position. I think the mainstream position is a series of concentric lines of defense.

The first line of defense is "how dare you!?". The point and sputter, as Sailer calls it. An attempt to dissuade the opponent from even breaching the subject of whether different people have different aptitude, without addressing it. Might involve siccing the mods on the opponent, or arguing that Something Must Be Done abut the fact that such a discussion can even take place, on sites where mods aren't available or sympathetic (i.e. twitter).

The second line is to deny that measurement is possible, i.e. IQ denial. Expect deflections about multiple intelligences or street smarts here. Doesn't withstand much scrutiny but is still more a more poplar stance than you'd expect.

The two-and-a-half is to acknowledge that individual differences exist, but group differences don't or are irrelevant. Lewontin may be invoked.

Only after those we're approaching what you postulated as the mainstream position. Even then, the primary focus will be on present oppression, i.e. it will be argued that the result in education continue to diverge because the black students are underfunded or otherwise discriminated against. Only then, after it's shown that funding is often negatively correlated with test scores, it may be admitted that inherent group differences exist. Very cautiously and tacitly, as it may get the admitting party into hot water from the people who stopped at layer one.

I wish my comment on this topic hadn't been nixed by the reset, but anyhow in brief:

expect deflections about multiple intelligences or street smarts here. Doesn't withstand much scrutiny but is still more a more poplar stance than you'd expect.

Well, it does apply; however, the coalition on the left are heavily into a one size fits all approach -- higher education -- due to their own deep investment within the educational establishment or having been a product of it. The professional management class (PMC) simply does not respect anyone without a higher education, nor do they respect blue collar vocations or vocational education. Immigration isn't a big deal for people who have jobs with high cultural context (much of the PMC/white collar workforce) and they have significant barriers to entry to their professions. On the other hand, unrestricted migration and the closing of many blue-collar workplaces along with the heavy restrictions on development in heavy blue coded states means that there are narrow windows in both aptitude and time for a young 'disadvantaged' person to potentially rise up and get away from grinding poverty should they have been unfortunate enough to be born into it. All that extra money being poured into education (administration bloat) is essentially a blue coded jobs program with exceedingly little to show for it in terms of ameliorating poverty and hardship.