100% agree. How is it racist to offer something as a business, it's not like it's a government or other public project. We already have BET so this is just a similar offering in a different format. "Netflix for black people" might not be a good choice as a tagline, though.
> How is it racist to offer something as a business, it's not like it's a government or other public project
I've seen people suggest that censorship is only censorship if the government does it, but suggesting that racism is only racism when the government does it too is a first.
> but suggesting that racism is only racism when the government does it too is a first.
I think you've misunderstood this post. This is less like a "white's only" restaurant, and more like an Italian food restaurant. It's supporting a cultural niche, not excluding another.
Now I’m European, so maybe I’m not in the right cultural mindset for this, but your comparison really highlights what is problematic for me: based on someone’s skin colour you are determining their culture/heritage. What does a Nigerian have in common with a Jamaican, apart from the melatonin in their skin? Why would they have similar tastes in media?
> based on someone’s skin colour you are determining their culture/heritage.
People can have more than one cultural background, and American "black culture" is the common cultural heritage around the experience of being black in America, which has a lot of broad commonalities regardless of where in the country you are, and also locale-specific subcultures (e.g. west coast vs east coast vs deep south).
Like the whole point of Fresh Prince of Bel-Air was that Will Smith and his uncle's family had very different subcultural contexts (although their divide was less "Nigeria vs Jamaica" and more a class divide), but also shared the broader experience of being black in America.
> What does a Nigerian have in common with a Jamaican, apart from the melatonin in their skin? Why would they have similar tastes in media?
They don't necessarily. Not speaking for the BlackOakTV folks here but I don't think this is trying to target all black people. The US is somewhat unique in having a large population that was ripped from their respective home countries and forced to create their own shared culture under the thumb of slavery. Someone that immigrated from Nigeria in the last decade doesn't have that same experience.
> The US is somewhat unique in having a large population that was ripped from their respective home countries and forced to create their own shared culture under the thumb of slavery.
Unique?
"Between 1502 and 1866, of the 11.2 million Africans taken, only 388,000 arrived in North America, while the rest went to Brazil, the European colonies in the Caribbean and Spanish territories in Central and South America, in that order"
If they're a few generations removed from their Nigerian or Jamaican ancestors, they probably don't have strong ties to their home countries' cultures. This seems true of most Americans whose families emigrated 3+ generations ago.
"The melatonin in their skin" explicitly shaped many aspects of law, society, and culture in the US up until the 60s, which is still in living memory, so I don't think it's that surprising that there would still be measurable differences in culture and media interests.
Think about how much your parents' lives and the stories they told you are reflected in your present-day values and interests.
> "The melatonin in their skin" explicitly shaped many aspects of law, society, and culture in the US up until the 60s
I see it regularly today, as African-Americans and many other people commonly say. We can recall that overt racism is practiced in certain political groups which have expanded in popularity. Research shows that racist attacks have greatly increased over the last few years. Regarding the law, many of the laws that existed before the Voting Rights Act have been recently reinstated since the Supreme Court invalidated key parts of the Act and banned federal courts from addressing many state voting issues.
It's also not rare anymore in my personal experience, as it was before 2016. In the last month a white person told me that people with black skin were 'biologically different', which accounted for economic inequality. Over the weekend another told me, highly ironically, that 'minorities' were more prone to disinformation than white people, and that was the cause of problem of disinformation on the Internet. (For the record, I disagreed with both as effectively as I could - you can't tacitly approve.)
A significant cause of discrimination is that its impact and presence is overlooked by people who aren't affected by it. Racism doesn't affect me (directly), so it's not hard to say it's minimal.
I wasn't trying to imply racism ended in the 60s, to be clear!
I intentionally avoided discussing modern politics in order to make a stronger (albeit more limited) argument, by emphasizing explicit legal discrimination. Even if someone doesn't believe in systemic racism, it's not a point of debate that black people alive today were explicitly persecuted under the law based on the color of their skin.
I understand what you are doing now and that used to be my approach. Now, I feel that it just allows the denialist rhetoric to perpetuate. I'm not even going to call it a myth because it's such obvious nonsense, I believe even to the people that say it - it's just push-back, a tactic.
In the US, the vast majority of black people have descended from the enslaved Americans who have been in the US for hundreds of years. When people say "black culture" that's what they are referring to. Not that recent immigrants from Jamaica and Nigeria are from the same culture.
