Light Blogging Continues, But for a Comment
Light blogging continues today and through the weekend as daddy-duty takes precedence, but I want to make an important observation about the racist morons at the Valley Swim Club, which yesterday denied a bunch of black and latino kids access to their pool and refunded the $1900 their camp had paid for membership.
The accusations are ugly.
In early June, Alethea Wright, founder and director of 13-year-old Creative Steps, registered her 65 campers – online – to use the pool on Monday afternoons from 3:30 to 5. The special arrangement, a first for the club, was approved by its board and was to run from June 29th through Aug. 10th.
The Valley Club charged her $1,950 for the weekly privileges, which Wright paid in full, in advance, from parents’ fees. And, on June 29, she arrived at Valley Club with 65 campers for their first swim of the season. She says that the children were excited to use the low-key pool; the leafy, 10-acre grounds on Tomlinson Road provide a lovely setting for aquatic fun.
Trouble began immediately, says Wright, when she heard several white members make disparaging racial remarks about the campers, who are black and Hispanic. Wright says that Valley Club president John Duesler, who was on the premises, seemed surprised and embarrassed by the behavior but assured her that all would work out.
Two days later, she says, he called to say that members had overruled the board’s decision to allow her large group to use the pool. He seemed sincerely sorry, she says, and said that campers’ fees would be returned.
“I told him, ‘You’ve got a bigger problem than that. Some of my campers heard what those people said, and they have told their parents. The parents are offended and outraged.’ ”
Who wouldn’t be?
You are a bunch of fucking CRACKERS. You are an embarrassment to white people everywhere, because if you think all of us are brainless bigots like you, you need to hop in your time machine and join us here in the 21st century.
Yesterday, NBC 10 reported that the club had released a statement from Duesler saying that “there was concern that a lot of kids would change the complexion” and “the atmosphere.”
When camp parent Christine Templeton’s son, Jabriel Brown, 11, heard the word “complexion,” he got teary-eyed.
“He’s dark-skinned,” she said. He wondered “if he had the wrong skin color to go into the pool. He will never forget this.”
Obviously, there might be less here than meets the eye. Having seen The Valley Club, I can say that its pool is a good size, but not huge. Perhaps 65 children entering the pool, en masse, does indeed overwhelm its quiet feel.
I hope someone takes a big fat shit in your pool. I hope you get sued so bad you have to sell the pool to the fuckin’ NAACP to pay your legal bills.
Seriously, take your obsolete Jim-Crow-we’re-scared-of-black-people attitude and go jump off a tall building. No one will miss you.
And I say this from the heart: I live in a majority African American neighborhood. My little boy happily plays with kids of all colors. My co-workers and colleagues come from more backgrounds than I can imagine.
Blow that shit right out your ass, Valley Swim Club. Blow it right out your racist, cracker, bigot ass.
July 10th, 2009 at 9:30 am
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