Safe Spaces: The New Apartheid
Here is got from a White person which exemplifies this thinking:
So, this is where we are in society today and why I formed the White Women Yoga group on Meetup to bring our societal dilemma into the open and hope that we can work to find a solution to the dangerous road our country is headed down. Yes, the United States has had a history of discrimination and racism that has affected POC over many generations but creating a separatist society in the reverse direction is not the solution. Already it is acceptable for POC to have separate Meetup groups, POC safe places on campus, Black dorm floors at colleges....where does it end? When will we see the signs go on the doors of yoga studios saying “Blacks Only” and signs on the doors of Black-owned restaurants saying “People of Color” only and then signs on the doors on nightclubs saying “ADOS (American Descendants of Slaves) Only” because Jamaicans and Africans aren’t welcome? Will POC demand separate school classroooms so their children don’t have to be uncomfortable around children of their oppressors? Does this sound right to everyone? Is solving the problem of what discrimination of POC still exists in our country yet more discrimination? More separatism? If it wasn’t okay to discriminate and separate from one race in the history of our country, how is it the right thing to do now? Where do the proponents of racial separation think this is going to lead?
We need to move forward and not backward in this country. We need to come together as American citizens - regardless of our race or ethnicity or country of birth - and we need to do POSITIVE things to help everyone achieve; improve education, improve our communities, improve the state of families for children, improve economic opportunties - but we do not need to separate, hate, and reduce our nation to tribalism and apartheid.
Pat Brown
February 18, 2019
15 comments:
You say: "people should feel free to hang out with whomever they want." Does this apply to POC?
OMG! Good for you for shining light on this situation. I have often discussed my outrage over all the "Black" only stories of exclusion...Black Entertainment TV, Black Miss USA, Black Awards, Black Meet-ups, Black yoga, etc. Do we want equality or what? I am sure that the black women in my zumba and yoga classes are receiving the same love and inclusiveness as any of the other women in the class. Is yoga so stressful for Black Women that they need a place of retreat from the "White World"? I see them come in, join in the activities, be included, be friends, be one as Americans, yet when you make groups that segregate, you "exclude" groups, and we all know what "exclusion" feels like and how it can create animosity. So again, do we want equality? Or do we want to dwell in the sins of the past? Where are the Native Americans? If anyone should be bitching, it should be this group...how about the Jews? They lost a lot of people in the Holacaust...how about the Christians? They were tortured in the Crusades...hell, what about red heads that were burned at the stake for having "the hair of the devil". Look, I can go on forever...most peoples have served as "slaves" or tortured in the name of their choice of religion, their color, creed, etc. thru the many years...I get that we have to be a nation without any memory of racism and segregation. We have to get everyone on board to stop seeing each other as "different". I keep hearing about Police Brutality...maybe put the anger on a specific group but don't look at everyone in a certain color or culture as "bad". We will always have good people and we will always have bad eggs...we all need to weed them out, regardless of what they look like, and we need to stand up for each other. That is how you show solidarity, love and inclusiveness. Not by seperating yourselves from the rest...didn't we learn anything about this from our history? I always wished I lived in a world where every culture could embrace the other cultures...how boring if everyone was homogenous in thought, religion, culture, race, lifestyle, etc.
Just my two cents...look at each other with love and know we all come from the same DNA...maybe it will soften hearts some...
ArsVita, of course, POC and everyone else should have the right to “hang out” with whom they want. “Hanging out” implies that this is an activity that is not a business operating or a sanctioned school event, etc. If a group of Black women want to do whatever together or a group of White women want to do whatever together or a group of mixed race people or a group of mixed races want to hang together, this is all good. I don’t think POC would object to four white men going golfing together. What they would object to is those four men starting a golf club and hanging out a sign that said “Whites Only.” If I go to a go-go club in the DC area, I will not be surprised to find it may be an al-Black clientele but because there is no sign on the door that says “Blacks Only” I can go in. Meetup is a business and rents storefronts to people and then those owners operate a business (whether they charge fees for it or not) who then hang out Black-Only or POC-Only signs. This is iin violation of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Wrong then, wrong now.
