I’ve embarassed and humiliated you.  Please come back.  I promise not to be a racist asshole ever again, honest.  Boy, howdy, I’d sure want to go back!

What makes those people think any self-respecting black person would ever step foot in their asswipe club again?  The insensitivity is appalling.

I love Alethea Wright’s reaction. She’s well aware they just fucked up their “square footage” defense against the lawsuit.

I love Alethea Wright’s reaction. She’s well aware they just fucked up their “square footage” defense against the lawsuit.

Agreed.  By inviting the kids back to the pool they all but admitted they ejected them because of their skin color.  Not that that was even in question.

Glee over here.  The safety concerns just went out the window.  They’ve basically admitted it was racially motivated, since once again they can accomodate 65 kids.

I read an article today that it was a club member who organized this emergency meeting, so apparently some of the members aren’t racist assholes and were trying to fix things, but there’s really no fixing this.  Another facility jumped in and welcomed the kids, so why would they return?

This is what should happen when you shine the sun on bigotry.  The BIGOTS should be squirming.

OT: Pam, you will enjoy this. Fox Business Channel asks, “is Christianity drifting too far left?” http://video.yahoo.com/watch/5517501/14504796

I hope these kids know and understand how many people are horrified by this and have their backs.  I’d hate for them to feel locked into their own neighborhoods by stupid, because then the racists win.

What Ms Kate said. Although if they never want to set foot in a white-dominated facility again, I wouldn’t blame them. It’s not their job to be ambassadors for racial outreach.

Also: this is the way that so many acts of bigotry have played out in the past: commit the act, find yourself on the wrong end of a lawsuit/investigation/picket/etc, graciously retract the bigotry and act as if everything is fine. No. You can’t just say “oops, my bad” and move on.

Is there an addy I can send a card of condolence to and solidarity with the kids?  Because, seriously.

In addition, the demands are quite reasonable—if the pool were actually to fire its entire board and expel many of its members, that might actually be a good faith sign of an intention to make a serious change.

Plus, as Creative Steps founder and director Alethea Wright said ”unless there’s been some additional footage added to the pool, I don’t see how we could return.”

Oh SNAP! It makes me positively giddy to see people who hide their bigotry under “safety issues” get their comeuppance. (I guess the idiot club members thought the ruse that allows wide-spread discrimination against people with disabilities would translate well into an excuse to eject a field-trip of black kids.)

my worry know is that the investigators are going say “oh, look, they tried to get the kids to come back, the kids don’t come back, so obviously the problem is with the kids (or the camp) and there isn’t anything further for us to do”

I hope to God we don’t actually spend tax money on investigators who are that stupid.  “Well, after learning that a lawsuit and a federal investigation were in the works, they did invite the kids back.  Even though by their own admission it wasn’t safe.  I think they’ve learned their lesson, our work here is done.”  They’re not investigating if the club’s membership has learned a valuable lesson about togetherness, they’re investigating whether or not a violation already happened.  It doesn’t matter if they guarantee one black kid for every five white kids in the pool or your money back now, the club already kicked the kids out after accepting their money.  The fact that they gave the money back might help them out a little bit, but it’s certainly not going to be that big a point in their favor.

“I love Alethea Wright’s reaction. She’s well aware they just fucked up their “square footage” defense against the lawsuit.”

I don’t think you want to mess with this lady. You’ll just end up stammering and saying “But I” a lot.

I don’t know what I think less of, the fact that these racist assholes are racist assholes, or the fact that they’re cowardly racist assholes who won’t just stand up say what they are.

You know, I’ve been watching this develop (having grown up Montgomery county, and still living close enough to Philly to get local media) and it’s odd:

This place isn’t the standard Jim Crow.  It isn’t a case where a single hint of blackness in the pool will cause the whites to clutch their pearls and pull their children out of concern for the pool’s “purity”.  After all, the swim club did before this incident have black and other non-white members.

Instead, this represents the evolution of racism, where the underlying fear is no longer of a single non-white body disturbing the purity of your white enclave, but of the non-white horde.  A few minorities provide color, and that’s fine.  So long as the general environment - the overall complexion, to borrow a term - appears white enough, everything’s fine.  You don’t have to feel icky about belonging to a whites-only club, (*) but at the same time you don’t get your sense of white-as-overwhelming-normal-standard challenged.

It reminds me of the neighborhood I grew up in, which was “integrated” because of the one black family on the block.  (And the one arab family who moved in when I was in high school)

However, when someone brings in a day camp full of mostly city kids (meaning kids who live within the Philadelphia city boundaries), that changes.  Suddenly, whiteness is not the obvious default, and the non-whites aren’t just cute flair on the edge of your white experience.  Suddenly, the horde has arrived, and you freak.

And of course, this discomfort has nothing to do with you, personally, being racist.  Why, you’re friends with that nice black lady you met at the pool last week - what was her name again? - and you’ve never had any problem letting your kid play with whoever he meets here at the club; honestly, you don’t see colors, you see people!  Really!

I’ll be interested to see how this gets resolved - it’s not going to be as easy and clear-cut a resolution as white people my age and younger might expect, having been told mostly the Hollywood version of Jim Crow and other racial segregation.  I do hope that the larger media will eventually tackle the evolved racism that underlies this situation - the kind of racism that accepts minorities as decorations but still recoils at the loss of white super-majority.  Unfortunately, I don’t see that happening.

(*) Swim clubs in the Philadelphia area have enough of a history of racial issues that the assumption should be bad if you don’t happen to see any non-white faces on your first visit.  That’s part of why my parents never joined the one near us.

I love that, in their panic, they undermined their own defense, as noted above.

OT: Also, asdf: LMAO. Reminds me of a scene in the Vicar of Dibley, where the Tory accuses the Vicar of preaching communist claptrap - which turns out to be The Sermon On The Mount. They’ve so missed the point. Sigh.

Daniel Martin got it in one. I grew up in a white flight suburb (suburb of Detroit) and that’s certainly how racism plays out there. I’m not sure how to tackle it, either.