There's the further concept that due to systemic racism, Jamaican and Nigerian culture will blend into the larger black culture than the larger US culture. And the Nigerian and the Jamaican will experience a similar American experience, very different from what an Irish or German white person would.
When an American says "black", they often mean "African American". The reasons why one would use one word over the other is usually more about social conventions between synonyms and less about trying to describe different ideas.
It's really self-centered when we use "black" to mean "African American". It's strange when it goes the other way. You'll hear some Americans call Idris Elba an African-American.
When I say "Black", I mean "Black". If I want to single out Americans, I say "Black Americans."
I'm all for dropping the term African American, unless it's referring to a recent immigrant. It's a misnomer from the past, that for some reason people consider PC.
> based on someone’s skin colour you are determining their culture/heritage. What does a Nigerian have in common with a Jamaican, apart from the melatonin in their skin?
Based on their skin color, they are treated the same way by much of society. They are often compelled, for safety and for just day-to-day peace from racism, to live in the same neighborhoods, go to the same schools, eat at the same restaurants, visit the same websites (where they don't have to read racist comments), play the same online games (ditto), etc. - heck, you can't even watch porn without encountering endless racist portrayals based on skin color. So people with 'black' skin have many common experiences.
Also, market segments don't have to be perfectly defined. We can always find flaws - no two people are alike; no one person is exactly alike from one day to the next.
Both are referred to as "black" (or worse), anywhere they go in the world, and both suffer the effects, prejudice and discrimination of racism - anywhere they go in the world.
Another fan fact - your hypothetical Jamaican and Nigerian, are the most likely to type "How does country X treat black people" before deciding whether to visit a country on holiday - something very few other people (if any) do - so there is a lot that binds the Jamaican and Nigerian together - the nonsensical (but very problematic) notion of "race".
LMAO, you're really reaching for those grapes. The courts ruled that "cakes for straight people" meant cannot be sold to non-straight people, which is in fact discriminatory and also illegal. I don't think BlackOakTV is requiring photo identification as proof of Blackness to sign-up. Stop it.
Edit: For clarity, the Supreme Court actually ruled in favor of the homophobic cake shop in Colorado strictly on freedom of religion grounds, however religion is clearly not the factor here. And for your argument to be effective, you'd have to agree that a homophobic cake shop can't get away with discrimination simpliciter.
SCOTUS didn't rule in favor of Masterpiece on freedom of religion grounds, they ruled that the Colorado commission didn't exercise religious neutrality. It was an extremely narrow ruling and essentially kicked the problem back to Colorado to fix their commission. This is an important distinction as it results in vastly different outcomes.
Not that this discussion is pivotal to my point but the court wrote that:
>“[T]he Commission’s treatment of Phillips’ case violated the State’s duty under the First Amendment not to base laws or regulations on hostility to a religion or religious viewpoint.”[0]
Not only is that utterly unclear, it doesn't even make a distinction between "they said something that offended Phillips' religion" and "you can't make/apply laws that are hostile to Phillips' religious viewpoint". I don't think there's a queer person in America that would perceive "vastly different outcomes" from a ruling like that.
> You can only discriminate against white people. You can't discriminate against all of the political elite's pets. Pets include blacks, browns, gays, trans, and all the victim groups.
Wow. Pets, okay.
> I get that this tag line is more for marketing purposes, and in fact they might not refuse to take white ppl's money that want to sign up... but they are in fact discriminating in the type of content they will produce and stream-- but since its against whites it is okay.
Lemme ask you a question: are the American arms of Univision/Telemundo/Korean Broadcasting System also discriminatory since they also will likely not put up content by ethnicities other than their own, which would also be "against whites"? Cause they actually have FCC approval.
Pretty sure none of those networks are advertising themselves as 'something for -some race', they just exist, do business and focus a sector of the US population, never mention anything else
You can target a niche, thats fine, but doing this type of headlines, you just end up segregating yourself.
> Actually the courts think that a similar business, "cakes for straight people", is in fact discriminatory and also illegal.
Remind me again which side won Masterpiece Cakeshop at the Supreme Court.
Also, there is a huge difference between denying service on a particular basis and designing a service to appeal to a particular community while leaving it open to all.
