Segregationist suburban swim party!

Gee, Rod--as they said to me when I moved to Texas, "you're not from around here, are ya, honey?" If you lived in Pennsylvania, you wouldn't even imagine that you were going to startle people by pointing out that racism is rampant here. It's kind of a toss-up between the more genteel racism of the eastern PA suburbs and the outright racism of western Pennsitucky. A black friend who had worked with troubled youth in various regions grudgingly allowed that Pennsylvania was marginally better than Indianapolis. Which should tell you something right there. But perhaps you're not familiar with Indiana either.

I am from Indianapolis. Until the late sixties we were told don't let the sun set on you in Greenwood.

When I came home on leave from basic training in 1978, I was denied entry to the Stoplight Disco due to excessive blackness. Naturally I called every media outlet and newspaper in the city and ended up triggering a firestorm that shut them down. Because that's how I roll.

The city is remarkably better than when I was young, and it's been at least several years since the police shot their last unarmed, handcuffed suspect to death. So yea Indy!

Last time I was called n****r to my face was outside of Fort Bragg, North Carolina in Fayetteville. Funny, I was in uniform then too.

It's an upsetting story, but I know of a crunchy con who blogged about his fear of Hispanic trick-or-treaters.
Racism is everywhere, and despite the best efforts of many, it's still not eradicated.

If I were paying to use a pool, I'd pick one that didn't have any kids in it.

All kids, black, white, brown, whatever, make pool-going unpleasant at best and unsanitary at worst.

It may nothing to do with race, and everything to do with the fact that they are inner-city children with less than stellar behavior.

A former church of mine included some inner-city children one year in their summer camp. It was an unmitigated disaster. The children were rude, had little respect for authority, swore like sailors, stole personal items from the other campers and were often physically threatening if they didn't get their way. The other children didn't like being around them and the parents were upset, too (as they had not only paid for their own children to attend but had provided scholarships for the inner-city children).

To quote the club president in this article, those children "fundamentally changed the atmosphere" in the camp.

In the desire to continually cry "racism", many forget that those who are poor and live in the inner-city are often that way because of poor choices and a way of life that does not contribute to success. Their parenting styles too often produce poorly socialized children who have a difficult time functioning in society.

http://blogs.dallasobserver.com/unfairpark/2008/11/someone_anyone_take_the_candy.php

I think I will chime in on this. When I lived in Dallas, they would bring vans full of children to our neighborhood and work it until 11PM. This got to be such a nuisance that the local kids quit trick-or-treating because all the neighbors quit just giving out treats.

I'm skeptical that race doesn't play any part in this, but can we at least accept the possibility that these kids were just badly behaved? If you brought a bunch of kool-aid stained white kids with rat tails and plastic Spider-Man shoes from the trailer park and dumped them into the same setting, I'm not sure the reaction would have been any different.

Rod: "But it is politically correct to refrain from making the observation of human behavior because it offends a liberal's sense of propriety."

I disagree. What offends is the attempt to link certain aspects of human behavior (especially the bad kinds) to the perpetrator's race or ethnicity. I'm more liberal than you, but I openly criticize bad behavior.

If you brought a bunch of kool-aid stained white kids with rat tails and plastic Spider-Man shoes from the trailer park and dumped them into the same setting, I'm not sure the reaction would have been any different.

Oh for heaven's sake. Inner city doesn't automatically mean hoodlum or residing in a trailer for that matter. A good portion of the soldiers at Fort Bragg live in the trailer parks right outside the gates.

If a kid comes to your door late at night, you tell them, "Hey, it's too late! If the light's out there's no candy left!" If they appear to be in a condition of advanced adolescence, tell 'em, "You're too old for trick or treating, don't you have a Halloween party to go to?" If they appear threatening, you indicate that you'll be calling the police now and the station's around the corner…

This is what we always do, and the kids generally take it in good humor--more often than not with an apology or acknowledgement. This method seems WAY more fair to the actual kids than speculating that their behavior implies some wider generality about the tendencies of their "race" or the general unfitness of their parents. We get kids driven in to our neighborhood, too, and they are from all over the city and the world (you haven't seen cute until you've seen a teeny Russian ballerina offering up her first "trick or treat" of the night)--trying to guess who's behaving badly because of what country of origin would be a fool's errand.

