# Assembly by Race **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 26, 2005, 12:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/assembly-by-race/318654 "2005-08-26T00:22:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![XP39C\_2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/91b2a8/32.png) [@XP39C\_2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XP39C_2)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2005, 12:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/assembly-by-race/318654/1 "2005-08-26T00:22:02Z")
The other day I saw a picture of a group of students in a Jewish day school. I got me thinking – people are allowed to make Jewish schools, Christian schools, Islamic schools. Presumably the reasoning is that the schools wants to teach religion along with normal academic subjects. There are also other race based institutions that have little to do with education. [This one](http://www.jccmanhattan.org/), for instance. I would presume the reasoning is that people find comfort in being with people like themselves, in this case, Jewish people may come here to be with other Jews. If a someone outside of the ethnic group wanted to attend an ethnic organization and were turned away, would that be racial discrimination? If someone wanted to make a community center for Catholics, Sunni Muslims, Blacks, and Latinos, would they be within their rights (legally) or would that be racial discrimination? If someone wanted to create a community center for everyone but a specific group (for the purposes of discussion, let’s say Japanese). Would it be within their rights to do this? So basically, it boils down to the question: Is a race based organization racial discrimination or is it protected by the First Amendment? OP Disclaimer: I don’t want this to turn into a mess, like the other thread a while back did (it was about housing rights, and everyone accused the guy of being a neo-nazi racist when he was just thought he was protesting the government’s interference in the right of communities to decide who lives with them). Let’s try not to make this about whether or not racial discrimination is a good thing, but if race based organizations are racial discrimination or protected by the right to peaceably assemble. XP39C^2 ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2005, 12:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/assembly-by-race/318654/2 "2005-08-26T00:31:46Z")
If it’s your own private organization and you’re not taking government money, you’re free to turn away whoever you want as far as I’m aware. ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2005, 2:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/assembly-by-race/318654/3 "2005-08-26T02:15:52Z")
For the record, the Catholic schools around here will aceept non-Catholic students, as long as they agree to follow the rules, which include taking religion classes. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2005, 2:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/assembly-by-race/318654/4 "2005-08-26T02:17:01Z")
The right to free assembly means that _the government_ cannot prevent people from assembling, although obviously there are limits to that. People can decide not to assemble with whoever they want. ---
**Author:** ![zev\_steinhardt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/97f17d/32.png) [@zev\_steinhardt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zev_steinhardt)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2005, 2:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/assembly-by-race/318654/5 "2005-08-26T02:59:55Z")
> [@XP39C^2](#): > > There are also other race based institutions that have little to do with education. [This one](http://www.jccmanhattan.org/), for instance. I would presume the reasoning is that people find comfort in being with people like themselves, in this case, Jewish people may come here to be with other Jews. > If someone wanted to make a community center for Catholics, Sunni Muslims, Blacks, and Latinos, would they be within their rights (legally) or would that be racial discrimination? Of course, you do realize that Jews, Catholics and Sunni Muslims are races. Zev Steinhardt ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2005, 3:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/assembly-by-race/318654/6 "2005-08-26T03:31:25Z")
**Zev** , you remind me. When I went to library school and took a class in ethnic librarianship, one professor who had emigrated from the Soviet Union kept referring to Muslims as an “ethnic group” no matter how many times I gently reminded him that Islam transcends ethnicity and includes a huge number of different ethnic groups. He was otherwise smart and I think he was genuinely free of all bigotry. It’s just that he’d made his academic reputation as a scholar of ethnicity, and when your only tool is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. ---
**Author:** ![DocCathode](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doccathode/32/18773_2.png) [@DocCathode](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DocCathode)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2005, 4:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/assembly-by-race/318654/7 "2005-08-26T04:01:19Z")
> [@Johanna](#): > > When I went to library school and took a class in ethnic librarianship, one professor who had emigrated from the Soviet Union kept referring to Muslims as an “ethnic group” no matter how many times I gently reminded him that Islam transcends ethnicity and includes a huge number of different ethnic groups. How old was he when he left the USSR? Soviet Jews had ‘Jew’ under the race entry on all official cards and forms. It’s not a stretch to assume that Muslims were treated the same way. It could be that he can’t get rid of the classifications he lived with for decades. ---
