This bugs me but am I just being stupid?

[Pap_sak]

If a place/ club or society declared itself "for whites" it would be (and rightly so) hounded, there would be a public outcry and probably would be shut down.

Yet it seems this is not a problem for clubs and societies for black people. These groups can, in fact, openly recruit and advertise.

Couple of examples:

http://www.meetup.com/Cape-Town-Black-Professional-Social-Meetup/

http://www.abasa.org.za/

http://www.bmfonline.co.za/?page=who_we_are (starts with we are a non-racial... )

There are of course many others. Now in the above, if you changes the black for white - people would have a serious problem. Weirdly, I would not have a problem if groups where there for different cultures (so Zulu, German, Xhosa, Greek), but bugs me it's raced based and it's deemed ok.

I personally would not want to have anything to do with any organisation that defined itself on race - infact, I thought this would be against the constitution. It seems not.

But, as said, am I just not looking at this correctly? I would be interested if members of these clubs would have a problem with a whites only club? I think not.

[IanF]

Papsak
Why don't you apply to join the BMF from their website

The BMF is a non- racial, thought leadership organisation founded in 1976, with the main purpose of influencing socio-economic transformation of our country, in pursuit of socio-economic justice, fairness and equity. The BMF continues to be vocal on these aforementioned matters and has been keeping Corporate South Africa in check and encouraging participation of the broader South African stakeholders.

The organisation stands for the development and empowerment of managerial leadership primarily amongst black people within organisations and the creation of managerial structures and processes, which reflect the demographics, and values of the wider society.

Whereas the BMF is not apolitical, but is non-partisan. The BMF is however not neutral on matters of transformation- We are pro-transformation.

So they shouldn't have a problem if you are white.
You can join here

I wonder what this does for someones self esteem joining them?

[Dave A]

Weirdly, I would not have a problem if groups where there for different cultures (so Zulu, German, Xhosa, Greek), but bugs me it's raced based and it's deemed ok.

Would you still not have a problem if those cultural groups were coming together around issues of access to economic opportunity?

[Pap_sak]

Not really - the idea of business is to maximise profit and therefore it's natural to chose suppliers/service providers that for you offer the best deal with regards to service,price or geographical location - a business would probably not last that long if it only dealt with a certain race group or cultural group for input services and stock. That's not to say business have not been built around cultural groups - Afrikaans music or Black Like Me products but for the most part are aimed at LSM groups regardless of race.

I think it's only a government where costs is not a priority that can force a race based requirement for services and supplies.