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.
That’s massively over-simplified.
Discrimination is bad. But not all discrimination is the same. Ubiquity and power dynamics play a huge role in what makes racism so damaging.
And, unfortunately, sometimes correcting for past discrimination can itself involve discrimination.
No, it’s really not. Racism is either wrong, or it isn’t. There’s not a middle ground here. That not all incidents of racism are equally bad does not mean any incident, large or small, of racism is not bad.
There’s nothing more permanent than a temporary solution, as the saying goes. That is precisely why all solutions, even imperfect ones, must be built on solid principles. Affirmative action, for example, is built on solid principles (unless one is some right-libertarian market fetishist, but fuck them), because it seeks the integration and inclusion of all races, even though it currently predominantly benefits non-majority groups. It seeks a better world, a world where people aren’t treated differently based on who their parents or grandparents were. Racism based on the idea of inferiority is far worse than racism based on the idea of collective ethnic guilt - but both are still bad. Racism based on collective ethnic guilt is worse than racism based on a simple but fundamental ‘othering’ of a racial group - but both are still bad.
Considering that people, incorrectly in my opinion, refer to affirmative action as racism constantly, this seems like an odd comment to square.
That’s because people are shitheads and I hate them.
Affirmative action is simply the implementation of the view that society should be comprised, in as many areas as possible, of demographics which reflect the demographics of society as a whole - ie that prejudices should not be allowed to dictate the construction of the institutions which rule our daily lives. It does not ‘other’ anyone - it welcomes them into areas previously closed off. And the principle would, in theory, defend a white minority same as a black or Asian minority. It is a way forward, a better world, a more united world, not a less united one.
Yeah and I agree with that.
The issue comes in when actually trying to implement affirmative action. It will, sometimes, temporarily demand discrimination to be done to correct for past injustices. And that discrimination is sometimes going to be based on race.
But that discrimination based on race is what a lot of people are calling “racism”. But it is not the same as actual racism. Not in effect or in principle.