Pennsylvania Swim Club Accused Of Racism To Ask Minority Kids Back

PHILADELPHIA — A private suburban swim club accused of racism after it canceled the memberships of dozens of minority children says it will seek a meeting with the kids' camps to work out an agreement for them to return.

Amy Goldman, a member of The Valley Club, said those able to attend a hastily called meeting Sunday afternoon voted unanimously in support of reinstating the memberships of the Creative Steps day camp and two other camps as long as safety issues, times and terms can be agreed upon.

The Creative Steps camp had arranged for 65 mostly black and Hispanic children to swim each Monday afternoon at the gated Huntingdon Valley club, which is on a leafy hillside in a village straddling two overwhelmingly white townships. But after the group arrived June 29, camp director Alethea Wright said, several children reported hearing racial comments and some swim club members pulled their children out of the pool.

The camp's $1,950 was refunded a few days later.

The president of the swim club's board of directors, John Duesler, has said the decision was made out of safety considerations, not racial concerns.

"We have near-unanimous approval from our membership, so at this point we'll be figuring out ... how to approach all the camps and see how we can move forward," Duesler told WPVI-TV at the club's entrance on Sunday.

The swim club has claimed it has a diverse, multiethnic membership, but Goldman, a member for two years, said she couldn't remember seeing a black member this year.

Goldman said members were told that the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission, which has opened an investigation, is to make a fact-finding visit to the club July 30. U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pa., said Friday he had asked the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate "to determine what action, if any, is warranted by the Civil Rights Division."

Others to criticize the club include the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the United States' highest-profile black swimmer, Olympic gold medalist Cullen Jones, who said Thursday that "hearing about what's happened to these 65 kids is both disturbing and appalling."

Chuck Wielgus, executive director of USA Swimming, the governing body for the U.S. swim team, said he was stunned by the accusations against the club.

Wright, the camp director, didn't immediately return a telephone call seeking comment Sunday evening. She said earlier that other institutions had offered to host her group at their pools for the summer.

Camp parent Silvia Carvalho said she hadn't heard about the club's action but didn't believe her 9-year-old daughter, Araceli, would be willing to return.

"She has already said so," Carvalho said Sunday night. "She doesn't want people to look at her the same way."

Comments

[amdezurik]

I guess the real question is will the memberships of the white kids and parents who objected to this be cancelled?

[kathy001]

Very good question.

[YoMama]

Agree.

[ZimboChick]

that is good reasoning. I am also glad that Specter took some action and this was not swept under the rug. I think we will see some heads roll.

[bluehand]

I think we all know the answer to that one. It's there very vicious wishes that were, and still are being placated. They're trying to "figure out times" when the white folk won't have to see those evil, dangerous little black kids at their pool.

[LargeJ]

Dude, now that the club has a bad rep, of course they want to erase that spectre of racism. Hey, they might as well be THAT CLUB now since irreparable damage has been done to those kids and they already acted upon their racism. Hey, they can now host aryan pool parties. This isn't going away soon, Valley Swim Club.....a­sk Denny's how mistreatment of any race can have a bad effect on bidness.

[findingthetruth]

And if the parents of these children allow them to return ----- that's irresponsible on the parents' part. Let's not sugar coat anything that we all know the intentions of management (as WRITTEN in a letter). The ONLY reason it was necessary for management to publicly speak, is because they heard the word ---- SUE. Otherwise, another day would have continued as their hearts have ALWAYS been ----discreetly bias.

[Phillup Textfield]

what the commenter below calls "suburban personalities" is called "habitus" by French Socio-Philosopher Pierre Bourdieu and Metalingui­st/Philoso­pher Jean Francois Lyotard calls "cognitive archipelagos. "

Americans cannot stop themselves from fetishizing melanin levels and facial features. Any Genetics researcher will tell you the substantive differences within our species is expressed in disease immunity, and, in that sense, our "racial" delineations are and have always been WAY OFF.

We still dice eachother up according to at the very most recent, late Renaissance classifications, and for some, even Biblical coordinates.

This IS a scandal, and THE CAMP and Campers deserve justice/co­mpensation for the trauma/stigma inflicted.

Ours and the media's duty is discuss the REAL FORCES that are at play here... to demystify the so-called Black American, who may be History's most halucinato­ry/fictive actor, and discuss SOCIO-LINGUISTIC, ECONOMIC, PSYCHO(Geo­grpahical)­, and EXISTENTIAL structures­/processes of ghettoization and niggerization -- processes that can be undergone by members of any so-called "race."

[kareemachan]

FTA:

'The president of the swim club's board of directors, John Duesler, has said the decision was made out of safety considerations, not racial concerns.'

