by JustExAWS | 2025-08-23 15:29:03+00:00
> Can you steelman the culturally conservative viewpoint? I find this to be a big blind spot in today's progressive thinkers; i.e. it's hard for someone in that camp to explain why anyone would have voted for Trump, without dipping into the "they know not what they're voting for" or "they're just ignorant, racist, and hateful" buckets.

I can’t possibly steel man why someone thinks it’s their right to tell another adult why they shouldn’t be able to date or marry who they choose whether it be someone of the same sex or someome of a different color. Liberty University just recently lifted the ban on interracial dating.

I am not saying everyone who voted for Trump is a racist. I hear some of the things that come from Democrats and I can perfectly understand why some traditional Republicans hold their nose and vote for Trump because the alternative is worse.

> I'm not treated any worse or differently in society.

And being an immigrant in the US (along as you aren’t Hispanic) is a completely different experience than being Black. I’ve moved to Florida now.

Have you spent time in “their spaces”? Have you gone to a White Evangelical church? Have your kids tried dating their kids?

Again I’m not saying “all white people are racist” far from it. I’ve tried to even distinguish between “George Bush”/“Mitt Romney”/“John McCain” conservatives and whatever the hell is going on now.

I lived in what was a famous “Sundown town” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundown_town) until the early 90s. I didn’t move there until 2016 when I had a house built in the burbs. My six foot two 230 pound+ stepson who has lived in the burbs all of his life often got questioned walking down the street of our own neighborhood and when he went to the community pool.

> Perhaps the biggest disparity I've noticed is that the Old South still believes that it's good for society for people of various backgrounds to assimilate to one central culture, whereas the more cosmopolitan metros seem to have declared assimilation as an imposition on minority groups.

To be blunt, I don’t have to assimilate shit and neither does a gay person who wants to walk around with their partner just to make other people comfortable or any other non white/non straight person.

If you have an accent, of course they are going to be respectful to your face. But they are going to complain just like they complain when people are speaking Spanish to each other.

Another anecdote, now I live in a resort area in Florida upstairs from a bar that is all tourist besides us (long story). Every Friday and Saturday night, they have karaoke and a live DJ. It’s mostly your standard non offensive top 40 music from the last 20-25 years.

Around 10 o clock, a large Latin American group came. I was already talking to a guy from Puerto Rico. The DJ started playing a Latin playlist and they all started dancing, there was another group there from Alabama and you could just see the looks on their faces.

My wife and I (Black) hung around, my wife started dancing with them, I used my A2 level (https://www.colegioespana.com/en/levels-of-spanish-language/) barely fluent Spanish to talk to some of them who didn’t speak English.

They also didn’t owe it to anyone to “assimilate” and they appreciated the effort that I made.