Hacker News Reader

Comment by mrexroad | Hacker News Reader

Opinions about <group>-only events aside, there's a difference between a homogeneous group of people choosing to be together, and a group of individuals who were barred from using specific toilets, water fountains, seats, education opportunities, jobs, etc. Comparing segregation to voluntary <group>-only events is a gross misunderstanding of how things were.

View on HN

Well it is my understanding that it was a whites-only back in the day. Now it is a not-whites only which really doesn't seem as different to me as you comment indicates it really is. It is just a different group of people telling others what they can and can't do.

If you were white in 60's America, you didn't have to check ahead of time if a given restaurant would serve you food. If you're white now, you still don't have to check.

If you're not white, things are different.

Can you think of some examples of when you were unexpectedly forbidden from participating in an event/group/etc? Did you have access to alternatives?

The 1960s were 50 years ago. You won't experience that today (with very rare exceptions), and that's a good thing. But we can't be forever fixated on things that we've moved past.

1. The purpose was to illustrate the difference between white-only discrimination (the origin of our current discrimination laws) and modern exclusive group events.

2. There are lots of people who lived through the Civil Rights movement alive today, and segregation and the associated attitudes didn't disappear overnight. Do you think 70 year old politicians carry no baggage from their upbringing and early adulthood?

I think you're missing qualifiers there because men-only social clubs, for example, have been frowned upon for quite some time now.

True, but that's not a gender issue per se. Women-only programming groups are based on the theory that women are not being well served by co-ed programming groups, as a combination of socially enforced gender roles plus an understandable discomfort at being the only woman in a room. All male groups are generally frowned upon because there's no reason to think the average male would be prevented from participating in a technically co-ed but heavily male group.

I suspect men-only clubs for traditionally female dominated fields, something like an all male kindergarten teacher group, would be broadly accepted as reasonable.

> I suspect men-only clubs for traditionally female dominated fields, something like an all male kindergarten teacher group, would be broadly accepted as reasonable.

Nursing, home healthcare, child care, veterinary services, social services, and libraries are the other canonical examples besides education of highly women-dominated fields where having male-only employee resource groups might make logical sense.

I'm not sure I agree with you that it would be broadly accepted as reasonable, however, even though I personally would find it reasonable.

Since you can't really eliminate backroom dealing, male only social clubs can have the practical effect of excluding women from equal participation/opportunity, at least as long as groups like "C level exec" are disproportionately male.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com