Oh look, prejudice

[illusionofjoy]

Goths have been banned from the Princes Street Gardens in Edinburgh, UK - the teenage set, that is. I wrangled this link from a thread on Slashgoth.org. Apparently a bunch of black-clad kids in white face paint decided to trash the park. The reaction of town officials, according to the article was to ban every teenage Goth from the park, going so far as to threaten arrest to any who decided to show themselves there.

It should be obvious to anybody with any base level of cognitive thought what exactly is wrong with the policy. First and foremost, the town is discriminating against a group of individuals based solely on how they dress, because of the actions of a few who dressed that way. There is a legal term for this type of policy: it's called "profiling." What of all the other Goths in the town who may wish to go to the park? Are the police going to card the black-clad set to make sure they're at least 20? Asinine policy calls for more asinine policy.

What should be happening is that the town should be dealing with only those individuals who committed the acts of vandalism, rather than looking at how they dress and deciding to ban anyone who dresses that way from having access to the park. I think that such a solution makes sense to everyone but a bureaucracy.