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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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