The row centres around the exhibition ‘This is Colonialism’ and the museum’s decision to restrict white people from entering a small section of the display
Police officers are gathered in front of the Zeche Zollern museum in Dortmund, the focus of what social networks are describing as a racism scandal.
The row centres around the exhibition ‘This is Colonialism’ and the museum’s decision to restrict white people from entering a small section of the display. For several months now, Saturdays at the museum have been reserved for black people and people of colour to explore a colonialism exhibition
The museum claims the objective is not to be discriminatory, but to reserve a safe space for reflection for non-whites.
Ah, so you aren’t addressing the point because it makes you uncomfortable and you realize your point is not on firm ground, considering that the original conversation is about racial exclusion and why it isn’t acceptable. How predictable.
No, it’s really not. All the arguments you put forth to justify this incident of racial exclusion are equally applicable to specific scenarios regarding white people and having conversations on issues that effect them. Sorry that you think racism is okay. I happen to think that racism is bad in all fucking scenarios.
Are you incapable of reading?
Or are you just so eager to throw out accusations than you just can’t help yourself?
Predictable.
And I’m sorry that you have a child’s understanding of racism.
Racism isn’t terrible simply because of discrimination. Discrimination based on race is bad, but that isn’t what makes racism so damaging. Racism is harmful because it is systemic, widespread, and has actual power behind the discrimination. Because those with systemic power deny those without access to what they need to live a fulfilling life.
A minority group, lacking in systemic power, reserving a small amount of space for themselves is not the same as the majority group leveraging their systemic power to exclude the minority from society.
Oh, so the original conversation isn’t about racial exclusion and why it isn’t acceptable? Is that what you’re saying? Or are you deflecting because you know you can’t actually defend any of your points.
I’m sorry, could you say this one louder? Because I’m pretty sure it’s core to the issue here.
When the fuck did I say they were equally bad?
It’s dogshit people like you who make being mixed race in modern society still so fucking frustrating. Thanks.
Absolutely wild that you are trying to accuse me of putting words in your mouth when you are constantly making up arguments for me and saying “is that what you are saying?”
You claimed they’re equally applicable right here, dickhead:
If you don’t think they’re equally bad, great!
But then you know that throwing up that trash and accusing me of thinking racism is okay is nonsense.
So you’re just another bad-faith waste of time.
‘Equally applicable’ is not ‘equally bad’. Jesus Christ, I can’t believe I have to explain this to another human being. It is equally applicable to argue that a principle regarding the sanctity of human life renders the murder of one person and the murder of a million bad - they spring from the same principle. But they’re not ‘equally bad’, the principle is ‘equally applicable’ ie they are both bad, not that they are both equally bad.
For fuck’s sake.
If someone was racist against white people AND East Asians, and decided, on those principles, to beat me to a pulp in a back alley and call me racial slurs, that would be bad, because unprovoked violence and racism are both bad. That doesn’t make it equally bad as the fucking totality of 19th century colonialism, even though 19th century colonialism is bad based on those principles. as well
Oh sod right off.
If you know they’re not equally bad, then you understand they’re different because of context.
So you asking me:
Is not only an obvious “gotcha” but you know it’s an obvious “gotcha”.
‘Different’ does not mean ‘not bad’. “This is bad” does not mean “This is as bad as all other crimes of this principle”, it means “this is bad”.
In what fucking way is asking you to acknowledge that racial exclusion is, at its core, bad, a ‘gotcha’?
Because every time a minority group tries to claim space for themselves, people in the majority group claim it’s the same thing as when the majority excludes the minority.
It’s a mainstay of discussions around race, sex, gender, sexuality, and pretty much every progressive topic.
It’s happening in this very thread for goodness sakes. People claiming racism against white people, completely ignoring what makes racism so damaging in the first place. As if every instance of discrimination is the same because they look kinda similar on their face.
Because at its core, as a matter of principle, making a PoC-only space because the discussion would be ‘disrupted’ by the mere presence of white people is bad, and in the same way that if a museum in Zimbabwe which had a section on Mugabe’s racial policies had an exclusionary area for whites-only to discuss, because PoC might ‘disrupt’ the freedom of the conversation with their presence. It doesn’t mean it’s as bad as legal segregation. It doesn’t mean it’s the same as turning away minorities from a business as a whole. It doesn’t mean it’s as bad as 99% of racism in modern society. But it is still springing from the same fundamentally flawed principle that racial exclusion is acceptable.
It is racism against white people, by definition, unless you’re using ‘power+prejudice’ definition, which would render all sorts of racism suddenly ‘not racism’. Hate crimes by black folk against Muslims in the environment after 9/11 would no longer be racism.
Just because the racism is not as bad (and, distinctly, it is obviously and apparently not as bad as colonialism, or mass segregation by law, or the intermittent exclusion of races in individual businesses, or modern societal-level cultural prejudices) does not mean it is not bad. Just because it is a minor incident of racial exclusion from a public venue with good intent does not mean it is ‘not bad’, it just means you probably don’t need an international embargo against Germany until they fix it. It’s still bad.
If someone, say, in this thread, commits well-meaning microaggressions against people of mixed-race without malice and with only the intent of buoying minorities not of mixed-race, not tearing down mixed-race individuals, that’s still bad, and on the same principle that all racism is bad. That doesn’t mean that they’re as bad as people who call mixed-race people slurs - it doesn’t even mean they’re even close. But it does mean that it’s still bad. It still fundamentally springs from a principle which should be examined with a critical eye in order to root it out for all incidents going forward.