taking history seriously

these chinese entrepreneurs are taking history seriously:

Staff at the Western-style restaurant were told to ask Japanese customers who walked through the door to give their views of Japan's 1931-1945 occupation of parts of China....

staff are told to deny entrance to japanese patrons who did not recognize and apologize for the occupation, which a war crimes tribunal found killed 155,000 chinese.

you can call this unfair discrimination, but the restaurateurs see it otherwise:

"We totally welcome those Japanese customers who can correctly view history," the manager, surnamed Tian, was quoted as saying."But as for those customers who still refuse to admit to history, we want to say we don't like them."

what better way to do that than to deny entrance to their establishment?

forcing establishments to discriminate, as with mandatory affirmative action, jim crow laws, or even - dare i say it - a smoking ban, has detestable outcomes that definitely exclude people from the market. however, one restaurant selecting its own policies for admittance seems perfectly reasonable to me.

Labels: social