There is still a race issue in strip clubs

Strip clubs are all about discrimination based on looks. This manager may have felt that he couldn't make as much money by hiring your black friend for a variety of reasons. Or he could have had a different opinion of her looks, irrespective of skin color, or her attitude. Or maybe he just hates black people. How are you going to tell which was the case?

Reporter, please don't take this the wrong way, but are you really a reporter? Which in my book anyway, means you are also a writer. I found your posts difficult to get to the bottom of.

Bad spelling, bad grammar and unaccepted abbreviations.

Lady(?) If you are a reporter I am prince William...

Seems to me that the evidence is pretty strong that most people find people from their own or similar ethnic group to be the most attractive. So why should't a club manager hire strippers who came close to matching the ethnic profile of his customers? He is, after all, in business to make the most money he can by pleasing his customers. It's not about race, it's about money.

It's not prejudice, it's DISCRIMINATION. For example, I personally am very discriminating about my grammar and style. I write much better when I am sober and discriminating, than when I am drunk and without inhibition. The same goes for my choice of dance partners, and my interest in unattractive women. There are plenty of clubs where women of a given skin color perform, but you will probably note, if you visit one of them, that all the successful dancers are ATTRACTIVE women, not just women of a given skin color.

That's right. You have to be GOOD LOOKING as well as black, to work at a black club. What a concept.

Naturally, the idea of what makes a woman "good looking" is a idea that changes, location to location. I have been to St. James in north Houston, and I've seen black women dancing there. But they were stone-cold hotties, attractive enough to grace the pages of playboy. And their "style" was not "ghetto." No excessive fingernails, ridiculous plasticene hair gels, flabby backsides waggling about, or dangling titties sixteen inches lower than their waistlines. Sure, at some lower-class clubs, that "African ghetto queen" look is in style, but not at most clubs. If the woman in question has a given style, she needs to find the club where her style, and her level of attraction, are appreciated.

See, it's all about discriminating. I'm a very discriminating customer.

I am a reporter too. I do investigative reporting for TUSCL. I have done a lot of articles for them. My spelling sucks too. Only got as far as the 6th grade.

Is there a discrimination going on in strip clubs? YES! But I don't think that it is racially motivated. And I can only speak of my favorite club because it is the only one that I am sure about.

6 or 8 months ago the ethnicity on my clubs home page changed from mixed to white. You don't see that happen very often.

Next a dress code. If you came to the club looking like a potential drug dealer (Boyz in the Hood), you ain't getting in.

Next came a ban on hiring any new black dancers. The existing ones were given grandfather rights.

I guess it is still somewhat racist. An attempt to keep out the bad elements. Protect your ass. Protect your business.

Among the dancers, there has been no change in what color they like. It is still green.

I agree with FONDL. The manager apparently is trying to cater to what most of the customers like. More than likely this club has more white male customers who are "well off" than somone who is making an average income.

But to respond directly to the original heading, of course there's a racial issue in strip clubs. There's a serious racial issue in our society. Why would anyone expect strip clubs to be any different?

I think we made a huge mistake 50 years ago when we chose to honor Martin Luther King but ignore his recommentdations that we establish a color-blind society. Government policy has been the exact opposite of that and still is. And until we reverse those policies I don't expect to see much improvement in race relations. I find it all very sad.

I find hot black women to be AS hot as, or HOTTER than, hot white women. I dunno, it's just a personal preference. I'm a pasty white guy (ethnically I appear a typical Scotch-Irish blend) and I like ever-so-slightly more muscular but still small females. For these reasons, I think, I find the typical African-American gene pool mildly more attractive, by about 5%, over the entire population.

But when I go to an "ethnic" style club, I find that the AFrican-American women there tend to be of the sort that I do NOT prefer. I am sure there are plenty of customers for the women who work there, but I tend to prefer the type of dark-skinned women who also tend to work at a typically "white style" club. So, although I like dark-skinned women in the gene pool, in my experience I tend to find them at non-dark-skinned clubs. If that makes any sense at all.

Now, all that having been said ...

None of it is bigoted, and all of it is making decisions on the basis of group characteristics. Am I discriminating?

And indeed, the American race issue (to respond to a more recent portion of this thread) is ridiculous. I think the Affirmative Action agenda is perhaps the most insidious of ALL the knee-jerk liberal agendas that we have, currently, in this country. No, wait, the Welfare State agenda is a little more insidious. No, wait, maybe the No Animal Testing. I'm not sure which is worst. Well, anyway, the Affirmative Action idea is just racism by another name.

So there.

BG, I'm just the opposite, I prefer girls who look like they come from a similar northern European background as myself. A girl from a different ethnic group than that has to be extraordinarily good looking for me to be attracted to her. That's clearly a discriminating view but is it wrong? Am I genetically hardwired to prefer my own kind or is that a learned behavior? I haven't the faintest idea but I know that's how I feel. And I think a lot of other people edo too.

A lot of guys want strippers who are as different from them as possible. A taste of strange fruit. CPAs go to strip clubs for the impulsive wild child they could never have before. Japanese businessmen look past all the Asian strippers for the blonde "Viking goddesses". Many white guys are into black chicks, just like black guys can be into white chicks. The generalization that people want to be with their own kind simply doesn't apply in strip clubs like it does elsewhere (to whatever extent it does). Strip clubs are a place to escape from your own kind.

My only real preference, aside from good looks of any flavor, is enough cultural affinity that we can flirt and laugh along with each other. I'm probably prejudiced against some ghetto-style dancers on that account, just like I am against most of the less Americanized Russian girls I meet.

Funny thing is, I never seem to meet the type of black girls that I prefer. When there's a darker-skinned woman working at a strip club, she's inevitably more of the "African queen" type that I DON'T like, than the "suburban but black" type that I prefer.

But I agree on the "cultural affinity" thing. Often times, I find that a little bit too much conversation with a girl can lead to me starting to get turned off because of her lack of affinity with my background. Lack of education, or posturing by trying to demonstrate more education than she can accurately portray, is often the sticking point. Sometimes it's racist attitudes -- "I don't want no damn Asians or Spics, they're dirty!" types of comments from her doesn't really offend me (I'm not at the club to defend men I've never met against the accusations coming from girls I won't ever meet again) but they do kind of make me think less of her. Like, what kind of loser can generalize so simplistically? Strangely, this makes me lose interest in fondling her tits. :(

"A lot of guys want strippers who are as different from them as possible." Chandler, I agree, and I'm no different. A major part of the attraction of strippers for me is that they are very different from the people with whom I usually associate. I still want them to look like the girl next door, but not to behave like her. I like the girls with conventional (for me) appearance but unconventioal behavior.

I dunno if I'd go AS far as Chandler with the "as different as possible" idea. For me, I guess a 600-pound Chinese peasant with three eyes and a conjoined twin would be more different from me, than the African-American petite-athlete-type that I do prefer. I'd say, rather, that they do need to be different (that's part of the appeal of the strip club) but within a close range. So, it's like, "the same but differ'nt" or "zack same, whole 'nother." Within reason. :)

Book Guy, that's pretty much the point I was trying to make. My ATF and I look enough alike that people who don't know us have often asked if we were father-daughter (which is actually quite flattering because I'm a lot older than her father.) She and I are alike in many ways but our backgrounds are almost exact opposites, which is what makes it interesting.

But I think the point that Chandler is making is that a lot of guys prefer dancers who also look different, eg. WASPs who prefer Asian, Black or Hispanic dancers. I agree that there are a lot of guys like that but I'm not one of them.