What the fuck? Seriously. WHAT THE FUCK!?!?!?
I’m sure you’ll pardon this late Friday edition of Angry Black Lady Chronicles, but I just saw this a few minutes ago, and my jaw dropped. (It’s still on the floor, actually.)
I mean… I just…
I…
It’s 2009, isn’t it? Right?
Directly quoted from NBC in my hometown, Philly:
“I heard this lady, she was like, ‘Uh, what are all these black kids doing here?’ She’s like, ‘I’m scared they might do something to my child,’” said camper Dymire Baylor.
The Creative Steps Day Camp paid more than $1900 to The Valley Swim Club. The Valley Swim Club is a private club that advertises open membership. But the campers’ first visit to the pool suggested otherwise.
“When the minority children got in the pool all of the Caucasian children immediately exited the pool,” Horace Gibson, parent of a day camp child, wrote in an email. “The pool attendants came and told the black children that they did not allow minorities in the club and needed the children to leave immediately.”
The next day the club told the camp director that the camp’s membership was being suspended and their money would be refunded.
“I said, ‘The parents don’t want the refund. They want a place for their children to swim,’” camp director Aetha Wright said.
Campers remain unsure why they’re no longer welcome.
“They just kicked us out. And we were about to go. Had our swim things and everything,” said camper Simer Burwell.
The explanation they got was either dishearteningly honest or poorly worded.
“There was concern that a lot of kids would change the complexion … and the atmosphere of the club,” John Duesler, President of The Valley Swim Club said in a statement.
While the parents await an apology, the camp is scrambling to find a new place for the kids to beat the summer heat.
Members of the club came forward Thursday to defend the organization. They call the situation a misunderstanding.
It’s shit like this that makes me a Sad Black Lady.
I grew up pretty close to the location of that club. I had friends in high school who lived in Northeast Philly. I’m shocked. SHOCKED. And very sad.
This made me so sad. I saw the little kid on TV and he was trying so hard not to cry; it just broke my heart. No one, let alone kids, deserve that kind of thing to happen to them.
I’d like to go in there with my pasty white skin and a nice WASPY outfit from J-Crew and take a giant doodie in the pool.
ugh – so awful, so sad
that’s horrible, is it even legal?
It makes me a angry, sad white lady.
Lava-
That’s a complicated question the answer to which would require me to bone up on my constitutional law and I’m far too tired right now!
Generally, discrimination by the state or federal government is unconstitutional under the Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amendment. Whether or not a private club can discriminate is more of a tricky question. Congress can usually prohibit private race discrimination under the 13th Amendment (which abolished slavery) on the basis that racial discrimination is a continuation of the harms of slavery and Congress was granted the power to abolish all “badges of slavery” under the 13th Amendment.
But as to private gender and religious discrimination, usually Congress can’t do anything about it. For example, some males sued my high school back in the 80s (I went to Philadelphia High School for Girls) on the basis that not allowing males to enroll constituted gender discrimination. They lost.
Comparatively, some women sued my high school’s brother school, Central High, around the same time period and won. Central High is now a co-ed school. (When my grandpa went, it was all men. Incidentally, both my mother and my grandma attended Girls’ High.)
Had the male plaintiffs sued Girls’ High on the basis that it, for example, didn’t allow blacks (it did, i’m just using it as an example), they surely would have won. Same probably applies if white male plaintiffs sued on the basis that my school didn’t allow whites, although that isn’t necessarily a badge of slavery.
But yes, if some of the black kids sued the swimming pool, they would definitely have a decent claim, but they would have to prove that they weren’t allowed to attend because of race. The pool is claiming now, that it’s an overpopulation issue and that they turned the black kids away because the pool didn’t want a summer camp at the pool. I call bullshit (and a court likely would too) based on homeboy’s “complexion of the pool” statement.
That’s my uber-simplistic answer.
P.S. Feel free to make “High Girls at Girls’ High” jokes at your leisure.
:)
Also, Congress can usually regulate the crap out of any private organization that receives federal funding and practices discrimination (power of the purse). And, it can usually regulate the crap out of a private organization that deals in interstate commerce and discriminates (commerce clause). There’s a huge case on the interstate commerce issue, the name of which escapes me. It was seminal though. From the 60s.
But like I said, I don’t have the inclination to delve that far into the discussion…
:D
This is totally unacceptable.
Someone should introduce the evil old bambi-murdering woman to those in charge of the Valley Swim Club.
