Subscribe"It may surprise some Americans to learn that not only do certain private clubs still refuse to admit African-Americans, women, and gay people, but that this kind of enrollment discrimination is considered perfectly legal."*
"One of the members was shouting out, 'We're gonna see to it that they don't come back anymore.' And two days later, Dr. John called me [Creative Steps executive director Aletheah Wright] and said, 'Miss Wright, I truly apologize, I'm so embarrassed, but the membership has overthrown me in votes and you're not going to be able to come back to the club.'"*
"The Michael Smerconish Program interviewed [audio | an eyewitness named “Jan,” who is a member of The Valley Swim Club. Jan says the children from The Creative Steps Day Camp were very well-behaved, and the camp supervisors were highly attentive. This puts a dent in the argument that, perhaps, the children were behaving in an overly rowdy fashion, which is why they were ejected."*
"Have Your Birthday, Graduation, or Family Party at the Club!"
The Valley Club is deeply troubled by the recent allegations of racism which are completely untrue.Basically they're going to pick an employee to throw under the bus, wait for the HuffPo/Facebook crowd to find something else to protest, and probably return to business as usual. Let's not lie to ourselves and pretend like anything good is going to come out of this, besides reminding everyone that "if you're going to be racist, for the love of god try to be subtle about it." I'm sure there are a ton of private clubs around every bit as racist as this one; Valley just happened to get caught.
We had originally agreed to invite the camps to use our facility, knowing full well that the children from the camps were from multi-ethnic backgrounds. Unfortunately, we quickly learned that we underestimated the capacity of our facilities and realized that we could not accommodate the number of children from these camps. All funds were returned to the camps and we will re-evaluate the issue at a later date to determine whether it can be feasible in the future.
Our Valley Club deplores discrimination in any form, as is evidenced by our multi-ethnic and diverse membership. Whatever comments may or may not have been made by an individual member is an opinion not shared by The Valley Club Board.
The Valley Club is deeply troubled by the recent allegations of racism which are completely untrue.Pool's closed.
We had originally agreed to invite the camps to use our facility, knowing full well that the children from the camps were from multi-ethnic backgrounds. Unfortunately, we quickly learned that we underestimated the capacity of our facilities and realized that we could not accommodate the number of children from these camps. All funds were returned to the camps and we will re-evaluate the issue at a later date to determine whether it can be feasible in the future.
Our Valley Club deplores discrimination in any form, as is evidenced by our multi-ethnic and diverse membership. Whatever comments may or may not have been made by an individual member is an opinion not shared by The Valley Club Board.
"It was crowded, but I can tell you that within the pool and all of these campers there were at least two adult counselors that I saw in the pool. The pool had two lifeguards on either side of this area of the pool which is only three feet deep and there was also a supervisor who called the children out when it was time for them to leave. As a matter of fact it was a very orderly. She called first for the female campers and then the male campers. And when one of the girls was not moving out of the pool quickly enough she was quick to say "You'll lose your swimming privileges." It was so orderly and so well-regulated both by the part of the staff from the camp and the staff of the pool. I knew of no problems..."
"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.Online no one knows you're African American, Hispanic, Latino or Asian!
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."
Jim Flynn, who said he was one of the club members who made a complaint against the children, said it was not racially motivated.It would help their story a great deal if they could get out some facts about these "two other day-care centers." Although you'd have to wonder what the board was doing accepting applications like this one if they'd led to this sort of trouble in the past.
"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."
He said two other day-care centers, neither of which included minority children, had previously been similarly disinvited.
“....All Creative Steps founder Alethea Wright was trying to do was find a place for her kids to swim on Mondays.
With their neighborhood Frankford pool closed because of city budget cuts, the Oxford Circle campers did find a new home at the Klein Branch of the Jewish Community Center on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
And after the signing the contract and paying the $1,900 fee, Wright thought they had a home at the Valley Club, too, on Mondays.
But once the 65 black and brown kindergartners-through-seventh-graders showed up, it was a different story.
One by one, the campers said, the 20 or so white children who were in the pool began to exit.
‘They didn't like the color of my skin. It makes me feel mad. And sad,’ says camper Jabriel Brown, 12.
‘I didn't understand because we're all the same. We're just a different color,’ 9-year-old camper Kevina Day Morris says.
‘The [Valley Club] parents were standing there with their arms crossed,’ Wright recalled yesterday. ‘I was hearing comments like, 'They won't be back here.' [Club president John] Duesler told me not to worry, that he would handle it.’
Apparently, the way Duesler handled it was to refund Wright's check and tell her that the club membership overthrew his decision ‘by voting to disinvite us,’ Wright said.
Well, that's news to Valley Club member Jim Flynn. Standing in front of the club - which was padlocked yesterday - Flynn seethed over the way he said Duesler has handled things.
‘To my knowledge, the members were not involved in any of the decision-making,’ says Flynn, 41, a Fox Chase resident who pays a $700 membership for a family of four. ‘As far as I know, all we recommended was to change the time that [the campers] came, from the afternoons to a nonpeak time. We never recommended to disinvite them.’
As for Duesler's ‘complexion’ comment, he said, ‘I couldn't believe he said that. It was insensitive and inflammatory. Look, I'm not naive enough to think that racism doesn't exist here, but I don't want the good people's names at this club to be smeared.’
It would be nice to get Duesler's take on the whole mess. But the club president's still not answering his phone. Neither is the director. And when I called the club secretary, someone answered the phone and hung up on me.
