3 ms·

> You can’t be “racist” against a culture. Counterpoint: yes you can[1] and it's basically what you're advocating. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_

> You can’t be “racist” against a culture. Counterpoint: yes you can[1] and it's basically what you're advocating. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_racism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_racism

crises-luff-6b 1mo ago
[dead]
rayiner 1mo ago
Your article clearly describes that as a concept that as been put forward for debate but hasn’t been generally accepted. And it shouldn’t be accepted. It’s just an attempt to use people’s rightful aversion to prejudice based on skin color to Trojan Horse cultural relativism through the gate. Cultural relativism is not morally required. People’s attitudes, beliefs, customs, habits, and ways of looking at the world substantively impact the societies people create. And we can judge cultures on that basis. In the Star Trek future, people of all ethnicities think and act like Anglo-Americans, not like Bangladeshis.
- mullingitover 1mo ago
  > In the Star Trek future, people of all ethnicities think and act like Anglo-Americans, not like Bangladeshis. That's a weird way to cap off an endorsement of cultural racism? A series of fictional stories about the future, by and for Americans, tells a story that Americans would want to hear: QED, monolithic American culture is obviously the future. Let's get this paper submitted for peer review.
  - rayiner 1mo ago
    That term isn’t an accepted thing, as your own article points out. Your idea is also itself racist by treating race and culture as linked. I guess that in your version of Star Trek the Desi characters would be showing up hours late to dinner. You’d have bridge scenes where face saving communications and excessive deference to seniority impedes information flow and gets everyone killed. I think the actual Star Trek paints a much more optimistic and hopeful vision of a post-racial society where everyone in the Federation adopts Anglo-American culture and values.
    - mullingitover 1mo ago
      > That term isn’t an accepted thing, as your own article points out. Gravity and the spherical shape of the earth also aren't 'accepted things,' this 'I don't like it so it's not real' argument isn't really a coherent counterpoint.
      - rayiner 1mo ago
        Articles about gravity don’t say “gravity should be considered a fundamental force,” as in the article you pointed to above. “Racism” as the word is generally accepted refers to skin color. It has nothing to do with culture. You’re playing word games to advance the position that culture should be treated the way society treats immutable characteristics, when those two things are completely different.
        mullingitover 1mo ago
        Your stance is that cultures are cardinally sortable things, with specific ones being more 'valuable' or 'better,' that you are allowed to be bigoted toward 'degenerate' ones, and imo you're taking it as a sort of consolation prize since you're not allowed to discriminate based on race. Just be bigoted on race, man. The richest man in the world does it, nothing stopping you from doing it too. You don't have to hide it in this era. Alternatively you can think harder and understand that the world is a complicated place, cultures can't be assigned numerical values and sorted, there's more variety within cultures than between them and have all sorts of circumstances and history that explain their situations that go beyond 'this culture is 3.75 eugenic units better than that one.'
        rayiner 1mo ago
        Again, culture isn’t an immutable characteristic, so the moral framework you’re using doesn’t apply. You should treat culture the same way Silicon Valley startups do. You emulate the successful ones and learn lessons from the unsuccessful ones. European culture is itself a product of that process. When the Germanic tribes conquered Rome, they didn’t impose their own culture on the Romans. Instead they adopted Romans’ self-evidently more successful culture, law, and institutions.

crises-luff-6b 1mo ago

[dead]

rayiner 1mo ago

Your article clearly describes that as a concept that as been put forward for debate but hasn’t been generally accepted. And it shouldn’t be accepted. It’s just an attempt to use people’s rightful aversion to prejudice based on skin color to Trojan Horse cultural relativism through the gate. Cultural relativism is not morally required. People’s attitudes, beliefs, customs, habits, and ways of looking at the world substantively impact the societies people create. And we can judge cultures on that basis. In the Star Trek future, people of all ethnicities think and act like Anglo-Americans, not like Bangladeshis.

mullingitover 1mo ago
> In the Star Trek future, people of all ethnicities think and act like Anglo-Americans, not like Bangladeshis. That's a weird way to cap off an endorsement of cultural racism? A series of fictional stories about the future, by and for Americans, tells a story that Americans would want to hear: QED, monolithic American culture is obviously the future. Let's get this paper submitted for peer review.
- rayiner 1mo ago
  That term isn’t an accepted thing, as your own article points out. Your idea is also itself racist by treating race and culture as linked. I guess that in your version of Star Trek the Desi characters would be showing up hours late to dinner. You’d have bridge scenes where face saving communications and excessive deference to seniority impedes information flow and gets everyone killed. I think the actual Star Trek paints a much more optimistic and hopeful vision of a post-racial society where everyone in the Federation adopts Anglo-American culture and values.
  - mullingitover 1mo ago
    > That term isn’t an accepted thing, as your own article points out. Gravity and the spherical shape of the earth also aren't 'accepted things,' this 'I don't like it so it's not real' argument isn't really a coherent counterpoint.
    - rayiner 1mo ago
      Articles about gravity don’t say “gravity should be considered a fundamental force,” as in the article you pointed to above. “Racism” as the word is generally accepted refers to skin color. It has nothing to do with culture. You’re playing word games to advance the position that culture should be treated the way society treats immutable characteristics, when those two things are completely different.
      - mullingitover 1mo ago
        Your stance is that cultures are cardinally sortable things, with specific ones being more 'valuable' or 'better,' that you are allowed to be bigoted toward 'degenerate' ones, and imo you're taking it as a sort of consolation prize since you're not allowed to discriminate based on race. Just be bigoted on race, man. The richest man in the world does it, nothing stopping you from doing it too. You don't have to hide it in this era. Alternatively you can think harder and understand that the world is a complicated place, cultures can't be assigned numerical values and sorted, there's more variety within cultures than between them and have all sorts of circumstances and history that explain their situations that go beyond 'this culture is 3.75 eugenic units better than that one.'
        rayiner 1mo ago
        Again, culture isn’t an immutable characteristic, so the moral framework you’re using doesn’t apply. You should treat culture the same way Silicon Valley startups do. You emulate the successful ones and learn lessons from the unsuccessful ones. European culture is itself a product of that process. When the Germanic tribes conquered Rome, they didn’t impose their own culture on the Romans. Instead they adopted Romans’ self-evidently more successful culture, law, and institutions.