Safety considerations, my a$$. When they took the camp's money, they knew exactly how many kids would be using their pool. If they didn't, the manager should be fired for incompetency.

[kareemachan]

And, interestingly enough, you can't access their website. The error message says, "You tried to access a document for which you don't have privileges­." Well, I guess they know about priveleges­....

[Veeve]

If I were one of those kids, I certainly wouldn't want to go back to that swim club.

[katocat]

I probably wouldn't want to either, but it's a good thing others didn't say that when they treid to make them sit at the back of the bus or prevent them from attending school.

[zenwhenicanbe2]

I believe this has more to do with suburban personalities and inner city personalities clashing and causing a horrendous misunderstanding than it does with actual rac*sm. 60 kids from the inner city arriving at the same time to a suburban pool? Come on are you kidding? Have you seen the size of that pool?
I will guarantee you that some individual white folks and the administrator certainly said some awful things and they should be condemned for making a regrettable situation into something entirely more sad. Children should never be treated that way. Never. But just don't go telling me that it's some fairy tale story set in the 1950s. If you wanna picket real rac*sm in America you're probably going to need a time machine... and frankly with all this fuss you do a disservice to people who really had to struggle in the name of true oppression. We need a new term like "rac*sm lite" So stop calling everyone rac*st that you don't agree with because I would never do it to you.

"to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even rac*st, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns -- this too widens the rac*al divide, and blocks the path to understand­ing." Barack Obama

[noudidnt]

"I believe this has more to do with suburban personalities and inner city personalities clashing and causing a horrendous misunderstanding than it does with actual rac*sm. "

or it has to do with the club's rayc ism and yours.

[zenwhenicanbe2]

I appreciate your opinion but I would ask that you read my entire comment

[noudidnt]

"If you wanna picket real rac*sm in America you're probably going to need a time machine... and frankly with all this fuss you do a disservice to people who really had to struggle in the name of true oppression. We need a new term like "rac*sm lite" So stop calling everyone rac*st that you don't agree with because I would never do it to you."


We are going to need an idiot spin machine decoder to figure out what you just wrote.

[CherrySpring]

The black kids jumped in and the white members jumped out.

The campers heard the members making ra.cist statements and generally being sour about their presence.

The club owner's initial statement was: "There was a concern that a lot of the kids would change the complexion­...and the atmosphere of the club."

Complexion? Not ra.cism, huh? Atmosphere? The kids were well-behaved, this is just another way of saying they felt too many brown kids spoiled their lily white ra.cist fun. This is not a new pattern of behavior, why deny the obvious?

[zenwhenicanbe2]

"Complexion?" did he really say that?! Did he take a cr*p in his pants right as he was saying that or just after? what an ignoramus

[paganmist]

I've read your entire comment and actually given it some consideration. Here are my thoughts:

I am an educated black female. I dress conservatively and speak politely. I went camping in a predominantly white part of Pennsylvania with my friends, who were all white. We went into a local store to pick up supplies. I was wearing a long pretty skirt and tank top and smiling and chatting with my friends.

I walked down a refrigerated aisle to get something to drink, and a white woman grabbed her child by the shoulder so hard the kid lost her balance. With her eyes on me (and with all of my friends and the counter clerk as witnesses) she dragged her kid away as if she were petrified of what I might do.

The clerk of the store was embarrassed and apologetic. Fortunately, I know enough good, rational white people where things like that don't make me think that most whites are like that. But my point is that it is irrational behavior. There was no reason or logic in it. I am not aggressive or dangerous-looking.

Had 60 white kids from the inner city (because whites do exist in the inner city) arrived at that pool, the reaction would have been different. Or even 60 asians! What part of the city they were from wouldn't have mattered. These white parents would not have been afraid of 60 pale-skinned elementary school children.

[YoMama]

I am so sorry for what you have endured at the hands of the ignorant.

[zenwhenicanbe2]

I appreciate your considering my comment, I am not rac*st, and it causes me so much pain to be labeled that when attempting to describe my feelings.

I wish that moments like that one in the store could be somehow captured so that you could see the revulsion that I would express in the face of such pure insan*ty. And I appreciate that if that has happened to you or anyone it is extremely challenging to "expect the best" from people. I think it is also worth stating for the record that I grew up in and live in a family with people of color and that fact along with having never done anything rac*st my self I feel no responsibility what so ever for anyone doing anything rac*st. Yet, I feel that uneasy tension, that disconnect when I walk through the projects on my way to my house two blocks away. The people that live there are really something else and they do their darndest to make me feel unwelcome. But what about the people in my family? What about the people of color that I work with? I would never ever dream that they would want to be around the people in the projects and would avoid them too. So who's perpetuating this notion that black people supposed to stick together? It's not my relatives and co workers?

