Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

‘Culture wars’ are fought by tiny minority – UK study

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 674 posts

Re: ‘Culture wars’ are fought by tiny minority – UK study

#101

Post by lawtalkinghuman »

arethuza wrote: post #6
pjc50 wrote: post #5

Yes. The culture war is to a great extent a US import. The US is extremely polarised, possibly uniquely so for a country with a single national language and mostly-shared ethnic background (compare Belgium, which is highly polarised but along language lines). The UK has its own natural fragmentation lines (north/south, class system, four nations, catholic/protestant) but those are not the lines on which the culture w…

"there is no counterpart to the hyper-polarised TV of Fox News yet" The Daily Mail?

The reason the UK doesn't have hyper-partisan television news is because of the regulation of broadcast television (i.e. Ofcom).

There is an effort to start a Fox News equivalent in the pipeline: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GB_News

Re: ‘Culture wars’ are fought by tiny minority – UK study

#103

Post by M2Ys4U »

Ichthypresbyter wrote: post #10
andromeduck wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly the US actually does not actually have an official natrual language.

Neither does most of the UK (the exception is Welsh in Wales).

Wales is the only place in the UK where English is an official language.

Re: ‘Culture wars’ are fought by tiny minority – UK study

#104

Post by barry-cotter »

charlesu wrote: post #90
barry-cotter wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first describes a quasi-religious ritual in which all participants ritually affirm that they are unworthy sinners, racists. Those who believe get the satisfaction of publicly proclaiming their sin, signaling their superiority over the outsiders. Those who don’t believe have their faces rubbed in the fact that other people have the power to make them lie in public about who they are and what they believe. It shows…

> The first describes a quasi-religious ritual in which all participants ritually affirm that they are unworthy sinners, racists. Why would being racist make someone an unworthy sinner? Racism is just treating others differently based on their race. It’s not weird or evil. In fact, it’s perfectly normal and even understandable. Humans have probably always separated themselves into groups. Even chimpanzees do it. I th…

> Meanwhile, Harvard, Princeton, Yale, MIT, Stanford, and UVA all have affirmative action and are doing fine. Decades of supposedly different standards haven’t hurt their standing. They continue to graduate a diverse class of high achievers that are well-represented in just about every field imaginable. How does that square with your claims?

That’s the entire point of comparing CUNY and Berkeley. You can maintain prestige while having different standards for different ethnic groups. You can’t while having no standards. Eliminating entrance exams is how CUNY did it. Different standards is how Berkeley and Harvard etc. do it. That’s not what is being proposed for the gifted school in question. It’s the elimination of standards.

Re: ‘Culture wars’ are fought by tiny minority – UK study

#105

Post by raverbashing »

dmurray wrote: post #72

> It states that 12% of voters accounted for 50% of all social-media and Twitter users – and are six times as active on social media as are other sections of the population. That's not a tiny minority: it's a pretty reasonable dispersal of social media use. 12% of the population accounting for 50% of anything is a more egalitarian distribution than we see with, say: wealth, healthcare use, or educational attainment.…

And to add to that, not all of those 12% take hyper-polarizing stances

Re: ‘Culture wars’ are fought by tiny minority – UK study

#106

Post by DaiPlusPlus »

cabraca wrote: post #89
DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So even if that Dean said he is a racist, he's probably not unless you warp the definition of racism. Please elaborate on what you mean by "warp the definition of racism".

> Please elaborate on what you mean by "warp the definition of racism" changing the definition of racism so a specific targetgroup is included. For example instead of "discriminate minority groups" they say "disadvantage minority groups" and then include things like those entrence exams as a disadvantage. In the end everything is somehow racist.

> For example instead of "discriminate minority groups" they say "disadvantage minority groups"

But to intentionally disadvantage a minority group is to discriminate against that minority group.

Are you suggesting that intentionally disadvantaging a group is not discriminating against that group?

Or are you suggesting that unintentionally disadvantaging a group is not only not discriminating against that group, but that also it is is also excusable and needs no correction? i.e. that the consistent, albeit unintentional, disadvantaging shall continue?