Sorry, that's a bit off topic, but it does seem like perhaps the country club representative could've said to the supervisor, "Look, just so everyone's happy and comfortable, would you let the kids know that *spiderman shoes/cursing/yelling/rattails/insert offensive behavior here* are not permitted at the pool?"

That's why this story seems so odd to me: the summer camp supervisor never seems to have gotten a reason about why the kids were kicked out, or any advisement about how to make it a better experience for everyone. Seems to me if we are to hew to societal duty, honesty and dignity in our interactions with others, we need to be straightforward about it when they offend us or do something that seems inappropriate or ill-mannered, rather than taking the rather easy out of simply thinking we're better than them.

Your Name at 1:34, I have had the opposite experience. My husband works at a school that offers summer activities and camps to both the surrounding (poor, predominantly African American) neighborhood and more privileged kids who are generally driven in. His experience, and my experience whenever I have visit him, is that kids are kids: if they are doing something that interests them and are well supervised, they basically all act the same way (like kids). There are a few rotten apples who simply don't know how to or don't care to follow the rules, and these kids generally get thrown out of the program (but I would imagine there are a few rotten apples within any ethnic/socioeconomic group, don't you think?). Criticize their parents up the wazoo if you must, but I really don't think it's fair to impose your discomfort about class differences on the kids themselves. (especially at a BIBLE CAMP!! Jeez louise!)

Am I the only one who thinks this perhaps only points out that our society underappreciates those who are skilled at working with kids? You can't just recruit volunteers or pay some grad student peanuts and expect them to be able to control a large, diverse group of kiddies 24/7.

Rod left off the last two sentences of the article for some reason:

The club president said allowing daycares at the pool was an "experiment" that didn't work out.

He said other programs were disinvited as well. One daycare counselor told us she just didn't expect this to happen in 2009, with a black president in the oval office.

I don't disagree that race might be behind this. On the other hand, it might just be a matter of adult members not wanting to be disturbed by high-spirited kids (although considering it was just one day out of the week for 90 minutes, you'd think the members would be able to suck it up for the sake of charity).

but hey, it never occurred to me to blame it on the parents' *race* of all things, or to chalk it up as something white folks do.

But hey, the only people I've ever seen doing it in my city are Hispanics. So it's perfectly normal to wonder if there's something cultural at work here. Big deal.

But black criminals are always sooo much scarier.

People from a group with one set of cultural expectations may not mix well with a group with different expectations. It's called culture shock. When street kids, irrespective of ethnicity, are expected to interact with kids from a very different upbringing and with different experiences, you can expect aggression, bullying and a poor time for all.

It isn't always the poor kids doing the bullying and threatening either.

But black criminals are always sooo much scarier.

Black criminals make up a far bigger proportion of the black population than Swedish or even Irish criminals do of theirs. Their larger presence in any population (coupled with the automatic assumption of racism on the part of any white accuser) does make them scarier, and with good reason.

"Your Name at 1:34 said :I have had the opposite experience. My husband works at a school that offers summer activities and camps to both the surrounding (poor, predominantly African American) neighborhood and more privileged kids who are generally driven in. His experience, and my experience whenever I have visit him, is that kids are kids: if they are doing something that interests them and are well supervised, they basically all act the same way (like kids)."

My 20 year old daughter has worked for several summers in day camps and would agree with you. She got "stuck" working at the social housing day camp her first summer and said she would choose to go back there following summers. In her own words, "All kids can be brats and I'd rather work with ones who have a reason to be and need some attention than the ones that are bratty because they are spoiled."

In my neighbourhood it is the overwhelmingly white, (crunchy con?) country/farm kids who are driven in to the neighbourhood for trick or treating.

Celtic, that Scout Camp sounds like a bad experience for all involved. For whatever reason, that kind of friction doesn't play a large part in the school I mentioned in my earlier post. It may be that most of the kids there have common interests to begin with, or grow to be friends over the course of a workshop or a summer, or something. I could see how a culture clash would happen in similar situations though. I do think that skilled teachers and childcare providers can make a difference.

Why do I get the feeling that the purpose of this post was not so much to show that racism is a problem that still exists in America, as it was an opportunity to imply, "see, we Southerners aren't so bad, after all."

I've been counting the minutes until this exact post. Winner.
Yes, I know all about those roving black gangs of terrorist killers blowing up department stores and gunning down clergy.
Oh wait, that's the IRA.

I'm not sure that your argument is really helped by conflating a terrorist/quasi liberation movement with garden variety street crime that may or may not be compounded by racism.

