Not the exception at all, which is the true tragedy. I guess I am hoping that the ability to expose these kind of idiocies will provide the sunlight to sterilize and cleanse them. Way to many privileged white folks (of which I am one) are able to cruise through their lives pretending this just isn’t a thing. The more we are forced to admit that this kind of bias actually exists and did not go away when Obama was elected, the less tolerance there will be. Well, that’s my hope anyway. Whether it will actually happen remains to be seen.
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I have no sense of agency in my soul-numbing job. So I try and help people do an end-run round the rules.
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You would think LA fitness know a lot about training.
Is this an LA fitness problem or a NJ problem?
It is indeed the modern Republican party’s strategy - which is why they’ve survived, despite terrible policies.
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There are not just two teams in America, white people versus everybody else. There is a ladder with many rungs. At the bottom is (surprise) Native Americans. Second from the bottom are black people. Various flavors of white are near the top, with a scramble in between to get away from the bottom and move up.
“People of color” who can pass for something other than black discriminating against black people should not surprise anyone. At all.
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No argument there! But (white) people presuming to impute motives to people of colour without first allowing them to speak for themselves is another kind of icky, isn’t it?
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I teach classes at LA Fitness (not the one in NJ). Obviously, all clubs are different, but they tend to have extremely high staff turnover, for a variety of reasons. The front desk staff changes constantly, and after over two years as an instructor, I often encounter a desk attendant who has no idea who I am. I can’t even imagine how difficult it would be if I were black.
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Ah yes, liberals are the real racists. Now I get it.
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Probably a bit of both.
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Good on you!
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You’re so right about how sad this is. In a country that prides itself (justifiably) on the First Amendment, standards of police behaviour are so appalling that this woman has to bow her head and submit rather than demand an explanation from the officer.
She feels (rather justifiably, in my opinion) that her choices are humiliation vs potentially life threatening violence. Not sure I would not make the same choice in her place.
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Oh, but some gamers insult everybody.
“Gitgud noob loser”
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An Ashki here. Don’t I know how that works!
When my grandparents came to America they were absolutely not White.
My parents grew up non-White and became “Honorary White”.
I grew up White, but with that legacy and the feeling that it was a sham and a privilege that could be taken away at any time.
Now that Jew-hatred is becoming popular again on the Right, on the Left, here and in many countries my Whiteness has started slipping, and I find myself unsurprised. My upbringing provided me with the assumption that it was bestowed by Whites and would eventually be taken away by them.
Of course, that’s not unique. The Germans back in 18th century America and later the Irish, the Italians, Ukrainians, and to some degree Asians have all been granted Honorary Whiteness. Arabs, Persians and (oh, the irony) people from the Caucaus region weren’t White. Then they were. And now that status is being revoked in Europe and America.
The one thing we can be sure of, though, is that Africans and Indigenous Americans aren’t and won’t be White because the concept of Whiteness was designed specifically to exclude them.
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Nope. They don’t get the benefit of the doubt. There is no doubt that he was a paid-up member. There is no doubt he was tossed out and they tried to get him arrested for accessing the services he had paid for. There is no doubt they tried to cancel his membership when they were caught.
But you try to come up with some reason, any reason, to justify it. Maybe he wasn’t just a shudder Negro. Maybe he was a God save us poor Negro. Because that totally makes it alright to try and get a paying customer arrested.
(multiple /s because that seems to be necessary)
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