Also, it’s easier to completely demolish the building. Accommodations can be made much easier, but no one does it because it’s too much work, the disabled people of the metaphor are figuring out ways around it.
Also the anti-disabled people knickknacks are still displayed EVERYWHERE
Not to mention that the hotel does what it can to keep existing through anti disabled propaganda and incentives for the workers to be anti disabled
I live in hungary and when i went to san francisco one of the things i noticed that every shop, bus, street, etc was built in a way that it would be easy to use by disabled people. So regulations can help and people should support politicians eho actually want to change things(even when it turns out to be a little stupid like the cancer warnings on basically everything). Also californians are so warm and welcoming compared to hungarians.
And these ADA accommodations were hard-fought for by disability activists, many of them disabled themselves because nobody else cared! The same thing is happening with any kind of prejudice or injustice against any marginalized group. We need to stop with the “fuck you, I got mine” mentality if we hope to advance as a compassionate species. But the older I get, the more I feel the tribalism is too hard-coded into humans and is too easily exploited by greedy/fascist interests. Solidarity is the only way…if we could just get over ourselves for one second.
to continue this incredibly labored metaphor, yeah things are kinda nice for everyone when there are accommodations for disabled, or mobility compromised people. There’s a term for when accommodations for one group, like sidewalk curb cut-outs, actually have a multiplicative benefit for everyone, even outside of the principle group. Curb cut-outs on sidewalks make it easier for wheelchair users, and the blind, but also they benefit strollers, old people, and delivery people getting up the curb.
so making the house nice for disable people actually makes it nice for everyone.
to drop the metaphor, yeah getting rid of systemic racism is actually nice for everyone
But on top of that, the previous owner raised the new one. On top of the hotel issue we now have the same issues, but with the new owner
If you think that the problems (inequalities) racism brought ceased to exist with segregation, try learning about red-lining and how countless black neighborhoods got unfairly bulldozed to make space for highways. All that stuff happened only a lifetime ago, of course its effects can still be felt today.
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You could also use the same reasoning to argue that colonialism hasn’t really ended either, when the colonialists went home they still left behind the scars of centuries of exploitation, that shit doesn’t get washed away in a day.
colonialism is also still enforced today - IMF loans that force austerity policies on receiving nations, coups that topple popular governments and replace them with dictatorships that are friendly to western interests, the fomenting of civil wars and conflicts that frequently genocide entire populations, the sale of arms and training to far-right militias. neocolonialism doesn’t involve direct rule but it’s merely the form that’s changed, not the character or the consequences.
Wells Fargo to pay $175 million in race discrimination probe - Reuters (2012) And let’s not forget stuff like this happened just within the last 15 years.
It’s different with racism, because it’s easier and cheaper to stop racist practices than it is to modify a building. And modifying a building isn’t hard or all that expensive.
