The swim club’s websitehas been updated:
See. Racism indeed.
They would never say that just to cover their asses, so we know they must mean every word of it.
Quote from a club member:
Jim Flynn, who said he was one of the club members who made a complaint against the children, said it was not racially motivated.
“There were a lot of children in the pool and not enough lifeguards,” he said. “As general members, we were not told that they were coming. If we knew, we could decide to not come when the pool was crowded or come anyway. We could have had an option.”
Link: Swim club accused of racial discrimination against kids - CNN.com
Interesting, to say the least.
Which begs the question…was this particular camp the only one that got money refunded because “they couldn’t handle the crowds versus the outrage of the members”, or not?
I love those multi-ethnic pictures they had up yesterday. Were those taken the day they hosted the albino convention?
Hasn’t this club been there since 1954 or so? Cant get to web site now…they don’t knwo their capacity?
Not to mention they “underestimated” their capacity. Heh–when you’re backpedaling, keep a dictionary handy.
I suspect the kids were extra-rowdy, the white members got persnickety, and the decision to revoke the camp’s privileges was made in ignorance of this thing called the information age.
Ah an interesting tidbit:
If the kids were extra rowdy, the fact that the “ejectors” happened to be racists that were gettting rid of dark skinned kids would be irrelevant.
When I was growing up a few miles from there, “multi-ethnic” meant Poles, Irish and Italians were present. And to be fair, if there aren’t a lot of black residents living near the club, you wouldn’t expect them to have a lot of black members.
Goodness mary and joseph. Rand and I are on the same side? Please haul my out the back now and shoot me.
He used quotes around a phrase that was supposed to have been a precis of something somebody else said. Do you not see why that was a dumb idea?
I hear you - I grew up in Central Nj - in the 70s we attended a place like that, I am sure it was all white, but multi-ethnic as you say. Within a year though everyone got thier own pools in their yards. I wonder what ever happened to that place? Probably houses there now.
Been in ultra-diverse CA for a long time, planning a trip to family on Jersey Shore in a few weeks for the first time in 5 years, I expect to feel like a fish out of water when everyone looks like me.
As for these more recent quotes attributed to the club and members, they smack of “meeting with the lawyer and a hastily hired crisis management guy” to me. Didn’t the club pres or board say earlier this was the first time they did this?
It is just PR posturing but still…
Ok…here’s a question: if this is true, why did the club yet again accept a booking for a large group? How many times does it take before someone puts out a memo to the employees, “please do not book groups of over 50/40/30/however many kids is deemed to be too many”? Is that supposed to be the argument the guy’s trying to make- they’re not racist, they’re just incompetent boobs who repeatedly forget the size of their own club?
It WAS a descriptive label in front of the word sentence, to describe in shorthand what the sentence was about.
Its not that complicated.
Its okay if you are too dense to understand that. But now he has explained it, so get over it.
That makes no sense att all.
I mean, the members that go to the pool on Monday afternoons might’ve theoretically been pissed by the unexpected appearance of five dozen kids disturbing their tranquility, but there would have been nothing unexpected about the kids’ future visits: they were going to come every Monday afternoon through the first week of August. And disinviting the day camp could obviously undo only the day camp’s quite predictable future visits, so this holds no water.
If there were too many kids in the pool, that’s when the club steps up and renegotiates the contract so that only umpity-ump kids can be brought at one time. It still would have sucked for the camp (and if I were the camp, I’d be asking for transportation costs), but at least it would have been better than banning everyone.
The immediate alternative would have been to let some of the kids in the pool while the others just hungout somewhere (with the other counselors), and then rotate. By the following week, the club could have hired enough part-time life guards to handle the crowd and it wouldn’t have been a news event. Also if the club members hadn’t been informed, that’s the club’s incompetence, not the camp. The camp had a deal with the club just as sure as the members had a deal with the club. Why not just tell the members about the situation way before the first visit is supposed to happen and let the individual membership decide if they can handle sharing a pool with that many children.
But kicking them all out, and not only that, doing it in front of the children? Racist or not, it’s just dumb PR.
If they said, “We don’t allow minorities,” then yes, it would be relevant. People seem to think that kids live in a state of racial innocence, but that’s nonsense: kids IME are highly aware of racial tensions that run through their society. And if a bunch of black kids are kicked out of a pool by a bunch of white people, they will certainly perceive it as a racist action, unless it’s made very clear that it isn’t.
I may be misreading you, but it sounds as if you’re implying that ejecting the kids for being extra-rowdy is copacetic. I disagree. Unless “extra-rowdy” means behaving unsafely or extremely offensively, rowdiness is to be expected at a swimming pool, among children.
When those private property owners choose to use their property for racism then it is reprehensible. It wasn’t those kids fault utter wastes of flesh choose to kidnap their ancestors for sadistic abuse and slavery, nor is it their fault utter wastes of flesh continue to keep the tradition of abuse alive.
I’m willing to let the details come out. Many times I have been enjoying a nice quiet day at the pool when a metric shitload of kids (either race) show up and ruin the tranquility of the afternoon. And this has been at a public pool, so the most you can do is leave.
Now, if I was paying an annual membership, I would certainly complain and the officers of the club would want to do something so as not to lose members. Kids don’t behave very well in general, but let them loose around a pool and they get a thousand times worse.