---

With respect to entrance examinations specifically - while I have zero experience of context with the situation today, I fully appreciate how entrance examinations can be intentionally and unintentionally exclusionary - and yet still be seen as innocuous. A good example is in the (historical) [entrance exams for the UK's Grammar School systems which are sat at age 11[(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleven-plus#Controversy); while the grammar-school system was ostensibly universal and open to all, the entrance exams with questions predicated on a familiarity with middle-class culture naturally disadvantaged working-class students.

Re: ‘Culture wars’ are fought by tiny minority – UK study

#107

Post by croon »

apatters wrote: post #47
QuesnayJr wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand how someone can say this with a straight face. Whitewater was a New York Times created scandal. It was the New York Times that ran cover for the Bush administration in invading Iraq. It was the New York Times that a week before the 2016 election ran dueling stories that played up the Clinton e-mail story and simultaneously absolved Trump of any links to Russia. All of these stories got widespread m…

If you genuinely believe the mainstream US media doesn't lean left, have a look at the Media Bias Chart: https://www.adfontesmedia.com/ The methodology is thorough and non-partisan (that's the point). Note that the triangle's apex is literally left of center.

Isn't the vertical alignment much more important than the horizontal?

Not that it counters your point, but the left alignment at the top is very minor.

Re: ‘Culture wars’ are fought by tiny minority – UK study

#108

Post by germinalphrase »

luckylion wrote: post #88
germinalphrase wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the first, you’re overreacting. I’ve gone through such training and it was nothing like you describe.

Did you have to say "I'm a gatekeeper of white supremacy" to complete the training? Either your threshold for "looks cultish" is very high or you didn't go through that kind of training.

I was never compelled to say anything at all; however, it did cause me to think more subtly about racism and white supremacy in my life rather than simplifying it to a reactive good/bad:racist/not racist dichotomy. Perhaps this is all more subtle, complicated, and bonding than the fringe culture warriors would like us to believe.

Re: ‘Culture wars’ are fought by tiny minority – UK study

#109

Post by readarticle »

rjkennedy98 wrote: post #11
pjc50 wrote: post #5

Yes. The culture war is to a great extent a US import. The US is extremely polarised, possibly uniquely so for a country with a single national language and mostly-shared ethnic background (compare Belgium, which is highly polarised but along language lines). The UK has its own natural fragmentation lines (north/south, class system, four nations, catholic/protestant) but those are not the lines on which the culture w…

> mostly-shared ethnic background America at this point has little shared ethnic background. It’s largest states are minority-majority for example and that will be the case everywhere soon as minority babies are already the majority.

America in 1998 had little shared ethnic background by the standards of America in 1898, which had a frankly hilarious lack of shared ethnic background by the standards of 1798.

California and Texas are utterly dominated by Non-Hispanic and Hispanic white people, the two ethnic groups with by far the highest rates of intermarriage in the United States of America.

England 1798 -> Europe 1898 -> Western 1998

Re: ‘Culture wars’ are fought by tiny minority – UK study

#110

Post by tankenmate »

ericmay wrote: post #95
donohoe wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thats an over-reaction. The first is not religious in any sense. It appears to be an acknowledgment of the bias's we all have as humans. We all have bias's, unconscious and conscious - its part of being human. In that sense we're all 'racist' to some degree and its important to acknowledge that so as to overcome it. As far as the second example cited I think more information is missing before jumping to a conclusion.

> In that sense we're all 'racist' to some degree and its important to acknowledge that so as to overcome it. No. I reject this. No matter how many times you or others tell me that I’m racist and can’t help it, and if I just pray... I mean take enough sanctioned training courses it’ll go away I will not partake. Period. Nobody is racist until proven otherwise, or racist until they’ve taken enough unconscious bias tra…

I suspect that a lot of people forget the concept of mens rea (sometimes through lack of critical thinking, sometimes for deliberate conflation). Labels are easy to throw around; unconscious bias gets lumped together with racism. One is culpable behaviour, the other not paying attention. But again if someone wants to push a particular point of view it's just easier to label someone else as "bad" without having to explain exactly what is bad or how bad.

For every problem there is a solution that is simple, neat—and wrong. -- H.L. Mencken

and from a different social issue but highlighting how easy it is to go from "good guy" to "bad guy";

When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why they are poor, they call me a communist. -- Hélder Câmara

Post reply on HN