Remember the first law of the 48 laws of power - you are still a minnow playing in the huge pool, and you have to appeal to ALL (if not MOST) of the current gatekeepers - who would not be as passionate about this as you are.
If you have any "fangs", this is not the time to "bare" them.
My advice is to be less explicit in the beginning, and use careful "dog whistles" in your messaging to target your audience - have you not learnt anything from history?
What's good for the goose, is surely good for the gander too.
BTW, I support what you're doing, and wish you all the success, you've just got to be more subtle with your messaging - as all the bleating in here suggests.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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"
"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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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 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".
HTH
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.
>“[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.
[0]https://www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/publications/human_r...
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.
You can target a niche, thats fine, but doing this type of headlines, you just end up segregating yourself.
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.
It was actually "cakes for anyone except gay people."
It's the exclusion that gets you in hot water, not the targeting.
> When I grew up in the 90s, it seemed like black people had a relatively high number of TV shows to choose from like "Martin", "Living Single," and "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air". It felt good. I felt represented. Unfortunately, it turns out the 90s were an aberration
I also grew up watching shows like these, and being a white person watching a black family didn't feel strange or incongruous at all.
Something I've already wondered is, what if that aspect of the 90s wasn't an aberration, but a feature from a time when there were fewer channels and diversity was concentrated in the fewer places everyone watched, due to how content was structured?
And is it unfortunate that relegating "black" content to its own service gives it a "niche" status that it doesn't deserve? Am I missing out on good content because signing up for any new streaming service is a high bar and something I don't do?
Will the bigger streaming services drop the content offered by this one, so that the largest audiences lose the opportunity to see this content?
Was having fewer channels actually in a way anti-monoculture?
What was weird for me was as I got older, all of these shows became just samey Horsein Around type crap on top of that I do remember at a certain point noticing a stark difference between shows that were on UPN, WB, BET ect and ones that were on say like FX, Fox, ABC NBC I'd say starting around the early 00s.
This difference became so stark, but when I was younger there seemed to be far less of a difference. Almost like we started off with the here are ethnic families, they are similar to you but slightly different. Then ended up with, here is this completely different culture that you don't understand so it no longer is going to appeal to you. You being me and me being clearly at the end not the target demographic.
In retrospect maybe the beginning was a fantasy that was never really true. My point is overall, I think I'm pretty burnt out on content that is meant to be hyper focused on identity. I hope more people get burnt out on it and realize that centering your life around aspects that you have no agency over is a waste of time.
I remember this fork in the road quite clearly. First noticed it when I saw ads for "The Parkers" on UPN during ad breaks for "Star Trek: Voyager." Prior to that point I'd watch hours upon hours of Cosby Show, Fresh Prince, Sanford and Son, etc. without the slightest feeling of otherness. I am also white.
1. And let's not fool ourselves thinking that because I've used the word "history" that it's not still very much the case.
Importantly, even if you're right in a lot of the instances, it doesn't actually move the discussion forward in a useful way because it paints with too broad a brush and encourages others to do the same.
This is most comments on HN.
Or also just get you to talk about it, because controversial.
If you find any niche that makes sense, go for it. There's a reason for MotorTrend to shift into cable and on-demand, Disney, etc. The market can get slice 'n diced in a million ways from the Left Handed Channel to TrannyTV (for transmission specialists naturally).
>make you think about the ways in which Netflix does not serve black people.
Heck, it (Netflix) doesn't serve me, and I ain't black. It's a pity that they can't run out and buy rights to a jillion older movies, but I guess everyone is still loathe to license them (or too expensive).
Even if it meant objectifying people into a market segment just to make money, under the branding of empathy and identity?
Just because it is branded “black” doesn’t mean it won’t perpetuate harmful racial stereotypes, such as “being black is the most important thing about you as a person”. In fact, it would have every reason to amplify that message to keep and grow their “segment”, regardless of its psycho-social consequences.
Not to be rude, but what do you think a 'market segment' is? What is there besides market segments? For that matter, what is there besides money? at least in terms of the entertainment biz.
On the contrary, you’re making my point.
The objectification already exists. This won't change that. It will, however, hopefully result in more content existing for a market that's hungry for it.
OP also identifies as black, so I trust that they understand that branding their product as "for blacks only" will only hurt them, even within their market segment.
This is a streaming service set up to elevate content by black creators, to make up for the fact that the mainstream media under-represents those people. I'm struggling to see the outrage on a cultural level and on a startup level I can absolutely imagine there is a market for this.
I'm going to guess that "Netflix for black people" is not going to be the tagline the business will advertise itself on, it was chosen by an early-stage startup to catch your eye and make you think about the ways in which Netflix does not serve black people.