YMCA OF RUTHERFORD COUNTY, TENNESSEE IN MURFREESBORO 37130

The YMCA was established in England during the middle of the Nineteenth Century. Its founder had a noble cause in mind: To provide social and physical accommodation for respectable interaction by non-affluent people, at that time young males who roamed the streets of England because they were disenfranchised by the social dominance and elitism of the Anglican Church(aka Church of England). Only the elites and affluent in England were embraced by the Anglican Church, and adolescent and young unmarried males from poor families were without access to any social or educational opportunities that could provide them with the social capital for upward mobility and self-improvement of their lot in life.
Further, as poor people, members of this class of British citizens had no wherewithal to provide for themselves adequate physical accommodations that would provide a respectable and decent place to stay off the streets, as well as meet and interact with others similarly situated by circumstance.
The logo symbolizing YMCA has evolved into socially significant meanings for members of all sociological venues, regardless to skin color, creed or socio-economic status throughout the global community of our planet.
My point is that although the origins of the YMCA vest to a noble source and intention, in the United States, YMCA bureaucracy has divested itself of responsibility for the manner in which local YMCAs are operated. In bedroom communities like Murfreesboro, Tennessee, the YMCA operates as an extension of the county-wide all-white patriarchy in Rutherford County. Although Murfreesboro has a country club, the YMCA was operated like a country club, in that, it screened out non-Caucasian local residents, meaning Laotians, Hispanics, Latinos, African Americans and all other brown and black peoples.
The screening out process took the form of over-anticipating the income range of low-/moderate-income minorities. Once non-Caucasians approached the point-of-first-contact, the front desk, they were quoted exorbitant rates and fees that exceeded any reasonable expectation for joining and attending the Rutherford County YMCA, with the predictable results that these potential candidates for YMCA membership left, never to return; and, this local YMCA facility remained beyond the grasp of ordinary people in order for the families and friend of its all-white county-wide board of directors to exercise exclusive use and control over its personnel recruitment, training, hiring and membership composition.
Although the minority membership at the YMCA was disproportionately low, there were two or three minority members who consistently attended. They were frequently singled out for arbitrary reasons and systematically marginalized by the executive and administrative staff who frequently claimed that they were breaking non-existent rules.
Two of these members complained to the YMCA-USA central offices in Chicago, Illinois. After the members of the all-white county white board of directors learned that these members had made formal complaints to the YMCA-USA central offices in Chicago, Illinois, on July 21, 2006, the then-YMCA executive director Richard Canada summoned his ally Chris Haynes, a Rutherford County Sheriff's deputy, and had this deputy to pretend that he was at the YMCA facility in an official capacity during the time that these minority members were present in order to humiliate these minority members by personally making them leave the Rutherford County YMCA without cause and without provocation under a police presence.
This is the most scurrilous demonstration of small-town bigotry and regional provincialism. More importantly, the YMCA's tax-exempt status and privileges should be revoked as a future deterrent to this type of bureaucratic maladministration and civic debauchery. Regardless to the perception by most people that tax-exemption is really a non-issue, in that, it appears to mean that entities are simply being exempted from sales tax revenue, the fact is that tax exempt status goes far beyond the common conceptualization of the range of financial benefits which accrue to bureaucratic organizations as vast as the YMCA network. The monetary amounts are staggering because not only are they exempted from acquiring goods and services at a rate discounted by the absence of tax, but also they receive a plethora of pro bono and in-kind donations that ordinary citizens are bereft of the opportunity to benefit from.
This type of windfall is reasonable when the objectives served by its provisions are meritorious for the community at-large. And, I must say that more often than not, YMCA presence in a community is more of a benefit than would be merited by its absence. However, as in the case of the Rutherford County YMCA, all it takes is that one bad apple to spoil the whole barrel for everyone else.
Our American system of justice permits the IRS to regulate tax-exemption activities and to ensure that organizations and entities devoted to and involved in improving the state of social conditions for all of humanity are not unjustly penalized by taxation for being authentically altruistic.
This is an outrageous abuse of that privilege, and American society should exercise more monitoring and insight over supposed charitable entities, what goals and objectives are served by their activities, not just on the surface, and in what manner are there activities administered to the community at-large. Further, who is on the local board of directors and what connections,if any, exist between the people who make the "big bucks" and the families and friends of the YMCA board of directors who are taking personal tax write-offs in addition to those written off by the facility, itself.
Rutherford County, Tennessee YMCA needs a reality check and more than a rap on its wrists.