HUNTINGDON VALLEY, Pa., July 10, 2009
Pool to Minority Kids: You Can't Swim Here
Suburban Club Accused of Racism For Rescinding Pool Privileges; State to Investigate Actions
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A protest sign outside the Valley Club in Huntingdon Valley, Pa., Thursday, July 9, 2009, several days after the club shut its gates to a day camp of minority children from Philadelphia. The club denies racism was the reason it refunded Creative Steps' $1,950 check for the children to use the club's pool this summer. (CBS)
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Play CBS Video Video Racism Charges At Swim Club A suburban swim club outside Philadelphia is coming under fire after being accused of racism. Bianca Solorzano reports.
The swim club says they ran out of room.
Sixty-five mostly minority children from Philadelphia's Creative Steps day camp spent June 29 cooling off at the private Valley Club in Huntingdon Valley, Pa. It's where they were planning to swim every Monday through mid-August.
But the first time they showed up, 11-year-old Marcus Allen says, it was obvious he and the other campers - children in kindergarten through seventh grade - weren't welcomed by some club members.
"They were saying, like, they didn't want us here, and they were saying that they were afraid we might do something to their children and trash some of their belongings. And they were also saying, like, 'Oh, we don't want these people here and how did they even get here?'"
In fact, Creative Steps had paid the club $1,950 for use of the pool facilities.
Creative Steps camp director (and Marcus' mother) Althea Wright said she was alerted about half an hour into their session. "The children came running down the hill saying, 'Miss Wright, Miss Wright, there are people making remarks saying they don't want those black kids and what are we doing here?'" Wright told CBS "Early Show" anchor Maggie Rodriguez. " I said, 'Who is saying this?' And they pointed towards the top of the hill.
"So I went up to the top, and I started addressing some of the derogatory comments that were made, and [club president John] Duesler was sitting there as well, and he said, 'Althea, Althea, don't worry about it. I'll handle it. I'll handle it.'"
Some club members removed their children from the pool and stood around with their arms folded, according to Wright, who said, "Only three members left their children in the pool with us."
Two days later, Wright received a call from the club's board president saying that the board had changed its mind about allowing the kids to be visit the club.
CBS News correspondent Bianca Solorzano reports that the camp's nearly two-thousand dollar check was refunded.
"He gave me no reason at all" for the decision, Wright said. But, she added, while they were at the club some of the club members were shouting that "they were going to make sure that we did not return there at all."
Dr. Duesler, the Valley Club president, told Philadelphia TV station WTXF that several club members complained because the children "fundamentally changed the atmosphere" at the pool but that the complaints didn't involve race.
"Unfortunately . . . we underestimated the capacity of our facilities and realized that we could not accommodate the number of children from these camps," Valley Club said in a released statement.
Wright, however, does not accept the reason, and says e-mail exchanges prove the club knew exactly how many children were coming.
This incident is making waves throughout the nation's swimming community.
Cullen Jones, an African American gold medal swimmer heads up Make a Splash, which trains young minority swimmers.
"This is a major setback to see that people are still in the old ways, if you will," Jones said.
On Thursday the pool was closed, its front gate locked. About two dozen protesters, most of them white, held signs and chanted slogans including, "Jim Crow swims here!"
Amy Goldman is a club member and joined because she thought it was so welcoming.
"I'm embarrassed and ashamed that a pool would do this to a group of young kids who were very respectful and well behaved," she told CBS News.
Marcus said the experience gave him very mixed feelings: "I was mad, I was angry, I was upset."
When Rodriguez asked Marcus what he hoped people would learn from their experience, he said, "I hope the lesson will be to teach people that everybody is like the same and that you shouldn't treat people differently just because [of] a difference between you and them. Like you have a different color skin or you look different, that doesn't mean that you're different from them. And that you shouldn't make fun of them."
Wright said Girard College, a boarding school for poor children in first through 12th grades, has offered to host the camp children for the summer.
On Thursday the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission said it will immediately open an investigation into the accusations of racial discrimination at the Valley Club.
"The rule of law in Pennsylvania is equal opportunity for all, regardless of race," chairman Stephen A. Glassman said Thursday in a written statement.
"Allegedly, this group was denied the use of a pool based on their race," Glassman said. "If the allegations prove to be true, this is illegal discrimination in Pennsylvania."
Wright said that some parents are "weighing their options" on legal action.
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People requested the Human Relations Commission's investigation.
Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pa., issued a statement calling the allegations "extremely disturbing" and said he was looking into the matter.
Chuck Wielgus, executive director of USA Swimming, the governing body for the U.S. swim team, was stunned at the accusations.
"This is the sort of thing you'd hear about in 1966, during the height of the civil rights movement, not in 2009, and not in the City of Brotherly Love, of all places," he said.
© MMIX, CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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This clearly is not one of those cases.
This is as blatant as it gets.
I would bet my house that the situation went down like this.
Someone, or several someone's with some clout @ the club went to management & power-played them with threats of rescinding memberships.
Told them basically, get rid of the undesireables or else.
The club quickly looked at the money vs principles thing, & we know which side won.
It's like the Mos-Def track Mathematics
"This is business, no faces just lines and statistics
from your phone, your zip code, to S-S-I digits
The system break man child and women into figures
Two columns for who is, and who ain't ******."
