United States
Country clubs can be exclusive organizations. In small towns, membership in the country club is often not as exclusive or expensive as in larger cities where there is competition for a limited number of memberships. In addition to the fees, some clubs have additional requirements to join. For example, membership can be limited to those who reside in a particular housing community.
Country clubs were founded by upper-class elites between 1880 and 1930. Therefore, country clubs were generally created and financed by wealthy white Anglo-Saxon Protestants in a time when economic racial and cultural issues segregated the United States. By 1907, country clubs were claimed to be “the very essence of American upper-class.” The number of country clubs increased exponentially with industrialization, the rise in incomes, and suburbanization in the 1920’s. During the 20’s, country clubs acted as community social centers. However, the number of country clubs decreased drastically during the Great Depression for lack of membership funding.
Historically, many country clubs refused to admit members of minority racial groups, such as Black people, Asian Americans, and non-white Hispanic Americans, as well as members with specific faiths, such as Jewish or Catholic individuals. In many jurisdictions, such discriminatory requirements are now prohibited, but in others, such policies are still legal or are subject to specific circumstances. In some cases, lawsuits have forced clubs to drop discriminatory policies.
In one example, in 1990 professional golfer Tom Watson resigned from the Kansas City Country Club in Mission Hills, Kansas, in protest after local businessman and civic leader Henry Bloch was denied membership. Watson believed the club denied Bloch because he was Jewish. Although Watson is not Jewish, his then-wife and children are. After Watson's nationally-publicized protest, Bloch was offered a membership, which he accepted. Watson rejoined the club in 1995. Since that time The Kansas City Country Club has accepted several minority and Jewish members. In September 2008 Katon Dawson left Forest Lake Club after a twelve year membership because it still has a whites-only restriction. In addition, country club membership tends to be self-selective and people often choose to join clubs where they can associate with people from similar socio-economic and cultural backgrounds. The Philadelphia Cricket Club is the oldest country club in the United States.
Read more about this topic: Country Club
Famous quotes related to united states:
“We now in the United States have more security guards for the rich than we have police services for the poor districts. If you’re looking for personal security, far better to move to the suburbs than to pay taxes in New York.”
—John Kenneth Galbraith (b. 1908)
“The white American man makes the white American woman maybe not superfluous but just a little kind of decoration. Not really important to turning around the wheels of the state. Well the black American woman has never been able to feel that way. No black American man at any time in our history in the United States has been able to feel that he didn’t need that black woman right against him, shoulder to shoulder—in that cotton field, on the auction block, in the ghetto, wherever.”
—Maya Angelou (b. 1928)
“In the United States, though power corrupts, the expectation of power paralyzes.”
—John Kenneth Galbraith (b. 1908)
“Greece is a sort of American vassal; the Netherlands is the country of American bases that grow like tulip bulbs; Cuba is the main sugar plantation of the American monopolies; Turkey is prepared to kow-tow before any United States pro-consul and Canada is the boring second fiddle in the American symphony.”
—Andrei Andreyevich Gromyko (1909–1989)