> It's a really fascinating part of history I always try to learn more about.
I suspect the regressive cultural backlash at the US at the moment as the "next generational" response the the civil rights campaigns in the mid-late 20th century.
I suspect the regressive cultural backlash at the US at the moment as the "next generational" response the the civil rights campaigns in the mid-late 20th century.
I think regression will be along some other axis. My personal two suspects are a) some variant of gender roles and the way they've changed since the 1960s and b) the widespread acceptance of cultural diversity being a good thing and the idea that there can not be superiority between cultures. The "goodness" of both of these things has been challenged quite a bit recently either directly or by shifting circumstances on other fronts causing people to need to think more critically about those subjects. In contrast, the goodness of not being racist (at least on a first order level) has been sailing along quite successfully recently.
I don't believe that. I don't even think that you believe it.
Here's culture A, which believes that there cannot be superiority between cultures. And here's culture B, which believes that there can be superiority between cultures, and in fact that B is the superior one. I'm pretty sure, based on what you said here, that you think that A is the superior culture, and that B should change into A (or at a minimum, that A should not change into B).
And if you can look at, say, the culture of Denmark, and that of Afghanistan, and think that neither is superior as a culture to the other, that seems to me to be almost wilfully blind.
Funny you mention Afghanistan. I almost did in my original comment. I think Afghanistan and the people we we spent 20yr propping up there is the wedge that will drive open the door to broader discussion domestically.
You can already see this starting to happen where people are getting more comfortable comparing the pros and cons of various subsets of American cultures. Will it turn into anything, IDK.
Cultures are fundamentally incommensurable and cannot be viewed from some abstract or neutral viewpoint. That doesn't mean to say comparison and discussion isn't informative - just not conclusive.
I think that's true. So when I say that Denmark is a better culture than Afghanistan, yes, I am making that judgment through the lens of western values. But as someone with four daughters, I simply cannot bend my mind far enough to consider Afghanistan's culture (or, perhaps, the Taliban's culture) as superior. (Though I admit that I might be able to if I were in the Taliban.)
But what I was aiming at was mostly the idea that it is morally superior to consider all cultures as having equal value. That position contradicts itself, even if the "morally superior" part is left unstated.
I will give you that all cultures have elements that are worthwhile.
All races may have potential but are absolutely not the same in opportunity and it very much is still a directly race based problem. If you want a trivial example, there's campaign messaging going on right now in the United States based on the racist idea that Haitan immigrants are killing and eating pets. If you look at the racial outcomes across the board they are much poorer for PoC in nearly every single possible thing you can reliably measure. From my view, there are still many of us that are of "shaking things up" age, I assure you, because much needs to be shaken up.