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So does the country club have an explicit all-whites policy or you just heard they do this implicitly and secretly from rumor?
both major longshoreman's unions are not all-white; there is a famous history of the federal government using lawfare against these groups to force them to integrate and not exclude based on race and the spectre of that lawfare is ever present
claiming there is a difference between social outcry and "legal barriers" rings hollow when in the context of the last 80 years of federal policy of using the governments at every level to harass and attack groups engaged in behavior which isn't explicitly illegal
In the Pittsburgh area there are plenty of all-white "ethnic" clubs that refuse to admit blacks or even serve them as guests at their clubhouses. If you see something like "French Club", German Club", "Croatian Club", or anything similar is probably whites-only, especially if it isn't affiliated with a national organization. There's one near my that I know members of an I've been offered membership on a couple of occasions but declined. I have been in the bar before to drink, but I'm reluctant to go if invited. As @Lewis2 points out, social censure more than any illegality keeps their membership down, though @Bleep is incorrect in at least this instance as membership isn't a bunch of racist weirdos. It definitely skews older, but membership of all social clubs skews older. It is, in fact, fairly difficult to become a member, as they only admit new members once a year, and you need a member to sponsor you, and they are allegedly selective in that members who pay dues but aren't really active don't have as much pull as people who drink at the bar regularly.
The issue comes in that they don't tell you up front that blacks aren't permitted. This wouldn't be an issue if the prohibition was limited to membership and denial of blacks would be understandable in the context of it being hard to get in anyway. The problem arises when a member brings a guest who is black. They will immediately be refused service and told to leave. I know two people who have made the mistake of bringing a black guest only for both of them to be humiliated and dumbfounded. My uncle was briefly a member and quit when he found out about the policy. He's liberal, but I know MAGA people who refuse to drink there as well for that reason. The old timers who drink there aren't even particularly conservative. One friend of mine excuses it by saying that it's pretty common for private clubs to be whites-only and leaves it at that, and he's pretty down the middle politically.
I know of these clubs in my area, mainly because I have older family members interested in them as they try to figure out what to do with their retirement. They may currently be all white (and maybe an asian), but the reason is because interest in the subject matter is not equal across racial groups and the demographic (old people) already skews heavily white. In my experience, the boomers which makes up these groups would be thrilled if some black person was genuinely interested in the subject matter, otherwise a good fit for the group, and wanted to join. What they're not interested in is a black person whose interest in joining isn't the subject matter but for some other purpose. I'm pretty skeptical about a claim that a German Club would tell some black who speaks German they're unwelcome and they need to leave immediately, but perhaps it does happen secretly and privately in ways hard to verify.
I don't know of a situation where a member brought some black guest and was told to leave, but I also haven't interrogated my family member over it. There is a large space between something being whites-only and the reality that most non-whites are not qualified and only interested in these sorts of clubs for purposes other than the purpose of the club itself, e.g., to make it about them or their own identity. Lefties and most liberals are very sensitive to perceive the former and reluctant to consider the latter. No, a German club is not "whites-only" because it won't allow some black person to join the club and make the club about blacks.
In the current day, it is true social censure more than any illegality keeps their membership down, however this sort of statement is goofy in the context of the last 80 years of history where federal and state governments set out to persecute and destroy these groups when they were not social pariahs and had real influence. We didn't just pop into existence yesterday; this wasn't remotely organic, it was an organized, top-down restructuring of acceptable behavior from the state to the universities and elsewhere.
Do you genuinely believe that a group which holds itself out to be whites-only or wink-wink-definitely-not-whites-only-but-whites-only who had any sort of influence or power wouldn't be targeted by the state? Their defense is avoiding the eye of Sauron in secrecy and denial. We have examples and recent, from the multiple groups which attended the Charlottesville protest, and the police guided them directly into opposing groups to start fights, and then that was used as an excuse to have their membership arrested, investigated, and then prosecuted on dubious legal grounds under statutes designed specifically to attack the KKK. Comparing the treatment of these groups with the people attacking them, basically as proxies of the state because it was encouraged and allowed while and defense was met with police violence, makes clear we're not just talking about social censure.
You're hopelessly naive if you think that these clubs have anything but a vague historical connection to the ethnicities they represent, or that the members would admit a black person if they weren't forced to. If you think the governor of the German Club is going to be impressed by a black guy speaking German, there's about a 0% chance he speaks German and a 50% chance he doesn't have a drop of German blood in him. Of course, none of this matters, because he's not getting served to begin with, and if he were ever interested in membership, the humiliation of getting kicked out wouldn't convince him that these are people he wants to hang out with. The same was true for a different local club that I forgot to mention earlier, that had a swimming pool that notoriously didn't allow blacks to the point that kids would have birthday parties there and be specifically told not to invite any black friends. This was 30 years ago and the club has since closed, though it was pretty explicitly segregated well into the 90s at minimum. Hell, my dad was a member of a whites-only sportsmen's club, though it's my understanding that they've since adopted a nondiscrimination policy.
The clubs I know that are still segregated get away with it because they're otherwise pillars of the community, and incidents haven't made the news. The police certainly know what is going on, and will give them special privileges wrt DUIs and the like, and will remove an uppity black person who refuses to leave. They won't specifically cite any whites-only policy, only that it's a private club and they have a right to refuse service to anyone, and that any discrimination claims are a civil matter. Not that a civil case would be successful, since private clubs aren't subject to the civil rights act as they aren't open to the public (the particular clubs in question have restrictive enough membership that it's not like an American Legion where if you ring the buzzer and want to join someone will sponsor you as long as you don't seem like a troublemaker; they only admit new members once a year, and it's difficult to get in even if you're white). I don't even think that the members are particularly racist; like I said they're just older and protective of what tradition they have, even if that tradition sucks.
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