Comment by foofoo4u | Hacker News Reader

Comment by foofoo4u | Hacker News Reader

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> What if we didn't encourage a world in which people identified with and advocated for their own race?

It saddens me to see the woke ideology taking hold across the United States. It is indeed fundamentally racist and brings us back to our most tribalistic behaviors. It's the kind of thinking we learned a long time ago to put in the past. But now it's making a resurgence. And it's spreading. But articles like [this](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/09/world/europe/france-threa...) and the most upvoted comments within it give me hope that the west hasn't become entirely mad. It seems the French have observed the discourse of modern American events and see how decisive and destructive the ideology is. I'll quote the top comment within this particular article.

> Yes, importing the American political correctness/woke/cancel culture will destroy France. How do I know this? Because it is already destroying the US. It fuels social division, and it distracts from the real problems, which tend to be economic and environmental. Much of the recent scholarship coming from the US, obsessed about race and gender, is completely useless and extremely ideological. It is no wonder that many of the most important books of global interest from recent years, such as Picketty's Capital in the 21st Century, do not come from the US. US universities are not free environments of vigorous intellectual debate anymore, and the faculty lives under constant fear of uttering the wrong word or phrase, and of being canceled because of their ideas. If a child of mine decided to study social sciences or a humanities field, the US would the last place I would send them to. I'm glad France is standing up against this nonsense. It gives me hope.

> Because it is already destroying the US. It fuels social division, and it distracts from the real problems, which tend to be economic and environmental

I think about this a lot. I don't think it's a coincidence that most of the countries lauded for their economic equity or environmental leadership are also largely homogenous societies.

I don't know what the answer is for a fundamentally multicultural country like the US but obsessing about race and "representation" surely isn't it.

> I don't know what the answer is for a fundamentally multicultural like the US but obsessing about race and "representation" surely isn't it.

I've been thinking about this a bit lately and it reminds me of the "melting pot" metaphors we learned about in middle school. Rather than having a bunch of disparate, competing identities I think America is only going to work well when we form a single united, composite identity. I'm not sure if this is nationalism or not, but if it is, it's an ethnically-inclusive nationalism which seems markedly better than the scary kinds of nationalism from the 20th century and earlier. It probably does imply some assimilation, but it's not necessarily everyone assimilating to some "white identity"; rather, everyone assimilates toward the composite "American" identity (whatever that is). I'm not sure if this is what "multicultural" refers to or if it refers to the more progressive ideal of segregated ethnic lanes competing with one another, but the last 5-10 years makes me feel like the latter is untenable.

Not sure that 'melting pot' is taught anymore. What I've seen over the past couple of decades is 'cultural stew' where the emphasis is on each ingredient keeping most of its integrity with some exchange of attributes (flavors) over time. It's a nice concept but every cook knows while incredible combinations are possible, not every combination of ingredients makes for a good dish.

Yes schools have explicitly rejected "melting pot" for a "tossed salad" metaphor where individual races/cultures remain distinct.

Wait is this really true? Since it’s been a long time since I was in school I wasn’t even aware that this subtle but obviously impactful change had taken place. I find it a bit sad because it programs students in a different way. How does one even track this kind of change?

The melting pot is what you're talking about when you say a single united composite entity.

The other part, the segregated ethnic lanes is often referred to as "patchwork quilt". The idea is there is no assimilation only people living side by side in harmony, but we're seeing exactly how those borders between identities are creating mayhem, not harmony.

It's patriotism, as opposed to nationalism. Not everyone subscribes to this distinction, but I think it's important.

Patriotism is liking your country and wanting other people to become part of it if they want to. After all, if your country and culture is the best then people should be allowed to become part of your culture and thereby become better!

Nationalism is liking your country and wanting other people to be kept separate. After all, if your country and culture is the best then anyone else is inferior and shouldn't be allowed to dilute your perfection!

Civic nationalism. Our citizenship tests have largely moved towards stressing instiutions and civic rules instead of cultural or historical touchpoints. The criticism of this is its identity-lite, at least when directly compared to ethnic or cultural nationalism, and can't effectively compete. I too would prefer our shared identity, but I wonder if the civic ideals are compelling enough to people.

The melting pot was just a hypothesis and we are living through the experiment.

The theory might not be correct

As long as people intermarry with people from other groups the melting pot will be a-meltin'! Pour on the heat!

Bulworth: "Everybody just gotta keep fuckin' everybody 'til they're all the same color".

From the movie "Bulworth":

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118798/?ref_=ttqt_qt_tt

> I think about this a lot. I don't think it's a coincidence that most of the countries lauded for their economic equity or environmental leadership are also largely homogenous societies.

America had some really high end social technology to address this. Having freedom of religion and people who practiced many religions has, for many other countries, been very divisive, see India/Pakistan, Yugoslavia, and many others.

So the U.S. created a civic religion to ride on top of all of the other religions. The civic religion has the pledge of allegiance instead of a prayer, co-opts mostly Protestant ethics, and instead the Bible, it has the constitution, and a set of semi-mythical stories like George Washington not being able to tell a lie about chopping down the cherry tree, and Honest Abe walking 10 miles to return two cents change.

The trouble with all of this stuff getting cancelled is that it's not being replaced with anything that serves the same functional purpose of putting everyone on the same page and fostering trust among people with different backgrounds.

The countries in Africa that seem to be doing the best are those that are mostly homogenous. Those that have many differing groups in a country whose borders were drawn up by agreements between European powers for their own benefit have lots of problems including violent conflict. Ideally the countries of Africa would get together and redraw their borders to be more aligned with the various differing population groups but unfortunately that is unlikely to ever happen as some valuable natural resources would change which group gets to benefit from them. The closest this has come to happening was the split of South Sudan from Sudan, but the oil curse has kept that from being a harmonious divorce.

If Africans decide to redraw their borders based on ethnic or tribal lines we would end up with hundreds of statelets (I am talking about black Africa).

> I think about this a lot. I don't think it's a coincidence that most of the countries lauded for their economic equity or environmental leadership are also largely homogenous societies.

It's no accident. The easier it is to divide the workers against themselves, the easier it is for capital to come in and rob them all blind.

HN loves criticizing "wokeness" but it's good to understand these divisions and how they have been used against us historically to maintain economic power structures that exist to benefit wealthy property owners.

The issue is that you can't put a bandaid on this and call it a day. You won't solve anything by appointing more minorities. Until people get wise to the real game being played by capital, we'll continue to fight among ourselves for scraps based on cultural identity.

The political class benefits from conflict and division like this. It gives them a scape goat they can use for whatever the pressing issue is at the moment and any consequences of their actions.

> US universities are not free environments of vigorous intellectual debate anymore

This seems like one of the most pressing dangers we are facing right now. How can this be changed? Where can people go to have honest intellectual debates?

I think another question is whether it matters if there is a different place to have those debates. If a significant number of people enter universities and get indoctrinated into their monoculture, the minority that are exposed to a more diverse and honest intellectual debate elsewhere might as well not exist. It’s like when Reddit, Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook ban someone or some group or some content: there may be other alternate spaces where the same content is shared but if it’s not part of the same gigantic mainstream network its real influence on society is nothing.

All that quote proves is that the the author of the quote isn’t paying attention to books as they’re released. Hyperbole gets recommends though!

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