chowder says he was a Ted, but I haven’t seen him around here in ages. I hope he’s all right.
IME clubs are much more overtly sexist that racist e.g. women go in free, men have to pay, groups of men without women not allowed at all etc. Does that shit fly in the US?
Before anyone says it, no I’m not making a big “woe is me for being a guy” thing. I know nightclub entry policies are hardly the most pressing equality issue.
Buy a bar. Then we’ll talk.
My understanding is that this is illegal in California but does fly in all other states.
Meaning what? If racist policies help a business owner make a profit (or even keep them from going out of business), then we should excuse them? Nuh uh.
Meaning, buy a bar, then we’ll talk.
That’s a bullshit statement to make on a discussion board.
What’s funny is that here in this overly white university town, we have the same signs!
But it’s mostly to exclude the white gangsta wannabes.
So less racial, to my mind, than attempting to keep trouble out of their bars. When it was bikers causing trouble, back in the day, they were forbidden to wear their jackets if they wanted to come in. Same thing really.
One or two biker/gangsta set to’s in your bar, and you could find your business in serious trouble. Seems to me owners ought to be able to act to keep trouble out of their establishments.
In Houston, Texas, that sort of dress code in a bar or club generally has a racist purpose. Namely: Keep out the black men.
A few years ago (when this thread was new) some bars in the at-that-time-hot area were tested–white guys & black guys dressed the same & tried to get in. (These places all had bouncers & velvet ropes.) The black guys were excluded disproportionately. And those were the days of the Spray-On-Tan White Douchebag–but they were allowed in. (This is not my demographic but I did a bit of anthropological fieldwork.)
I’m sure things are different in London, Ontario–or Belfast or Oslo.
Thanks for the report. I have no doubt this is not just about clothing.
The poster upthread who will only say “Buy a bar and then we’ll talk” won’t elaborate; from that I can only conclude that s/he means something like “if you had a bar, you wouldn’t want those [unprintable] in your place either”, but is too coy to say that straight out and own it.
I started a thread about him in ATMB several years ago. The consensus was that he’s probably passed. 
I would say that it’s not “every way black people might dress,” because black people do happen to dress without need of large chains or baggy jeans. If you’re white and go there in baggy jeans, flat billed hats or athletic apparel and get denied entry would that mean it’s not a racist policy?
I knew (and worked at!) a bar with a sign like that, in Queens, in New York City.
Different purpose, though – the policy was only enforced if you asked for a pain-in-the-ass drink (like, say, a Long Island Iced Tea, and “layer it”).
If you did that, no ID you had would be found acceptable. Not if you had white hair and dentures, your driver’s license, your passport, a military ID and a personal letter from the Pope attesting to your age and character.
What does that mean, to “layer it”?
That’s a big “if”. A place might have a rule against turbans, which I’m sure some white people wear; that’s still racist.
And I still want to hear the justification for banning flat-billed caps but not curved-billed ones; and for banning long white plain T-shirts, but not shorter ones or ones with logos on them.
first off, I don’t want to give the impression that their dress code doesn’t set off some alarms for me, because when reading the list of items one imagines a particular race. But some of those things on the list don’t seem like big ifs when applied to white people. I’m sure white people do wear turbans but I think it’s very rare to see that. But it’s not uncommon to see whites wearing flat billed hats, sports jerseys, or sleeveless shirts.
And from my personal experience, I’ve seen similar dress codes enforced in clubs where there was an even mix of blacks, whites and hispanics. I’ve been to clubs where it was zero whites and they had similar dress codes.
But then again establishments who are purposely trying to deny blacks and/or non-whites have a history of trying to get around the law in order to do so like the new story linked on the previous page.
And I would say that even if they enforce it against whites, it is unfair and still racist-ish to apply a dress code that targets a style that originates in a nonwhite community. I will say again that I defend a bar or restaurant’s right to ban sloppy clothing generally–but then it should be all T-shirts (requiring shirts with collars), all baseball caps, etc.
It does seem unfair and possibly racist, and in this case it maybe an attempt to turn away black customers, and if that is the case they deserve being called out. But I don’t think that it’s unfair or racist just because a style happened to originate in a non-white community. I remember back in the 90s high schools in my area didn’t allow students to wear jerseys, hair nets, Nike Cortez shoes, or Homies shirts. That style originated in the Mexican-American community but I wouldn’t consider it a racist policy.
The dress code is aimed at reducing violence. It has nothing to do with sloppy. Some bars ban colors (bloods vs crypts) and some ban sports clothing. It’s all aimed at reducing violence.
You don’t know what it is “all” aimed at. But I will acknowledge that it can be done with that intent at least some of the time.
Yet why aren’t we hearing about bans of the kind of clothing white guys wear who tend to get into brawls? There are plenty of those types out there, but let’s face it: the people in power feel a lot more threatened by violence committed by young black men than by young white men. There has been ample evidence gathered about this of wider scope, in terms of how many black teenagers end up with prison records because of things like schoolyard fights, compared to white teenagers who do the same kind of thing but usually get only administrative punishment from the assistant principal rather than being arrested.
You bring up a good point. But what about establishments that ban biker styles that originated in the white community?
I would still prefer they do some kind of broader dress code that would eliminate those without targeting a certain group. Requiring shirts with collars, slacks rather than jeans, etc.