I have no doubt that the IRA was a result of Protestant bigotry, but that is another matter.

>quasi liberation movement

So that's what their calling it these days? No matter what barbaric criminality or depraved acts are committed by majority Caucasian societies from Spain, to Italy, to Ireland, to Russia, America's black inner city criminals are always worse.

here is nowhere near as much adult supervision, and Scouts are expected to behave to a higher standard and adhere to certain principles.

The scouts who burned by camp project and terrorized my best friend were no doubt well aware of those principles.

When I lived in Kansas, there was a big municipal pool, but there was no shade, so it was broiling hot, and it was crowded in the summer, and you couldn't bring in your own food and drink. I found a small, shady private pool with a reasonable fee, nearer to my neighborhood, where you were allowed to picnic. I mentioned to a black friend who had grown up in Kansas City, MO, that I'd joined this pool, and noticed a certain coolness in the air. "What's the matter?" I said. "Is there something wrong with this pool?" Well, then I found out that, sure enough, the downtown pool had been segregated till 1965. And when it was desegregated, that was when some white people built the smaller pool and made it members-only. So I'd just hopped onto the coattails of racism, without meaning to. My friend thought I'd done it on purpose. But the point really wasn't whether I'd done it knowingly or not. The point was that I COULD do it, and remain completely oblivious to the implications, because I was white. If you're white, you can just pretend racism never happened, but if you're black, you can't.

When we lived in Michigan, I became a Girl Scout leader. About a third of the girls were from a mostly black housing project. There was a small core group of three or four black girls who caused a lot of trouble. Eventually the trouble escalated to some behavior that endangered themselves and others, and I had to ask them to leave. I made it clear that they'd be welcome back if they could have their mom or other adult call me so we could sit down and talk about acceptable behavior. That never happened, but one of the girls did call me herself and apologize very nicely.

Okay, now for the rest of the story . . . . There was an equal number of little white girls who were also undisciplined, rude and wild. It was one of those girls who broke into my pantry during a sleepover and drank half a bottle of wine, as well as smoking in her sleeping bag in the basement, thus running the risk of burning my house down. I had to let her grandmother know I couldn't have her in my troop, either. The grandmother tried to insinuate that I was to blame for having an opened bottle of wine in a house where children were present. The grandfather was present for this conversation. He was surly and clearly drunk at 10 o'clock in the morning. It was this same child whose answer to the question, "what do you want to be when you grow up?" was "I want to be a hooker." When I said I didn't believe she really meant that, she replied, "Why not? My sister's a hooker!"

There were, as well, some very nice, well-behaved black girls from the same housing project. After I'd tried in vain to get them to join my troop, I found out that their moms wouldn't let them because I had too many bad kids in my troop!

When I first starting working with the Girl Scouts, I was assisting the then-leader. She was an outright racist who didn't want any black or poor kids in the troop at all. Her husband was a liquor distributor who was in bed with the Mafia. He was kind of scary. But, you know, getting rich while associated with crime lords in peddling an addictive substance that causes a lot of death and sorrow was more morally virtuous in her eyes than being the child of a poor woman who was addicted to such substances. Go figure.

Social relations are complicated. Waaay more complicated than "black kids are bad."

Richard Bottoms:

You seem to have some personal stake in this, so I am reluctant to really engage here. In any event and whatever your view of the IRA, that organization cannot be reasonably nor productively compared to, say, the Bloods or the Crips in Los Angeles.

The IRA was viewed as a criminal enterprise or a freedom fighting enterprise according to your religious and political beliefs. If you happened to be a Protestant supporter of the RUC and had a good job and your kids went to schools were Catholic kids were not to be seen, you probably thought that the IRA were criminal thugs.

If you were a an out of work Catholic in rat infested public slums and your kids had no hope for a better future since the laws (and law enforcement), social structure and wealth were all run by Protestants who hated your Papist guts...your views of the IRA might be a tad different.

Just sayin'.

If you also happened to be a Catholic who had was dragged from your home at night, your teeth knocked out and a 1/4 inch drill bit put through both your knee caps and your wife gang raped by Protestant para militaries for being an uppity Catholic...you might just have a different view on membership in the IRA.

Yes, the IRA did a lot of real, real nasty stuff too. Blood on both sides, and for the life of me I can't really see how a government that behaves in a criminal fashion (which the government of North Ireland did)should get any more benefit of the doubt than the ostensibly "criminal" organization that rose to fight it.

