The problem is still here.

[netmouse]

From yesterday's news: Summer camp kids get expelled from a private club their camp paid for membership in because club members and owners concerned minority kids will "change the complexion … and the atmosphere of the club."

"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.

Go to the article and watch the video linked to on the left. Those kids are so articulate, and so bewildered at the same time, by comments made by club members.

Then consider watching this video here:

Happily another place stepped up and offered the campers a place to swim. The club is now claiming the reason was really that the pool couldn't accommodate so many children in addition to the private members. That's obviously not the whole story, and in any case that doesn't take away the experience of these kids hearing racist comments and being told they had to leave.

Comments

[netmouse.livejournal.com]

I guess, but to me, the positive way forward would not be to close the club down by sueing them for every penny but rather maybe to order their members into community service in the black neighborhoods of Philly or something. Those people need exposure, man. And to be pushed out of their box.

Some sort of antiracist training could be good too.

[popelizbet.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but none of that is legally enforceable, and I'd be happy enough to just see all of them lose their very nice facilities that they paid out the nose for.

[netmouse.livejournal.com]

yeah but, but, isn't that going to just make them bitter and more racist as they reach for some easy way to blame someone other than themselves?

[popelizbet.livejournal.com]

I'm not really concerned about them. Court-ordered anti-racist training isn't going to make them open to learning, and I wouldn't ask people known to make nasty comments to Black children to volunteer in the inner city for fear they'd do it again. Let's hit them in what they care about: their pockets. Let the individual patrons turn around and sue their lily-white little club for breach of all their contracts when it goes bankrupt from punitive damages. If it makes them more bitter, fuck it; the kids they fucked over with their ugly little petty racist bullshit will have money for college, and they'll be that many more blood pressure spikes closer to death.

[netmouse.livejournal.com]

Well, if you want to condemn the Valley Swim Club's actions and encourage the Department of Justice to consider suing them for a violation of Federal law, ColorofChange has provided a form for you to do so (http://www.colorofchange.org/swim/).

[popelizbet.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the info, I'll spread it around.