[Highwind]

I have had a woman do that to me in a store. The store clerk looked at this women like she was crazy.

[kathy001]

It seems to me you are using a comment by Barack Obama to excuse your lack of knowledge. Frankly, I think it is wonderful that you are not confronted by blatant and nasty racism in your life. That tells me that there are pockets in this country that are really progressing. But there are many other areas where racism - pure, unadulterated Racism - is in evidence at all times. It's not a "fairy tale story", it's real. And it's ugly.

[luziannagirl]

I'd be willing to be the devil is in the details here. And we haven't heard the details.

As a regular lap swimmer and member of private community non-profit-run pools, I can say that running a safe and effective aquatics program is NOT an easy task. There's so many "moving parts", so many different ways to fail with public/community pools, both on the parts of those who run them and the user groups.

And, unlike other recreational opportunities, failure, whether it be on the part of those who schedule different user groups (lap swimmers vs kids playing), maintain equipment, keep the water clean, removed slick algae from adjacent concrete, disinfect showers...­in a swimming pool situation is often serious, if not deadly.

Folks might want to wait for the details before they pass judgement.

[julesbh]

I'm with you. That camp wasn't the only one turned away, there were 2 others. I would like to hear more info before I pass judgement on them.

[noudidnt]

You should read the Club President's original statement before you start dismissing the day camp's claims.

[RustyGranite]

If it was too many kids (60) then why didn't they tell them, at that very moment, to break up the kids into groups of 20 and bring them back on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday instead of just Monday?

Instead of returning a 2000 dollar check? In THIS economy?

Sorry, this excuse doesn't wash. At all.

[noudidnt]

Bingo

[stevi]

If this has to do with slick algae and showers, how is it that this club accepted money, signed a contract and agreed to have this group swim on Monday afternoons? I don't buy that this is anything other than fear of something that is not familiar = racism. Plain and simple, otherwise, why did the white members who there, yank their children out of the pool when children of color began a swim that was pre-approved and paid for?

At the very least there is a sensitivity problem here, and that is being exquisitely generous . This club made these children cry. Do you understand that? This club made these children cry....

[kathy001]

The statement that the children from the camp would change the "complexion" of the club was enough for me. The added fact that racist slurs were used cinched it.

[ShyShea]

I don't understand the "overcrowding" explanation. When the swim club set up the date with the camps, they had to have asked about the number of kids to attend in order for the camps to pay a particular amount. If "overcrowding" was a problem, wouldn't they have let the camps know in advance the max allowable? Seems to me the so-called problem didn't arise until they saw what kids actually showed up.

[keene]

What I want to know is who are the 2 other camps that they refused. The club has said that they turned those 2 other clubs down because there were too many kids. Why aren't the 2 other clubs speaking up?

[JScott]

Some folks still don't get it-any offensive utterance can spread (and be distorted) with the internet now.

[motoGpifupleez]

Bigotry and Racism are LEARNED hatreds. The children get it from the parents. They pick up on the things they hear in private, in the "comfort zone" where a persons true self emerges.
The biggest joke is that this kind of behavior only happens in the south. Gated communities and "exurbs" owe their very existence to the fear of mixing with "others".
America clings to it's bigotry more fiercely than it's religion/guns. Heck, in America, bigotry IS a religion.

[gladys46]

Check mate ! Hp continues to scrub my saying that in my own words ! I'll take yours wholeheardedly !

[gladys46]

"wholeheartedly"

[GhostNyc]

It is probably the simplest and most common emotions we share even with the most wild of animals, that is to protect our children. What makes this story even hard to comprehend and more offensive is the complete lack of respect and disregard that these children suffered. It is 2009 and these kids discovered very harshly and very publicly that racist, bigoted people still exist.

This facility should be shut down. The parents of the children already in the pool who pulled their children out of the water need to check their values. I understand a large crowd of children jumping into a pool could be an issue. But they need to check their reactions and gauge whether or not their own kids translated that into thinking that racism is okay.

[AnnfromCA]

Disgraceful story in this day and age. I felt truly awful seeing those kids tear up over the racism.

[biglover]

It really is/was a disgrace. These are kids for goodness sake. You destroy their self-esteem when you do things like this.

This is just backtracking by the Club to try to avoid a lawsuit but if the kids benefit in the end, by giving them another chance to swim there then they should and probably not file a lawsuit. I just hope these b'strds learn a lesson

[mzzanthrope]

A day late and a dollar short.
Now their stupidity and racism will cost them.
I hope that the group files suit.
How could they, with a straight face, tell the group that they were denied because of safety issues? WTF?