My direct quote, it's interesting that that doesn't say what you said it does. I'm not saying this isn't a struggle for white people, silly. I'm saying that they have less to grapple with losing. Even if they have the same level of connection to community through their hair, losing that won't other them from an intrinsic part of their identity. That is a lesser loss, which was my point and the reason why I emphasized that.

Completely ignoring the thousands of different ethnicities

I'm not ignoring shit, dude. You asked what being white had to do with it, I gave a counter-example of someone who isn't white losing something deeper than a white person could face in the same situation. I don't need to explain that hair is a big part of many identities to demonstrate my point or cover every possible group that it could possibly apply to, just that it isn't the same for white people.

[–] daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

And that's where I fundamentally disagree. And what I do think we could not agree.

You said that black people (and supposedly all other ethnicities but white for some "absolutely-non-racist" reason), have something defined by their race that makes them lose something when they lose their hair that white people doesn't have.

You said that black people lose a sense of community when they go bald because hair saloons are more important to them because of their race. I do not agree with this, as I know that hair saloons have not that "black community" meaning to all black people, and that many white people have that "community" feeling for their hair saloons. Bonding with other human beings in a hair saloon is not a race specific condition. And pointing out that while you outed white people for some "not-racist" reason you where unable to find more examples of not white people that lose something fundamentally related to their race that white people do not lose when they go bald.

Going even further I would say that you are not even doing a favour to black people here. As I'm pretty sure that plenty of balding black people are suffering not because they "loose their saloon community", they suffer because they like their hair, they like how they look with hair, they believe that hair makes them look younger and more attractive, and they don't stop being black for feeling this way or because they don't have a "black saloon community". As these feelings are not race-lock. A black person, an asian person, a white person, a latin-american person... feeling like shit for aesthetic reasons because you are loosing your hair it's one pretty common suffering among most races and cultures I know.

You also while accusing me to "white defaultism" are doing a very strong USA defaultism. Ignoring that the majority of black people of the word does indeed not live in the USA, and does not have those US related experiences. You can be in a country with 99,9% black people, with not weird shenanigans about racism and barbershops. And they still most of the time don't like when they go bald, why? because it makes them look old, same as an "privileged" white dude.

On an even more profound note about racism. Trying to equate "community" things to "race" things... not good in my opinion. On this example, the moment you say that something fundamental about being black is a "community formed in the hair saloon" how do you think that makes feel black people who doesn't have such "saloon community"? Black people that go to a white barber, that do not bond in the barber for whatever reason, or maybe they cut their own hair because they are broke af? Are they not black? Are they less valid? There are common black experiences, of course, most of them related to a blatant racism against them. I just don't think that "hair saloons" and thing related with hair are one of those experiences.