Anon, yes, good eggs and bad eggs in all races, cultures, religions, sexual orientation, and business. We should definitely work to improve our country but not by condemning an entire group of people or refusing to go around them or spreading misinformation about them. This is what happened with Black Lives Matter, the claiming of racist shootings by police where the evidence did not support that this happened. And it didn’t matter to the members or the media that it didn’t happen that way; the idea was to claim racism across a huge group of people, in this case police officers. I don’t deny that on occasion there is a bad egg cop that needs to be arrested and convicted for his behavior (like bad priests, bad teachers, bad doctors) but to make it something that happens everyday to all POC citizens is untruthful (although some POC claim that this is daily life in America). Regardless, separating the races is not going to bring fairness to any group...it is going to be a disaster.
Pat,
I applaud you in principle -- after all racism is racism, and highlighting the selectively applied racist principles that meetup sometimes allows groups to impose is -- a valid point. That meetup then delisted your racist groups, while allowing the other openly racist groups to continue is -- notable.
What I disagee with is the degree of the problem. This is not yet a crisis, and is still far far from a crisis. Over-the-top language is often counterproductive, and I think yours has been here. And Meetup is just a customer-responsive startup business, who is solely reactive to their customer bases, not any major offender themselves.
So, attagirl for your courage and well executed stunt to expose racism, but please listen to a friendly suggestion to tone down some of your alarmist rhetoric.
Dcleve,
I think it IS a crisis or I wouldn’t have stuck my neck out. The last number of years have seen this country suffering from worse and worse race relations, everything seen through the lens of race, the media pushing and pushing that we are a racist society. I brought this up because it IS a crisis and I see it worsening by the day. Unless we all speak up and address this, we will wake up a few years from now and realize it is too late. Already, we have people stating this country is worse than it was prior to MLK and reparations are needed for descendants of slaves. We are seeing claims that whites will never understand POC. We are seeing POC segregating themselves from whites. We see POC separating themselves from other POC.
As to Meetup, they are a major multimillion dollar business, not a local group of people picnicking in the park. The are required by law not to violate the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
As to alarmist rhetoric, check the comments on the Washington Post assaulting my character and intelligence. Check how many POC and Whites are trashing Whites as hopeless racists. There is where the problem lies. I don’t judge POC on anything but their individual selves but many POC and Whites judge the entire race of White people as evil. Luckily, not ALL POC and Whites think this way and they agree with me that discrimination, racism, and supposed safe spaces have no place in our society.
Congratulations for your experiment!
Someone had to light up the SEGREGATION & RACISM we are living right now, but extremist ppl demand inclusion while they segregate the society ( Black lives matter).
Ppl have forgotten we DO NOT CHOOSE where to be born and what color to have in the skin !
Our color doesn't make us, our actions, our education, our culture is what make us a better or a worse person.
I am mexican and it is embarrassing to see color ppl having their "color groups" , color tv series, color dancing teams, etc. but they attack any group that has very little or none person of color.
You should travel to Mexico for a while, you will see how many persons discriminate our ETHNIC groups, you will find that most light brown ppl will try to show they are descendants of European ppl (SPANISH, FRENCH, ITALIAN ,etc) but they will deny their ethnic roots.
Pat Brown, just saw you on Tucker tonight. Bravo to you for shining a light on this problem of racisim and sharing your story! I’ve been a fan of yours since the days of the OJ Simpson trial! You always had the most logical & smart reasoning of any of the anylyst’s at that time!! Keep up the great work...Enjoy being a Gramma....you go girl!
BTW so glad I’ve discovered your blog.
I don’t know how else to get in touch with you if you’re the real Pat Brown that was on Tucker Carlson tonight (seems so) but I just wanted to say you are absolutely my new hero!
