> We're seeing a wide trend in the US where people want rules to prevent people from making choices that they don't agree with, which was basically the opposite of the point of the US.
Freedom is a relative thing. Here we have AirBnB's freedom to not want racist hosts vs white supremacist's freedom to use AirBnB. The only freedom the ideal of USA is supposed to grant you is freedom from too much government meddling.
That's really the crux of what I'm getting at here.
People who are using AirBnB to rent space in their homes will also have the freedom to stop doing so if they are no longer comfortable losing any say regarding who they are willing to let stay.
If anything, AirBnB is really opening the door for a competitor who totally defers to the property owner to cut into their market share.
It's not about WhiteBnB. It's about WhomeverIWantBnB. I am white, European, affluent, from a popular country and was rejected many times by AirBnB hosts (most of them blacks or women), so what? I looked elsewhere. It's really their right to provide accommodation to whomever they wish, it's their property. If AirBnB doesn't want them, they'd go elsewhere and AirBnB will go the way GitHub is going. Most hosts are featured on many competitors when you talk to them; they were happy about the least amount of hassle coming from AirBnB, but if they have to hop over many hurdles...
I really think US is now getting to a completely different extreme - why should be whites and men so severely disadvantaged? You are getting to a point that when you don't enthusiastically approve of whatever a SJW says, you are instantly labeled an enemy.
Go and watch video how Turks in some remote city were kicking out Korean tourists - that's a problem you should focus on if you want to make the world a better place. First world problems...
> If AirBnB doesn't want them, they'd go elsewhere and AirBnB will go the way GitHub is going.
So, exactly where it is now?
I know it's super popular in regressive circles to think that GitHub is somehow failing because fffffemninisms, but it's also untrue.
> I really think US is now getting to a completely different extreme - why should be whites and men so severely disadvantaged?
We're not. Claims to the contrary are indicative of self-adopted persecution complexes and mistaken beliefs in zero-sum sociology. Source: straight white male in one of the most liberal parts of the United States and doing just fine.
Source: straight white male in one of the most liberal parts of the United States and doing just fine.
It's mostly about socioeconomic status. The overarching problem is the conflation of things like race with socioeconomic status. Poor white males being conflated with affluent white males is basically a part of the same phenomenon as poor black males being conflated with affluent black males. The former results in poor white males being discriminated against. The latter results in "driving while black" or my ex girlfriend's devout uncle and his well behaved sons being treated like drug dealers by the local police.
I'm not saying poor people of one color have it better or worse than poor people of another color. (And for the record, affluent whites still can have it much better than affluent people of color, depending on context.) The whole problem is the use of race as a proxy for socioeconomic status, which creates an uneven playing field -- which creates social injustice. Let's be aware of this and not contribute to it.
Sure but in general poor whites are still better off than poor blacks. It's really hard to make the case that white men are systematically disadvantaged in any real world scenarios besides maybe some internet or college social justice activist circles.
Sure but in general poor whites are still better off than poor blacks.
So if our society mistreats two groups, only the group that gets treated worst counts? No. Suckiness based on discrimination is bad, period. It's still sucks, even if you're affluent, actually. It's this constant background corrosive.
How much interaction do you have with the justice system? It's no picnic being poor and dealing with them. How much do you deal with the police? It's no picnic being poor and dealing with police you don't know. Organizations across society are crappy to the socioeconomic disadvantaged, period. Heck, even employment is crappy to the socioeconomic disadvantaged!
The thing to watch out for in the struggle for social justice across history: Letting yourself create a scapegoat. Don't let some sort of salient indelible marker become a proxy for who someone really is as a human being. That's the root cause of the problem in the first place! Just as this goes for the fallacies of "blacks being criminals" or "Asians being good at math" or "Jewish people being business sharks" it also goes for white men being angry "supremacists."
You probably noticed that many of the most talented developers are idealistic and support meritocracy. Then you see the guys that created GitHub and made it lovable by those top guys, getting unceremoniously kicked out. Maybe it's a good business for a while, but many of those brightest developers move away and the best projects will grow elsewhere. So that's for your "regressive circles". It's a simple lack of justice for those guys.