Sorry, but that is how I see it. When you think about it, we had some rather similar reasons for being mad at the Brits ourselves. I think we just celebrated a holiday about that, in fact.

1) probably was a different atmosphere with a lot of black children around
2) even if this was purely about race, its a private club, membership has its privileges
3) I have absolutely no problem if blacks, hispanics, or left-handed albinos want to start their own clubs and exclude whitey-- and in fact they have an do.

Well, on face value it's easy to cry racism but I would really have to see how these kids are acting, compared to how other kids are acting, to determine whether that's really the case. My husband works with underpriviliged kids, mostly black and Hispanic, and he says a lot of these kids just don't know how to act in pools, lakes, and general outdoorsy-type nature places.

Hey, I have an anecdote. I was recently on vacation in the Bahamas. I left the little, heavily white (for the Bahamas) enclave where I was staying and took a bikeride along the main road. Funnily enough as I was peddling I passed a group of 5-6 black youth, gave them a smile and a 'Hi guys'. I was shouted at, told to 's**k my d***' etc. I passed the same group on the way back, and again was shouted at an insulted. I didn't hear/see this group carry on in this manner with other (black Bahamian) passers by.

Am I bitter about it, do I cling to this experience? No, I just learned where to go and where not to go in this particular island in the Bahamas.

I love Randy Newman, but the passive construction "free to be put in a cage" is gag-inducing PC tripe.

Welfare killed black fatherhood. Fatherless black homes are veritable factories pumping out unemployable thugs, hard convicts and young corpses-to-be. What part of "We have seen the enemy and he is us" doesn't pathology-enabling PC America get?

Sigaliris, your personal anecdote is interesting but it doesn't begin to address the empirical data Rod posted. Jesse Jackson's quote does, even if he later caved to PC pressure and tried to retract it by saying he'd been quoted out of context:

"There is nothing more painful for me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery -- and then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved."

Oh please, hootie! Illinois puts "Land of Lincoln" right on their license plates.

As a parent, I would be upset if a daycare showed up at my pool (at a private club). It would not matter the race of the children, only that daycare kids, kids without their parents to watch or control them, were there.

I don't like going to the zoo when the school kids show up, or to any type of park, and find a pre-school group or daycare there. I avoid it.

I'm not saying race didn't play a part in it, only that there could be other reasons as well.

So I'm probably just being a PC scold here, but is anyone else disturbed by the way this post (in which I guess Rod was making the simple point "Yankees can be racist too") has turned into a rather smug forum for many iterations of the general theme: "Those kids just don't know how to act"?

Also, if we're going to talk about how many African Americans there are in prison (a terrible statistic) it seems only fair to also point out that most studies indicate that African Americans are, by rather large ratios, more likely to be the VICTIMS of crime in America, more likely than whites or Hispanics to be pulled over in routine traffic stops, and more likely to receive harsher penalties than non-Black criminals receive (for the same crimes). (If you look up "Crisis of African American Male and the Criminal Justice System"--it's a PDF--you'll see the sources.)

I fully believe that people should be held responsible for their crimes and even for the state of their communities. But I just don't think we're doing our society any good by continuing to take the "Black and Hispanic people just don't know how to behave" statement as an uncomplicated statement of truth.

Typical of many news articles these days, so many unanswered questions.

How many kids are we talking about?

Did the country club board do anything to prepare their members for these visits? Since the members probably paid a substantial initiation and regular membership fees, they probably thought they would be sharing their pool with other members rather than renters. The club probably even has a few hours when even members' children don't use the pool so adults could actually swim laps or just enjoy it in peace.

Perhaps the club did make it available as a charitable act. Did the board get the agreement of the majority of their members to do something kind for inner city kids? The fee they charged for 90 minutes every Monday afternoon for the summer sounds like just enough to cover the lifeguard's time (which probably had to be supplemented for the added group) and hardly enough for "rental".

Were all members informed so they could plan something else at that time? If they didn't, that was a big mistake.

Just another PC article. We are well-trained to recognize them these days.

> that to fear black males is always and everywhere racist

You must be reading words written by some other Richard Bottoms.

This Mr. Bottoms is saying that the fear that I experience drom whites first hand is blind, and can they not seem to tell the difference between a 16 year old gang-banger and a 54 year old software developer in a suit, many have no interest in trying.

