Do you find this offensive?

[Meeting]

The Theatre Royal Stratford East is putting on a show and have blocked out 2 dates as "Blackout" nights where they encourage (but I don't think plan to enforce) that only black people may attend these performances.

I saw them discussing it on Piers Morgan and neither of the guests advocating for it were able to convince me that this type of segregation was at all beneficial.

Does anybody think this is a good idea? Personally I think segregation based on skin colour has no place in society, no matter who benefits from it. But I'm interested to hear from others who might away it differently?

No, do you? Your analogy is ridiculous. Skin colour and sexuality have literally nothing in common, unless you think only certain races can be gay?

A better analogy would have been to ask if I believed clubs for people with hazel eyes should exist. My answer would have been ‘No’, because eye colour, like skin colour, doesn’t make any difference to who one is as a person, nor does it dictate one’s likes and dislikes. Skin colour and eye colour are not a reason to segregate people. Simple.

I find it offensive. Don't segregate me or my family we will go when we like if we want to go.

But that’s not the only reason for gay bars to exist.

They exist because there is a demand from gay people for spaces to be around people from the same community, around people with shared experiences or cultural reference points.

Do you object to that?

It is not segregation though nowhere did it say non black people could attend.

can't attend

Above post in no way trying to minimise the suffering of the Jewish population of Europe in the holocaust - just to say that the Nazis were awful and killed loads of other folk as well.

You explained that beautifully and fat better than I could

It seems to be implied that they shouldn't.

This is nonsense though.

People of colour have certain shared experiences, particularly of racism. White people saying race doesn’t matter doesn’t change the fact that for many people of colour their skin colour has massively shaped how they’ve experienced the world and how the world has treated them.

And it is perfectly legitimate for them to seek out community based on that experience, and to share certain cultural reference points with people within that community.

Just as gay people tend to build community based on shared experiences and to want to share space and experiences within that community.

I must have been off sick from school the day they taught about hazel-eyed people being brutalised and enslaved and still being discriminated against to this day.

Exactly this it is a ludicrous example. I also heard people trying to compare being black with being ginger and how both are discriminated against SMH.

Please stop with this nonsense. The event is planned to be black-only. Obviously they're not going to have security guards throwing non-black people out the door but you are purposely ignoring the objective of the event which is to be back only

You sound like men fighting to be invited to women only spaces, except you aren't even being excluded.

Was just going to post and say that this thread reminds me of every time there's a women's only event at the sport I do.

Even if that was true we never heard the same outrage for women only spaces, LGBT spaces etc.. Why is it always when black people do something everyone tries to highlight it to an extent and exaggerate something.

I don't find it offensive, just very weird. In this day and age it seems childish to be fixated on the race of people around you. It's all well and good to have diversity and representation, but asking audiences to choose the date of their visit based on their skin colour is just a thoroughly weird thing to do.

As someone with hazel eyes, the child of someone with hazel eyes and the mother of someone with hazel eyes, I can attest to none of us ever having been subject to discrimination of any kind on that basis. How many black people can say the same through three generations?

The two things are not analogous.

this is sort of what i was trying to say.

For a play designed to explore a black narrative and aimed at a black audience this theatre is failing so badly to create a safe space for black people on all the other nights this show is on that they need to run two special shows to keep people safe. This is the scandal.

they are to me saying “we have have failed totally to make our audience for this play (and all of our other ones) reflect the ethnic diversity of our location due to a combination of percived ethnic elitism/prices/failing to control racism in our audience members that we are going to give up making our theatre safe and welcoming for all races and instead run two days only in the year when black people are welcome and the other 363 days will continue to be essentially for woke middle class white folk, and we can call ourselves totally right on because of it”

next step - there’s not enough black kids at university let’s set up a university for black kids rather than fix the existing ones to take the correct proportions of races

separate but equal and all that

I absolutely understand the coming together to discuss issues that are relevant to the group but the theatre seems different unless there is lots of audience participation.

Either way it doesn't offend me but I suppose I feel I watch theatre in isolation in as much as I'm not interacting with other members of the audience. I do sort of zone out if I'm interested in a film or a performance so wouldn't really be aware of other people. Perhaps that's why not everyone understands, some people like me and others who are more involved with the group? It is interesting to me as I've never really thought that other people might feel their experience is changed by the make up of the rest of the audience.

There appear to be a lot of patronising white women speaking for non white people on this thread. I hope your virtue signalling brings you a smug glow of pleasure. It’s not doing much for anyone else…

Do you want to go and see this particular show OP?

Will they have a colour chart at the door? What a horribly regressive idea

Indeed

Absolutely agree @ancientgran
I go to cultural events to enjoy the culture.
I take no notice nor care who is around me. I don’t count how many other people there are of the same ethnic background as me to see if I feel safe or to judge whether I can share the experience with people of the same colour.
I don’t care.
Im really not that obsessed and because of this I feel I live a more positive life.

If there is a need for it, fine. But I'm not sure why there would be a need, or what the point is really. But it's not something for me as a white person to grumble about.

I’m not sure I’d classify it as grumbling. I grumble about the weather sometimes, but bringing back the hated colour bar is horrific and in quite another league from grumble worthy topics.