You are probably a high-income white male. Now imagine how your life would be were you a low-income white male with a dadbod-shape. Not everyone is as lucky as we are (for the record, I am affluent, very tall, athletic, popular amongst girls) - I see plenty of these problems amongst my less lucky friends and frankly I reject this stupid game of taking care only of myself and not helping people around me. I know this is un-american, but I couldn't care less.
This comment doesn't provide a substantive basis to any of its claims, and unfortunately, whether the author means it that way or not, it reads like a lot of racial propaganda. Spreading that kind of idea has historically led to very bad results, with many people getting hurt, killed, and oppressed. I hope we can be very careful and apply scrutiny to what we write on the issue; words have serious impact.
Nobody should be disadvantaged; it doesn't matter what the color of your skin is. If you look around society, such as SV companies, Congress, on TV, in college, on Wall Street, or any other measure, you'll see a lot of white guys doing very well; it's been that way for hundreds of years. No research I know of shows white men having trouble getting Airbnb rooms, I've never seen it mentioned, and I'd be pretty surprised. Factually, it's obvious, very well-established, and there is a long history regarding what groups are disadvantaged. We should do something about it.
Finally, I hope that in a free society I can disagree with your comment without being preemptively attacked and my behavior criticized.
Why would I want to attack you? I'd love to see you achieving the utmost goodness potential you can reach without the need to bow under senseless political currents. Coming from a society ranked amongst the highest in equality scale, it comes naturally to me. Frankly, I was writing about my experiences while I was traveling around the world for roughly 2 years and using mainly AirBnB for accommodation. Do you really think white people get automatically pass when they try to do anything?
What I think you are talking about and see is more fight for belonging to the upper echelon of society, the ones that seem to make decisions affecting all of us. Well, news for you, vast majority of whites don't belong there. If you also want to be more nasty, i.e. singling out Jews, a historically popular scapegoat nation, another news for you - most of them are poor and uneducated, hence disadvantaged. Simply the goal of all these fights is power and nowadays equality turned into another mean how to acquire power, causing yet another slew of injustices, sadly.
The facts are that certain groups have far more opportunity than others, including access to education, jobs, health care, power in their communities - and now Airbnb rooms, among many other things - not just access to upper echelons (though that is an issue too, because it means these groups lack a seat at the table when decisions are made). The extensive, overwhelming research, and centuries of history show which groups these are.
That doesn't mean there is no other suffering in the world; that begs the question. It means these groups face much greater problems, your unsubstantiated claims notwithstanding. Given the overwhelming evidence, why wouldn't you want to do something about it?
Most of us would love to see the real social justice. There were many whites trying their best to help the rest of the world, often with self-inflicted wounds from their own culture, as well as many whites that wanted to dominate the rest (but were Ottomans, Mongols, Huns, Kushites etc. any better back in their days?)
Look, a few thousands years ago the dominant culture were Egyptian, Babylonian etc. Then there was China, Aztecs, India, Rome, Islam, then enlightened Europe. All those older cultures became zombies on self-inflicted wounds when they couldn't cope with their evolutionary advancement anymore, their mental framework got stale, they probably overly indulged in pleasures their technology allowed them without caring about progress and justice and they went from advanced to weak, allowing themselves to be conquered easily.
Here we are at a wonderful place in history when everyone can seemingly have their words heard. We are also marching towards post-scarcity economy and a single smartphone has a larger computing power than the whole humanity had when we launched into the space. More than ever disadvantaged groups have their say. The previously dominant, white culture, allowed that, working on abolishing slavery, awful crimes and horrible warts plaguing all previous cultures. Why are you still feeling offended? So many people worked so hard on bringing the concept of justice to everyone. Should their successors be persecuted for whatever wrongs you historically feel? How many of those wrongs were self-inflicted by your own culture? When you compare your life in the US, would you exchange it for your native one? Would you apologize to all victims of your ancestors' horrible acts?
When there are some things causing injustice, they should be disbanded, and not new ones erected as a "payback". Please get it out of your system, we would love to see you cooperating on a just world.
It's long, but unsubstantiated and generally factually wrong, including its characterizations of my comment: I don't say most of the things you allege.