Oh well then I would assume, since all education is equal, and that the responsbility lies with the student, you would have NO PROBLEM sending your bright, articulate child to an inner-city school with a crumbling infra-structure and underpiad teachers, right?
Now who's shooting themself in the foot.
Oh and you 2 twenty something "upper class" white males...****...you know nothing. I, as well as many people are tired of hearing your blathering "Oh I know poor black kids"...."I have no racist bone in my body"..."Stop the racism"....
Well - that pretty much sums it up right there, chief. You don't HAVE to think about race, because you are white and upper-middle class. Try telling that to the 21 year old poor black kid who didn't get equal access to education because they were born in a poor neighborhood to poor parents who didn't have access to equal education, and THEIR parents weren't allowed to vote in legislators to look after their own interests, and were instead sprayed with fire hoses and had crosses burned in their yards.
I'm a 28 year-old upper middle class male, but I'm sure as heyl not so naive and history-ignorant as to think poverty and race aren't related and inextricably linked to each other. 40 years of "equal rights" doesn't make up for 200 years of slavery and oppression.
You sir, are as naive as they get...
Oh well then I would assume, since all education is equal, and that the responsbility lies with the student, you would have NO PROBLEM sending your bright, articulate child to an inner-city school with a crumbling infra-structure and underpiad teachers, right?
Now who's shooting themself in the foot.
They had this all Pre Paid for the summer, 65 kids at about $30.70 to swim all summer one day a week until September. I am White and these Backwards thinking Stupid White people at the Valley Club GROW THE HELL UP its 2009 and this was completely Racist.
Talk about shooting yourself in the foot...
Your comment demonstrates very clearly that you are not moving forward in good faith. Please, enlighten us - just what WOULD "make up for 200 years of slavery, oppression, unequal access to education and jobs, and not being able to vote?" Anything? And while you're at it, why not explain why YOU'RE entitled to it? Are you 200 years old? This is precisely what pw08-2009 is talking about.
Actually, there are some things that CAN and DO make up for those 200 years...ever hear of affirmative action? And my point is that it is idiotic to think "Hey, sorry about all those years of slavery and oppression, but let's just start over from scratch, okay?" and to claim that now everyone has an equal chance of succeeding, when 200 years of institutionalized racism cannot make that possible. But people such as yourself would rather just forget all those terrible things that took placem, and think that none of them have any effect on the present.
If we ignore history, we are doomed to repeat it.
More importantly, "wallowing or not" when racism is institutionalized, then any effort by blacks to escape the 'wallow' will be limited or controlled by whites. This means a black who wants to get off their butt and get an education may find the education options limited (as was the case prior to the CR movement) or out of reach financially. After getting a degree, the same black may find no one will hire him or her regardless of degree or skills--that same black with no job is no different than the black on welfare--both will be in poverty...if residential options are limited--that educated black will live in the ghetto, be subject to the same treatment as other blacks, will be stopped and questioned and treated by cops the same way--etc--it is disingenuous to speak of blacks or any other racial group "wallowing" in their circumstance when others do not face their circumstances and the "circumstances" are such that they are sanctioned and fostered by the society. That is like touting a man who learns to fish eating for a life time--but denying access to the pond, the fishing rod or anything else but worms to the man and claiming it is his fault he can catch no fish.
One form of discrimination cannot alleviate another. "Affirmative action" is merely institutionalised racism in the other direction.
Yes, to truly move forward and make any progress EVERYBODY, black and white and in between, will have to let the past be the past and not let it define the future.
Of 100 jobs, 5 must be set aside and to be provided for blacks and other minorities (including Indian and Asian) and for women, and the disabled and now, the elderly. The other 95 can go to white males--no problem.
The result was a backlash. Companies, angry at being told to let those groups share 5 jobs began to hire the worst candidates possible and to parade them around as AA not working--because here is the other thing about those 5 jobs:
The jobs can only go to a "competent" minority, woman, handicapped or elderly person and a company must exercise due diligence and good faith and PROVE they sought out those groups before giving those 5 jobs away to those groups.
if you think there are public companies where no blacks work--that is untrue--I have worked for several of them. Know why they get away with no blacks? Because no blacks either apply or meet the standards set by the gov to work in my field and so cannot get the jobs. The jobs require certain degrees and years of experience, also, few women are in the mgmt positions in my companies because they too, fail to meet the criteria.
So--is that discrimination? YES--it still is--discrimination is singling anyone out for special treatment (good or bad) based on race, creed, skin color, religion, etc--it is the same thing we do when we allow phones to give directions in Spanish but don't allow for them to give directions in Swedish, Swahili, Chinese, Dutch, German, etc
Some discrimination will exist because we have not found a way to integrate willingly. The real question is--when 95 white males are hired to a company and 5 jobs are withheld for women of any color and for minorities--is that unfair? If so, what is the remedy? In instances where AA has been curtailed, it was found that on their own, companies do not trend toward diversity, which means regardless of education or trying to become better citizens, some groups are deliberately hamstrung and left out of the loop.
When you come up with a better suggestion--let the gov know--just remember--that if you favor solutions which benefit YOU as a majority--those same benefits will disappear when other groups become a minority--can you honestly say you would want to be treated and perceived in the same way blacks are? CAn you honestly say if faced with the same obstacles and prejudices their lot would not eventually be YOUR lot?
Points to think on....
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