Maybe their flagrant racism will scare her too…
That is just awful! And done to little kids too. For shame.
stm i’m so darn proud of myself for understanding all that!
it’s unfortunate that it’ll probably slip by unless there’s a particularly ornery parent involved.
the racism in that area is just sickening, i’ve lived in delaware, georgia and oklahoma and feel like that institutionalized racism in the philly area was the worst of all. it’s so sly and it sneaks up on you when you finally think you can relax. they could at least blast a confederate flag on their door or something, ya know so we’d at least KNOW.
I am utterly appalled that this could happen in this day and age. I seriously hope that someone offers to sue the SHIT out of this private club on the day camp’s behalf.
Unbefuckinglieveable.
Enjoy your pool time, private club members. It’s gonna be awfully hot where you end up.
can we sue them as a team? Squeers against racism!!
i say we send malia and sasha to that pool to regulate. “we have a special message from our daddy, the president. he says “‘YOU SUCK!!’”
On a serious note, I cannot believe that I actually had to tag a post “segregation.”
i wonder how many of the club members are fox news watchers?
all of them. i didn’t even time need to think about that.
I hate to say this, but Pennsylvania isn’t exactly known as the cradle of acceptance. It’s pretty widely known as being just as racist as any backwood-bayou that Mississippi has to offer. It’s just worse I think in PA because in Mississippi you expect it; the rest of the country doesn’t think of Pennsylvania as being as racist as it it. They think Rocky movies, Philly cheese stakes and the Amish.
In a follow up interview, the man, in what seems like an attempt to make himself not sound like a racist fuck-wit, said in his own defense that the kids didn’t know how to swim anyway. I sat there wondering if he really did just say, in essence, “Black people can’t swim.”
LtP, that’s a well known fact actually. Black people sink like stones. Nutthin’ to be done about it. In the olden days that’s how they used to figure out which black folks were tryin’ to pass.
“Throw ‘em in the pool!” was the feared cry from the days of Harriet Tubman to Jim Crow. Racists would seize the seemingly white person, throw them in the Country Club Pool and if they rose to the surface they apologized and treated them to a complimentary massage. If they sank, well, “Oops, there goes another one.”
Its truly sad that things like this even happen when I believe that we are all from the human race, and that’s all that should be important.
Rev. Random: Then that means they are also witches, because witches sink, right? (I went to the Sarah Palin School of Syllogism Composition.) Wait, do witches sink or do they float? I always confuse my dangerously ignorant preconceptions. Either way, it all involves someone drowning or being drowned, so that’s OK then.
Witches float. I always remembered that b/c you’re f’cked either way:
You either drown and get a postmortem “my bad” from the witch tester…
Or you survive to be burned at the stake.
Those wacky Puritans – more fun than a barrel of monkeys, I tell ya.
you know what also floats?
ice cream and root beer.
::groan::
and hope.
hope floats too.
reading the article above made my brains leak out of my ears. don’t those people have ANYTHING better to do with their time, or anything more pertinent to worry about than instilling their children with such drivel? what kind of over-inflated sense of self importance allows people to behave in such a manner and not realize that they look like a bunch of simpleton arseholes?
if i had a pool and lived near those kids, i’d have a huge pool party where the only admission was creative passive agressive ways to systematically break down the morale of the Valley Swim people. when all the kids ended up in therapy, maybe their parents would have better things to worry about than being superficial and bigoted.
Great post!!! Read how I feel about the incident at
http://www.nichewho.com/journal/2009/7/11/a-misunderstanding.html
thanks, marvin, and welcome!
read your post. nicely done.
I want a rootbeer float. But I’m confused…the rootbeer is brown and the ice cream is white…
Is that even allowed?
:-P
miscegenator!
I’m from Philly and the news is that the “club” has invited the day-campers back. The Day camp is responding with a lawsuit. The swim club’s president and some board members have offered to resign in order to make amends. I don’t think that’ll be enough. My question is, did the swim club also rescind priveleges to other days camps due to overcrowding as they are now claiming is the reason the daycampers were kicked out? If not, then somebody gonna get a hurt. (I love Russel Peters!)
The one good thing that has come of this is that other clubs and organizations have stepped up and offered gymanstics lessons, music lessons, and other sports to give the daycampers some activities. Unfortunately, it has reminded us that racism is still rampant and will always be woven into the fabric of American society. Hopefully, knowing this will make people more aware and self-reflective and will make changes for the better.
Also, we call any area north & west of Harrisburg Pennsyltucky.