This Mr. Bottoms is, and has been saying that the pathologies referenced and no different than what you get from any underclass in any country anywhere. Given the evidence seen elsewhere America is blessed that this indolent minority is satisfied with crime rather than a running insurgency or 100 years long civil war.

Bernie Madoff has probably stolen more money in a decade than all the black criminals in history. And truth be told most of the blacks in jail are there for drug offenses that a good lawyer and access to "treatment" can buy you out of. That's the difference between being a black thug and Robert Downey Jr. or Lindsay Lohan.

You're damn right I am still smoking hot after forty years for what was done to me and my brother. Yet, I don't choose to kneecap passers by or engage in ethnic cleansing like in Bosnia or Ireland. I go to work, pay my taxes, and vote like most other black people do.

If I choose to resent being brutalized as a youth or the indignities heaped on my father and my brother because of the color of their skin, that's my business.

I wouldn't change a thing about today, not the crack babies, the wasted youth in prison, or any other damn thing because unlike that longed for time in America when black families were pure and stable, we now have the vote and full citizenship.

It's really not enough to say "X% of race A is in prison, while only Y% of race B is" and drawing conclusions from that. The situation is more complicated than that.

Uh. Black males make up less than 5% of the American population -- and fill close to half of America's prison cells. (Never mind the mortality rate for black male youth due to black-on-black violence.) The reasons for such mass social pathology may be complicated but, despite what gets drummed into whites' heads in the "frank conversations" this "nation of cowards" is afraid to have -- thanks for the enlightenment, Eric Holder, et. al. -- the solutions surely don't begin and end with a quixotic quest to "eradicate racism." Next to the crushing mountain of cultural pressures black males are under from one another, white racism is a minor molehill.

Truth Teller,

Yes, you are.

As I recall, I observed that there was, and is, a thing in Dallas in which some Hispanic families will drive around to neighborhoods not their own, and hit the houses for trick-or-treat loot as if it were a professional operation. That rubs me the wrong way -- as if the point of trick or treating was to accumulate as much candy as you possibly can. Last year, there were families driving up to front doors on our street as late as 10pm, which to my mind violates the spirit of trick-or-treating, as well as being rude and unsafe.

This attitude strikes me as ungenerous at best. Grinch.

I live in an upper-class white town which is not far from some rather appalling slums, mostly black. On Halloween the parents from the latter place routinely bring carloads of children to our neighborhood for trick or treat.

I think it's wonderful that for one evening in the year these children come to a neighborhood which is safe after dark, where they can roam around, be kids, and score some candy. I wish, everyone wishes, their own neighborhoods were like that.

If you're short on money to buy cheap candy, post that fact here in October and I'll send a donation. For crying out loud.

As for the children in the story, if they had behaved badly, this bad behavior would have been cited specifically when the access was revoked. ("On date X one child [stole money from another guest] [pushed someone down] [whatever]; on date Y, [another incident]." That the best they could do was "they changed the atmosphere" tells all. It tells that there was no basis in fact for this policy except the color of the skin of the children.

And as for black crime and all that jazz, these are children, not adult criminals. No one realistically expects them to pull a Glock out of their swim bag. This is racism, pure and simple.

This place should be ashamed of itself.

We would all be a lot better off figuring out how to break that cycle of criminality that will cause prison to swallow up so many black men, rather than to deny what is plain to those with eyes to see.

Perhaps welcoming black (and other minority) children into our neighborhoods to trick or treat or swim might be a step in the right direction. Surely kindness to children can't hurt.

stari momak and the rest of you, please explain to me why the rate of violence and crime against women by men doesn't justify separatism on our part

Actually I don't base my arguments on relative crime rates. After all, Asian Americans have lower crime rates than whites -- but I would rather my society not resemble Singapore or the LA of Bladerunner.

But I would say that while it is perfectly possible to imagine an all-white society (which is not, not, what I imagine for the US, btw, or even any possible successor states) All or overwhelmingly white societies have existed in the past. Other than in mythology, I know of no all female society - such a thing is, at least for now, a biological impossibility.

Dreher, maybe the kids you're talking about never see candy the rest of the year. Maybe they go back home and gorge it up and get sick.

I mean, I don't know what's handed out on Halloween in your neighborhood, but here it isn't gold coins or something, it's those bags of "mixed candies" you get at the supermarket. 99% sugar.

