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Comment by throwaway290 | Hacker News Reader

In the picture of the buffet line, the woman reach for bacon appears to be of Asian descent, and a man at the back left appears to have dark skin. In the broader shot at the end of the story, a man sitting near the camera--blue shirt, broad in the back--has dark skin. So I don't think that the club can be enforcing a rule of exclusion. I would expect a club started by equestrian businessmen to reflect the better off chunk of the population.

What’s the value of bringing up race in such unrelated topics? It makes everyone suspicious about your motives.

A group of people is having regular fun, eat food, exercise. Do you suspect they discriminate based on race?

Of course it would be a throwaway with the malicious assumption. Might as well say "I wonder if the reason why they have trouble finding new members is that they kill half of them".

I asked whether it is actually limited to whites or whether it is self-selecting this way, and you seem to think this question is illegitimate somehow. OK.

Unlike reading clubs, yachting clubs, AA etc. there seems to be just nothing else that brings these people together. Maybe you know what it is?

(I am not American myself but I recall there is a significant percentage of non-white people yet I saw zero on photos of the club in this article. There is clearly a nostalgic vibe throughout the text, the question is how far it goes.)

PS. Feel free to explain what does using a throwaway have to do with it if you want. This acc is the one I'm logged in atm but also yes I don't want to implicate my main in controversial topics like this if tides turn and bringing up these questions is again prosecuted with something more than downvotes on HN. I have been following you for a while and didn't expect you to be pro real name policies.

Because the idea that they have a white-only policy is profoundly ridiculous.

...and because if it were the case, we would have likely already heard all about it.

I'm not pro real name policies, it just seems very unlikely that a group in this day and age would ban specific races from attending. Given that, and the fact that the account is a throwaway, it's a priori more likely that it's a troll trying to stir up a flame war than an actual question.

Maybe the article photographers had a bias for white people, that would be more plausible, but I can't see how any group today (that isn't explicitly a racist/extremist group) would ban races from its members.

It could discourage them without explicit banning though. But then I guess it would be news if this was true, so fair enough.

Addendum: To be clear I do not support forced racial equity / reverse racism, but considering the history I would expect article authors to make a bit of extra effort to show diversity on photos if there is any (and if there is none it just begs the question, no offense).

Yeah, I guess they could. I hope not, but then again I don't know anything about this club...

You're being downvoted for just being unnecessary. Also, there's nothing wrong with a group of only-white people doing something. That doesn't mean that they don't welcome non-whites.

It sounds like, due to the club's location, it largely appeals to wealthy people. Wealthy people in the US disproportionately skew white/Asian. That's a problem, for sure, but it's probably not the club's fault.

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