**Author:** ![EllisDee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ellisdee/32/4531_2.png) [@EllisDee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EllisDee)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2005, 4:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/assembly-by-race/318654/8 "2005-08-26T04:59:51Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > If it’s your own private organization and you’re not taking government money, you’re free to turn away whoever you want as far as I’m aware. As Martha Burke (that was her, right?) found out when Hootie took a hardline stance at Augusta. Not even the free market could overcome their right to admit whom they chose. I’m still a bit iffy on the whole “discrimination in private clubs” thing. If I understand correctly, a private club can be forced to admit (certain) minority members against their members’ wishes, right? And is this generally regarded as a good thing? ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2005, 5:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/assembly-by-race/318654/9 "2005-08-26T05:15:56Z")
> [@](#): > > If I understand correctly, a private club can be forced to admit (certain) minority members against their members’ wishes, right? And is this generally regarded as a good thing? In a limited number of cases, various authorities, (courts, states, or municipalities), have determined that a particular variety of men’s club was the specific location where movers and shakers set up large financial deals in an informal atmosphere of friendship. The deals were not considered unethical, but the manner of limiting membership by sex or race was deemed to have been a _de facto_ way of prohibiting access to those deals to one or another protected group. (Effectively a mixing of restraint of trade with unlawful discrimination.) In those individual cases in select locations, either the courts or the governing bodies have ordered those clubs either to open their memberships or face sanctions against their charters. The cases and petitions to legislature or council may or may not have had merit, but there has been no _general_ prohibition against closed memberships for private organizations across the country. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2005, 5:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/assembly-by-race/318654/10 "2005-08-26T05:31:36Z")
As **Zev** noted, either through irony or typo, Judaism is a religion, not a race, so there may be a misunderstanding on the part of the OP regarding which groups are “allowed” to associate. Since we certainly allow the formation of Irish ethnic groups, Polish Ethnic groups, Italian ethnic groups, German ethnic groups, etc., I see no reason why we would forbid “Jewish” ethnic groups. (I put _Jewish_ in quotation marks because for all practical purposes, a Jewish ethnic group in the U.S, (particularly in NYC), would be an Ashkenazi _ethnic_ group, while other Jewish _ethnic_ groups, (Sephardic, Mizrahi, etc.) would rarely find enough members to actually form a club in these later years in the U.S., even though the Shephardic Jews vastly outnumbered the Ashkenazim in the U.S. prior to around 1890.) ---
**Author:** ![Billdo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/billdo/32/315_2.png) [@Billdo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Billdo)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2005, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/assembly-by-race/318654/11 "2005-08-26T16:27:07Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > In a limited number of cases, various authorities, (courts, states, or municipalities), have determined that a particular variety of men’s club was the specific location where movers and shakers set up large financial deals in an informal atmosphere of friendship. The deals were not considered unethical, but the manner of limiting membership by sex or race was deemed to have been a _de facto_ way of prohibiting access to those deals to one or another protected group. (Effectively a mixing of restraint of trade with unlawful discrimination.) In those individual cases in select locations, either the courts or the governing bodies have ordered those clubs either to open their memberships or face sanctions against their charters. Tn New York, the basis for the rules prohibiting discrimination in clubs was that the clubs in question were deemed to be “public accommodation”, meaning they acted more like public restaurants and bars, rather than just purely as private clubs. New York Executive Law sec. 292(9) provides the following definition (bold and italics emphasis added): > [@](#): > > The term “place of public accommodation, resort or amusement” shall include, except as hereinafter specified, all places included in the meaning of such terms as: inns, taverns, road houses, hotels, motels, whether conducted for the entertainment of transient guests or for the accommodation of those seeking health, recreation or rest, or restaurants, or eating houses, or any place where food is sold for consumption on the premises; buffets, saloons, barrooms, or any store, park or enclosure where spirituous or malt liquors are sold; ice cream parlors, confectionaries, soda fountains, and all stores where ice cream, ice and fruit preparations or their derivatives, or where beverages of any kind are retailed for consumption on the premises; wholesale and retail stores and establishments dealing with goods or services of any kind, dispensaries, clinics, hospitals, bath-houses, swimming pools, laundries and all other cleaning establishments, barber shops, beauty parlors, theatres, motion picture houses, airdromes, roof gardens, music halls, race courses, skating rinks, amusement and recreation parks, trailer camps, resort camps, fairs, bowling alleys, golf courses, gymnasiums, shooting galleries, billiard and pool parlors; garages, all public conveyances operated on land or water or in the air, as well as the stations and terminals thereof; travel or tour advisory services, agencies or bureaus; public halls and public elevators of buildings and structures occupied by two or more tenants, or by the owner and one or more tenants. **Such term shall not include . . . .any institution, club or place of accommodation which proves that it is in its nature distinctly private. In no event shall an institution, club or place of accommodation be considered in its nature distinctly private if it has more than one hundred members, provides regular meal service and regularly receives payment for dues, fees, use of space, facilities, services, meals or beverages _directly or indirectly from or on behalf of a nonmember for the furtherance of trade or business._** An institution, club, or place of accommodation which is not deemed distinctly private pursuant to this subdivision may nevertheless apply such selective criteria as it chooses in the use of its facilities, in evaluating applicants for membership and in the conduct of its activities, so long as such selective criteria do not constitute discriminatory practices under this article or any other provision of law. For the purposes of this section, a corporation incorporated under the benevolent orders law or described in the benevolent orders law but formed under any other law of this state or a religious corporation incorporated under the education law or the religious corporations law shall be deemed to be in its nature distinctly private. In short, in New York, a private club may discriminate so long as it does not allow its dues or food/beverage charges to be paid directly or indirectly by non-members for business purposes. In other words, businesses cannot subsidize the membership fees or pay for corporate events.