I don't divide the world into groups of people based on skin color, and then assign group achievements and faults as if they are a team, and imagine there is some competition or racial Olympics. That premise is the root of the problem. I see individuals and mutual benefit when they do better, not a zero sum competition. The fact - not speculation - is that many of those individuals are suffering from racism.
The thing is that nobody cares if a white male experiences any sort of problems with anyone, but the moment a black person or a woman says something, everybody rushes in. Now we see white males in blue collar jobs are committing suicide in huge numbers and many checked out of society completely (unemployment + gaming, porn) as they don't see any point to be involved as they are invisible to women in their 20s and get automatic scorn whenever they are accused of something. There are now many women-only places/clubs but the same is denied to men in the US. Does this really seem fine to you?
You're attributing to me emotions I did not express. Obviously, because I didn't offer an opinion on anything in my question.
>There are now many women-only places/clubs but the same is denied to men in the US.
This is demonstrably false, and can be disproved with Google in seconds.
But I'll surmise you aren't all that concerned with the existence of women's social clubs as a counterpoint to men's social clubs. I'll give the benefit of the doubt and guess that your concerns are likely about something more substantive.
I was just asking where one can objectively measure the severe disadvantage of white men in America. A disadvantage so profound surely would be obvious in data of education, political power, wealth, or employment, or the like.
Your contention is at odds with what I would have guessed based on having lived my life in America. So: what publicly-available data set would you use to exhibit this severe disadvantage?
I am not an American, so it's only tangentially related to my life (in a way that my part of the world is going to experience it 10 years later), or that I have to be more careful not to accidentally trigger anyone on my next Hawaiian vacation (like last time I visited Old Lahaina Luau and some black woman from NYC wanted to kick me out of the place I paid for because she wanted to sit there - is being a "black woman" the secret superpower to do crazy irresponsible things with no penalty nowadays?).
Anyway, possible interesting stats for your further research:
- average/median earning of single women in their 20s comparing to the same group of men in officially recognized fields (no sugar daddy incomes etc.)
- ratio of female/male university graduates
- number of male-only clubs forced to close or allow female participation comparing to the number of female-only clubs
Frankly, I couldn't care less about men-/women-only clubs, I just don't understand why former are scorned upon and latter are celebrated. I come from a part of Europe that was pretty equal for a long time so seeing this happening seems extreme to me.
This may explain a lot. Perhaps our current media exports are offering a misleading perception. I would suggest you look at the public data, as it might be a better basis for forming conclusions. I would wager a beer that actual data (NB: or any time spent in pretty much any corridor of power in America) will not support the conclusion that white men in America are disadvantaged relative to other groups.
Also: we don't actually have all that many social clubs here; they are in some ways a relic from the past. I would suggest they are opening up to black people and women as a result of self-interested response to market forces. The types of clubs that denied admission to black people until well into the 1990s aren't the types of clubs that cave because Huffington Post ran an unflattering piece.
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
Of course this is a dead letter because of a misinterpretation of the Commerce Clause, but there it is. If the Constitution didn't literally give the federal government a power, it doesn't have that power.
Haha there's a charitable interpretation. Actually my second-favorite amendment is the Fourteenth, precisely because it knocks the states down a few pegs, and gives the federal government the power to enforce that. (In addition to, you know, extending citizenship to everyone...) I doubt old George would have agreed with that.
[EDIT:] to avoid confusion, the First is my favorite.
What I meant by that was individual liberty and the ability to make your own choices and decisions.
Government meddling in that in this case is forcing people to do something they are uncomfortable with simply because they paid money while simultaneously running the risk of legal action if at any point you want to abort the transaction.
The most basic example is akin to forcing somebody to sign a contract without knowing who they are signing it with.
The law was actually far more intrusive back then than it is today. For example, you might be shocked to discover that Jim Crow laws actually mandated discrimination in sexual relationships!
The closest we've come to trying this kind of thing is the present day, where at least sexual relationships have been deregulated. (This one is a biggie for me, I discriminate pretty strongly against white women and think the government should not restrict my freedom in that way.)
Freedom is a relative thing. Here we have AirBnB's freedom to not want racist hosts vs white supremacist's freedom to use AirBnB. The only freedom the ideal of USA is supposed to grant you is freedom from too much government meddling.