What's your remedy? Trick or treat is supposed to be "civilized" armed robbery, by its very nature. ("Pay up, varlet, or we soap your windows!") You gonna cross-examine the children who show up at your door? Turn on the porch light so you can assess the precise color of their skin?

Pay up and stop complaining.

Observer, I resent your constant insistence that my disapproval of the conduct of these children and their families is a racist act. The only reason I brought the fact that these kids were Hispanic into it is that we get white and black trick or treaters in our neighborhood, and they don't act this way. I speculated that it might be a cultural thing. I don't care what their color is, the behavior is obnoxious. And so is your pissy insistence that the only reason I could possibly object to this behavior is racism. Knock it off, or leave this site.

Spambalaya, I'm not sure what your point is

Rod, my point is that when you make outrageously wrong statements such as that if you're the victim of a violent crime the perpetrator is eight times as likely to be a black male rather than a white one—when the true number is only 1.2 times—serves to reinforce the kind of hysterical racism you ascribe to the members of the Valley Club. Before perpetuating such an assertion, even innocently, you have a responsibility to check to see if it's true. Which in this case it obviously is not.

One out of three black males will enter prison in their lifetime. That means one out of three black males you see at some point are or have been criminals.

But that doesn't mean that the majority of those incarcerated are there for violent offenses. The prison population has quadrupled in recent decades even as the rate of violent crime has decreased, and that is largely due to mandatory sentencing guidelines for drug offenses. Nearly one million of the 2.3 million persons now behind bars are there for a nonviolent offense. And imprisonment for drug convictions disproportionately affect the poor, especially minorities.

A racist criminal justice system cannot possibly explain this discrepancy.

Of course it can. I don't believe that it does, necessarily, but it can. It's a lot more believable than the idea that blacks are 6 times more prone to criminal behavior than whites are.

I completely reject that race per se makes anyone criminal.

We are in complete agreement there. It doesn't.

It also doesn't mean that only 5.9% of white males are criminals. Incarceration figures don't tell the whole story, obviously, since if you commit a crime then you are in fact a criminal, regardless whether you receive probation or are able to escape conviction with the aid of a talented lawyer. And to repeat myself, whites are, as a group, wealthier, and therefore better able to obtain competent legal representation and "beat the rap." Whites aren't incredibly less likely to commit crimes; they just have much better resources to escape imprisonment (or even conviction) when they do so.

Poverty, obviously, has a lot to do with it, but so does culture. We would all be a lot better off figuring out how to break that cycle of criminality that will cause prison to swallow up so many black men, rather than to deny what is plain to those with eyes to see.

I'm still not sure what your eyes are seeing, Rod, but mine have seen far too many lives ruined because of prison time being handed out for drug possession and similar nonviolent crimes. Marijuana, for example, is no more dangerous than hard liquor, yet how many tens of thousands (hundreds of thousands?) of young black men will spend time in jail for nonviolent pot violations whereas their white counterparts get off with a lesser penalty? Until we adopt a practical approach to such inescapable realities, this unnecessary tragedy will continue.

Observer,

The Philadelphia Inquirer (Philly's "paper of record," for what it's worth) posted this story about three hours ago:

A Huntington Valley swim club is facing accusations of racial discrimination after 65 children from a Northeast Philadelphia day camp claim they heard prejudicial remarks by club members and later had their club membership rescinded.

The children, kindgergarten through 7th graders who attend the Creative Steps, Inc. day camp, showed up to the pool at The Valley Swim Club on June 29.

While the campers were swimming, Alethea Wright, executive director of Creative Steps, said three children came up to her and said they heard club members asking what African Americans were doing at the club.

Repeated attempts to reach club President John Duesler and other club officers were unsuccessful. A Philadelphia Inquirer reporter was asked to leave the club premises when he asked for a comment. NBC 10 reported today that Duesler made the following statement: "There was concern that alot of kids would change the complexion .....and the atmosphere of the club."

Several days after the incident, Wright said the camp's $1,950 check in membership fees to the swim club was refunded, meaning the children no longer had access to the pool. She said Duesler did not provide a reason for the refund.

Rod, I just started reading your blog, but I can't believe that you endorse many of the prejudiced and bigoted views presented here. Do you teach your children to avoid large groups of blacks or that blacks are more likely to be criminals? As one of those young black people, who so many on this blog choose to avoid, this is seriously depressing. I guess I shouldn't be surprised those kids weren't welcomed at the pool. They never stood a chance.

