I'm not really a fan of the whole "we'll be intolerant so you know what it feels like" but it's also the only way I can really know what it feels like as a white man from a middle class family. I'm on the fence on this one.
They should just make it a small art exhibit out front, then 2 bathrooms, the mens is normal, with some basic art, but the women's bathroom has a bar and cocktail lounge and the extra amenities. Then the business wouldn't be excluding men, it would just be providing them a different experience in the bathroom which I feel like they'd have a much better time defending in court. But it also seems like this whole thing was done as a form of activism and it looks like one of the intents is for this business to close down so they can be martyrs.
I'm not really an artsy type person, more of a logical minded person, so it really wouldn't be something I would do. But as a logical thinker I'm good at coming up with creative logical solutions to puzzles. I'd be better as a consultant.
I think downvoters have forgotten the paradox of tolerance. That said, intolerance should be applied at the individual level (ie don't tolerate a nazi because they are a nazi), not by group (like the scenario this thread is about did).
The more interesting thing to me is... They were modeling a thing that was popular in the 60s, according to the article. It's an art display to protest something from 60+ years ago. A lot of the people who would go to such an exhibit weren't alive, and certainly weren't adults at the time.
There are surely problems that women face today but I don't see how this helps shine any light on that or does anything at all for it.
I mean, overwhelmingly people aren't racially discriminated against for being white so I'm not sure what it is you're trying to back up.
Sure it happens. The one that's closest to home for me in that list is Northern Ireland. White Catholics here were abused, but it was by white people so nothing to do with the colour of their skin. Honestly such a terrible example with absolutely no understanding for historical context.
I've spent non-trivial time in the Middle East. Sure I'm not at the same social class as Arabs there but I was sure fucking glad I wasn't brown.
China, wot? Yeah people stare at me but nobody was nasty. If anything I was a novelty.
White people in South Africa were gonna get what they were gonna get in a post apartheid world where they pillaged and oppressed until quite recently. That doesn't make it right but it makes it inevitable.
They're all very poorly thought out, edge case examples with the exception of Zimbabwe unless I'm missing others that I'm not aware of.
The Irish have been abused and degrqded by the British for Centuries. Still are, not nearly like they used to be, but its still there.
I know very well. I'm Irish. Pretty sure still have our own "and the Irish" section in British airports as a holdover from the troubles. The point I'm making is that it had nothing to do with being white and I haven't met any British people trying to abuse or degrade me for being Irish. My sister lives there and is married to an English man so I visit frequently.
China: I didn't experience any overt racism there because of the colour of my skin. We have derogatory words for basically everyone in English but it doesn't mean people use them. Hell, we call the British "Tans" if we're feeling belligerent towards them. "Paddy" has lost all meaning as a slur against the Irish.
Middle east: Sure. There I did experience it but it was incredibly mild and as I said I was very glad I wasn't brown.
Anyway, my main point was this:
overwhelmingly people aren’t racially discriminated against for being white
And I feel that it stands and yes there are exceptions but the historical weight of racism hasn't fallen on white people because of the colour of their skin.
The concept of "white" as a race dates back to WW2, at most. Before then, being from France was as ethnically important a distinction as being from England, Spain, Germany, Ireland, or China. Due to the long history of conflict amongst European nations, there was no unified sense of race due to something as simple as skin color.
When the Irish immigrated to the US, they were considered equivalent to black people by Americans and competed for the same jobs.
The British, inspired by the American ethnic cleansings of the Native American tribes, attempted to ethnically cleanse the Irish from Ireland for their land. That's what the famine in Ireland actually was. There was a scarcity of potatoes, but otherwise there was plenty of food - so long as you were British. In fact, there's a statue of a Native American in northern Ireland commemorating the Native tribes' aid during the famine, because they recognized what the British were doing and were one of the few groups to send supplies to the Irish. Nobody else cared, because they were Irish, not (insert country here).
The concept of “white” as a race dates back to WW2, at most.
Wow I'll make sure to tell all my black friends, I'm sure that'll endear me to them.
When the Irish immigrated to the US, they were considered equivalent to black people by Americans and competed for the same jobs.
Well, this is just completely false, you're completely disconnected from reality. Irish were never blocked from whites-only schools were they? Irish people were never subject to interracial marriage laws afaik. Were any Irish ever entirely excluded from being able to immigrate to the U.S.? I know it's popular among certain groups to pretend certain Europeans faced the same disadvantages as formerly enslaved African-Americans but frankly it's incredibly insulting and tone deaf as fuck.
Theory is fine you guys but you need to actually go out into the world and interact with people sometimes.
I am...unclear on what you're actually arguing about. You went from arguing that white people are oppressed for being white and/or that white as a unified race wasn't the invention of racism to separate the white European ethnicities from black people, to straw-manning me to argue that white people were never oppressed the same way black people have been (and continue to be).
Both me and the OP are saying that the idea of a single "white" race was the invention of racists. To separate white Europeans from other people. Before the white supremacists coined the term white as a race, your race was French, Swedish, Irish, British, Russian, etc. White is just a label to lump all these Europeans from disparate cultural backgrounds who hated each other's guts together to form a unified front against "the savage black man" and "the Asian menace."
And nobody has ever been oppressed for being white. When was the last time you heard of somebody being passed over for a job because they were too white, or the cops going around arresting all the white people off the streets. White people probably suffer the same treatment as other foreigners in xenophobic countries, but they're not singled out for being white.
What bullshit? Do you think that white people are oppressed? Or that the idea of white as a race wasn't the product of a bunch of racists who wanted to prove the superiority of white people over black people?
I don't have to; I know from personal experience what it's like to be right and correct. I recommend you abandon you current beliefs and try not being wrong yourself.
I don't have to; I know from personal experience what it's like to be right and correct. I recommend you abandon you current beliefs and try not being wrong yourself.
Maybe one day you'll wake up and realize that you don't know everything and are not always "right and correct." One day maybe you'll realize that others have lived experiences that are different than yours, but maybe not and you'll just float through life thinking your experience and your views are The Truth.
Slavic slaves in the Roman empire predate the social construct of whiteness. Implying they were oppressed because they were white is one of the stupider things I've read on the Internet today.
Okay, modern day. Look at the DEI initiatives. Literally just systemic racism against white people (and Asian people, but thats not what this argument is about), thats why they keep getting slapped down in court, and now having laws directly passed against even teaching them because they are so racist.
Again you're trying to conflate things which are not the same (war captives and society-wide anti-Blackness actualizing in dehumanization and chattel enslavement. )
and using weak "seems obvious" "can't imagine" arguments to do it.
If a captured ship had white and non-white non-muslims on it, do you imagine only the white non-muslims would be enslaved and everyone else let go?
No, because being oppressed while being white is not being oppressed for being white.
Further, your comment about albinism proves you understand race to be a social construct.
the same appears to be true here, just with "non-muslim" being the back-engineered justification
You can't change race by reciting The Shahada.
And irrespective anything you have said white people have never been oppressed for being white; the original assertion which started this discussion that is only tangentially related to an OP about women excluding men from an art exhibit (they didn't want to go to anyway) as performance art.