Comment on Dumb Conservatives

• SJ0@hilariouschaos.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  You measure literacy rate as literate people per 100 people because people are literate, pieces of land tend to be unable to read or write or do math on account of being inanimate objects. More importantly, we have voter totals and literacy rates per state where nobody is measuring square meters of literacy or square meters or Republicans because that’s silly.

  Now because this discussion is just stupid, let’s be real for a minute: the major factors for literacy isn’t left vs. right on a statewide basis.

  California is relatively illiterate, just like Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, Florida, and New York. They’re illiterate because people who barely speak English much less read and write it tend to end up in those places which is why new york is one of the outliers, the same way Toronto is Canada for many, New York is America for many and so they end up there as adults.

  Other illiterate states such as Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Alabama are illiterate in part because of the legacy of slavery and past racist public policy, and in part due to long-standing (but apolitical) aspects of laid back southern culture.

  Among the most literate states in the union are blue new Hampshire and Vermont, and red Alaska and Montana. Which really is the point.

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  • conditional_soup@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Damn, this is a lot more of an informed and nuanced take than the meme. Your meme kinda sucks at getting this point across, dawg.

    But I’ll point out that literacy rates will probably show more interesting variations that could support your points if you did look at literacy rates by sqkm on a map. Maybe I didn’t do a good job communicating that, but that’s the idea: look at literacy rates across each sqkm in the US. Supposing you’re right, you’d expect to see literacy rates in metro areas drop acutely compared to the outlying areas.

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    • SJ0@hilariouschaos.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      It’s not my meme. :P

      Besides, memes are often just meant to be entertaining or to deliver a message to someone who already basically agrees in a way they enjoy, not to prove a huge point conclusively. Seems safe to say this one is pointed directly at the ingroup, and the reaction it’s meant to elicit is probably something like “Those assholes think we’re stupid, screw them!”

      Based on things like a shocking literacy statistics from public schools in many cities such as the dozen schools in Baltimore that failed to train a single student to grade level, and the fact that New Jersey has the highest levels of illiteracy and the highest levels of university education, I suspect you’d find American cities are sort of feast or famine. Unfortunately by many measures inequality is at record levels and so is class segregation, so you’d have your upper middle class and lower upper class folks who are highly educated and trying to get a seat at the table, and you’d have incredibly impoverished people – not so much in a money sense (though in some cities it’s insane what rent on a basic place is), but in a sense that all the things that are beneficial are in short supply.

      Pretty much everyone above a certain socioeconomic level pretends to care about the poor, but then advocate for policies that sound nice but actively harm the poor and will lead to more opportunities for people like themselves. It’s brilliant subterfuge.

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