I guess there was a real reason the black panthers were out at the voting stations last November, eh?

Throw a zagnut in the pool and watch all the racists run.

This just doesn't make sense: "the camp's $1,950 check in membership fees to the swim club was refunded".

"Membership fees?" For 65 kids from a day care, accompanied by a few counselors? But instead of "country club" we now see it called a "swim club" which is quite a different thing. Maybe more like a YMCA or a neighborhood pool club where you can pay fees for short term or seasonal use and might have quite different structure and rules than a country club.

Sleight-of-hand in word choices, withholding of basic information. Just what you'd expect from a hack writer trying to gin up racist fury. "Let's you and him fight."

Z. Treed: hardly a digression, actually very on-point. When any country has a significant portion of its population devoted to hating others, with state support, while being in complete denial about what really ails it (economically and especially socially), you wind up with "Rev" Sharpton, et al. How the pathetic fate of Micahel Jackson is, like everything else, the fault of DA MAN is a mystery to me, but then again I am merely white. The late and (among the sane) unlamented Mr Jackson - a washed-up pop star, drug addict and, by any normal definition, pedophile - is hardly someone to miss, much less honor. We need to ask ourselves: Would, say, Donny Osmond (another product of a childhood stolen by a strange showbiz family and weird cult-like religion) get a pass on kiddie-rape? Um, no ... And why the difference?

I'll stop asking questions we ALL know the answers to in advance.

Strange as it is for me to be saying this, celtic dragon critter and sigaliris make the most sense on this thread.

AML,

I think some confusion arose from the fact that there is both a tres chic Huntingdon Valley Country Club (http://www.hvccpa.org/club/scripts/public/public.asp) and The Valley Club (http://www.thevalleyclub.com/). The two establishments are a good three miles away from each other.

The Valley Club appears to be open to anyone who cares to submit their credit card information, if you check out their Web site. A weekday-only child's membership is $30, which times 65 kids comes out to the $1950 mentioned in the news reports. So it seems that the Valley Club wasn't extending charity to these kids at all; they paid their full and proper fees and were then denied the use of the facilities they put their money down for. That's quite a different thing than the Valley Club extending a hand of hospitality and then retracting it, I'd say.

Hi Observer,

The fence was to keep out dogs and also to keep the toddlers in. There were no signs explaining the situation. And no actual dogs in the story I am telling. I mention the dog issue because when my father came to visit he kept wanting to bring his dog inside the fence. Also you don't want dogs in there to frighten toddlers. My point is just that there were good reasons for a fence. It was not race related.

Many, many human children from another town who were not toddler age came into the toddler area. Maybe 20 elementary school age children.

I think it is possible that the elementary school teachers and parents didn't perceive that the play area was set up so thoughtfully for the different ages and couldn't hear it when the parents tried to explain it. They immediately saw it through the lens of racism. And thought the fence was an implicit racial boundary marker that the neighborhood used to keep a special area set aside with a fence to keep blacks out.

Strange as it is for me to be saying this, celtic dragon critter and sigaliris make the most sense on this thread.

We do try ;)

Perpetua,

They immediately saw it through the lens of racism. And thought the fence was an implicit racial boundary marker that the neighborhood used to keep a special area set aside with a fence to keep blacks out.

This might be a very perceptive remark.

I have a black foster-son, now an adult. He did not grow up in the neighborhood where we now live, which is upper-class almost entirely white. One day he was visiting, and realized that he had forgotten something in his car, and went out to get it. His car has one of those alarms that you turn off with the key fob when you approach, and it goes beep! This happened, and my neighbor came out of her house, saw my son opening his car door, and went inside her house again.

His interpretation? He "saw it through the lens of racism" and complained to me that my neighbor seemed to be thinking that any black man on the street was of course up to no good.

So after he left I went over and talked to her, and what she was thinking was, "why did the car alarm go off, and did I cause this somehow?" She didn't even notice the color of his skin.

I'm not faulting either one of them. My son has been beaten up emotionally all his life; perhaps a little paranoia is appropriate. (Even paranoids have real enemies!) My neighbor reacted in all innocence and certainly is not responsible for the tough growing up of a man she's never met before, and she was reacting to the car alarm, not to his race.

Extending this reasoning, perhaps the swim club in question had some other objection to the presence of these children besides their race. If so, however, they certainly haven't articulated it very well.