I’m bi-racial myself, half white half Puerto Rican, and I’ve noticed the same, EXTREMELY disturbing trend of racism towards white people being called not racist because somehow only white people can be racist, this new definition of racism (prejudice + institutional power), black only college graduation ceremonies, the whole fiasco at Evergreen College kicking all of the white people off campus and attacking any who stayed, and on and on and on.
I’ve been saying for ages now how MLK Jr. wanted people to be judged by their character, NOT their skin color, he didn’t just want white people to be attacked instead of blacks. And said how much I’ve wanted to start like an online newspaper that takes modern articles like “37 things white people need to stop ruining in 2018” (a real buzzfeed article) and just change POC/black to white and men to women (the same thing is happening against men and against straight “cis” people)
It’s this whole trend of intersectional identity politics that’s tearing our country apart and some, like Stacey Abrams in the democrat rebuttal to the SOTU speech are calling for MORE identity politics. It’s crazy!
I’m SO glad someone finally did this and is showing how just changing black to white all of a sudden takes the same exact thing from “inclusive” to “racist” even though it’s racist either way. The utter hypocrisy and lack of self reflection by people who engage in it is astounding. And it’s being pushed onto companies, schools, etc. it’s truly terrifying.
So anyway, hopefully you see this and know that someone out there is VERY grateful you set up this experiment. And I hope you continue to advocate for this cause and show people that identity politics/intersectionality/victim culture is taking our country BACKWARDS, and not progressing us forwards.
Thank you!
Oh and in response to the other comments, they might not see it, but you’re ABSOLUTELY RIGHT that the alarmism is justified and it’s absolutely a serious issue. When mainstream television is counting off how many identities “they’ve got” it’s a serious problem.
All I saw during the last midterm election from most news channels was them complaining about how many “old white men” were on the republican side and how “diverse” the other side was (despite having no diversity of thought, only of immutable characteristics) because the democrats had “2 Muslim women, an openly gay man, x number of women of color, etc” they didn’t care what any of their actual thoughts/positions were, just that they could collect as many “oppressed and traditionally marginalized” identities as they could.
I would suggest if you ever do another experiment like this, make 2, one that says white, one that says black, and watch how you’re praised for how inclusive the black one is and how racist the white one is. Man I wish more people would wake up to this.
Hi Lillian! Thank you for your comments. As a matter of fact, I just spent two weeks in Mexico in January and it is my fifth time visiting the country (I have visited many cities, large and small, and always enjoyed my time there). My son spent half a year in Mexico studying Spanish in Guanajuato and enjoyed living there. But, sadly, you are right about the color issue and this color issue is also a problem in India and other countries as well. Obsession with color of one’s skin is wrongheaded but, unfortunately, much has to do with culture and power as well. The Hutus and the Tutsis of Rwanda were of the same race but there was still genocide. It is simply important for people not to separate themselves to the point of fear and hatred. Appreciating one’s culture or subculture is fine but doing so to the point of hating or ostracizing others is a dangerous road to go down.
Thanks, Cheryl! I try to stay on the side of logic and reason but sometimes logic and reason don’t seem to trump emotionalism! I am having a grand time as a grandma, thank you!
RadicalxEdward,
Yes, I am the one and same Pat Brown! And thank you for all your great comments. You know, I had forgotten about the nonsense at Evergreen College and the black only graduation ceremonies....it is hard to keep track of these separatist/racist incidents...but I think I need to make a long list of them and really do some studies on their progression. I have been quite busy in other pursuits so I haven’t put the work into that but I think it may be necessary so that we can see the truth of the downhill trajectory our country is on when it comes to race relations and separatism.
I’m sure it will be an uphill battle for you, but we desperately need more people to bring back MLK Jrs vision of the future.
I really hope you’re able to get another spot on Tucker or Hannity with a longer segment.
It’s actually terrifying the direction we’re heading in.
I think I’m going to try also making a list. I know it would be thousands of items long at this point. I hope you keep up the good fight and don’t give up when people call you a racist just because they’re unwilling to take the time to listen to what you’re actually saying. And please be careful, lots of companies are starting to ban people for much less than what you’re saying (not just social media, but even banks are starting to ban people)
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