But you can't hang up on the world. In just three days, this story has gone viral. CNN, NBC, and ABC News were on the scene yesterday. And outraged citizens protested outside.
Yet no matter how much outside pressure is applied, the truth is, change must come from the inside out.
Because this isn't about complexion or atmospheric change, but about kids having a good summer.
‘I know everybody isn't like that. I've got a lot of white friends and they're not like that,’ Dymir Baylor said.
‘It doesn't matter where we swim. We just want to have fun.’”
Over the last few days I have gotten dozens of emails encouraging people to protest against this private swim club that kicked out a group of young people of color. All of this attention on on this issue has been concerning me, and I am trying to figure out why. I will do my best to explain my perspective here. Feel free to challenge me on this. Its not that I think the behavior of the swim club is acceptable. Its not, but I think these kinds of acts of overt discrimination draw all of the attention of anti-racist organizers while we miss the more insidious ways that modern racism operates.
Thousands of young people of color (and some white working class folks too) are being denied access to pools everyday in Philadelphia because of a recent round of closures to public pools (this is likely what caused that day camp to look to the private club for a place to swim). These pool closures effect far more people than this one swim club incident. Yet there is no national outcry about these closures. The closures are also part of an agenda to cut basic services to mostly of color poor communities in Philadelphia. Taxes and services are being cut in order to draw a gentrifying middle class back to the city.
Racism today is not just a matter of explicitly denying people access to services because of skin color. The structural and institutional forms of racism that keep communities of color poor are far more prevalent. While these more subtle forms of racism are harder to pinpoint, they do at least as much, if not more, damage to communities of color.
My concern is that all of our attention can easily be drawn to condemning this swim club. Meanwhile we missing the larger structural forms of racism that actually helped create this very situation. The swim club is an easy target because it is so overt, but attacking racism today means not just going for the easy targets. Instead we must develop a critical analysis of the true roots of racism in modern society and attack there.
If, as activists, we fail to develop this kind of analysis, even if we are successful in our organizing, we run the risk of creating a society where no one is denied access to private swim clubs because of race while the majority of young people of color still have nowhere to swim. I don’t think that’s what we want. The folks in power would like us define racism as simple discrimination because then we are busy condemning private swim club owners and the like while the powerful are free to continue their agenda of destroying communities of color.
So I write this because I would like to caution us not to fall into this trap. To really uproot racism we must understand the way that race and economics are intertwined. We must build movements that constantly analyze these conditions and attack this system at its roots.
I think it is great that people want to help move racial justice forward in Philadelphia. If you want to protest the private swim club, that’s fine, but if you have energy to spend on Philly I would urge you to join with the Coalition to Save the Libraries that has been building a multi-racial coalition against budget cuts http://coalitiontosavethelibraries.blogspot.com/. There will be a rally on Tuesday at noon at City Hall.
I guess I get concerned when incidents like this one at the swim club draw all of this attention, while the more systemic forms of oppression are ignored. I know its easier to organize around an incident than it is to organize around prevailing conditions, but I think that if we are serious about ending racism and other oppressions we must take on the hard work of building movements that address these larger issues.
OMG. That is the pool we go to. I remembered seeing a posting that no summer camps were going to be permitted to come to the pool a week or so ago, but obviously didn't say anything about race. *shakes head*A couple people responded to the story, and he commented once more (again, emphasis mine):
We are not really happy right now. I am hoping there is a reasonable explanation. At the very least, even if there wasn't any racism involved, this has been handled poorly thus far. I have read a couple different stories - what I think is true is that this is the first time they contracted with day camps and were unprepared to handle them. I don't think they kept them from coming in, it looks like the kids were playing at the pool, something happened, and they were told to leave. A few days later, the camp was told they wouldn't be coming back and (the club) would refund their money. I don't know. I'm sure we'll be hearing more about this.And indeed we have.
19006 is an affluent (median household income: $73,385) suburban zip code in Huntingdon Valley, Pennsylvania. The population is primarily white, older, and mostly married couples. At $218,400 the average home value here is a bit higher than average for the Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington metro area, so this probably isn't the place to look for housing bargains.BrainyZip:
Huntingdon Valley is a decidedly white-collar town, with fully 89.89% of the workforce employed in white-collar jobs, well above the national average. Overall, Huntingdon Valley is a town of professionals, sales and office workers, and managers. There are especially a lot of people living in Huntingdon Valley who work in sales jobs (16.09%), office and administrative support jobs (14.60%), and management occupations (11.56%).
Also of interest is that Huntingdon Valley has more people living here who work in computers and math than 95% of the places in the US.
In addition, Huntingdon Valley is home to many people who could be described as "urban sophisticates." Urban sophisticates are people who are both educated and wealthy, and thus tend to be older, richer, and more established than young professionals. "Urban sophisticates" is not just about being educated and well-off financially: it is a point of view and state of mind, one that you might call 'urbaneness.' But such people can and do regularly live in small towns, suburbs and rural areas, as well as in big cities. They read, support the arts and high-end shops, and love travel.
The education level of Huntingdon Valley citizens is very high relative to the national average among all cities (14.96%): 44.92% of adults in Huntingdon Valley have a bachelor's degree or even advanced degree.
The per capita income in Huntingdon Valley in 2000 was $38,748, which is wealthy relative to Pennsylvania and the nation. This equates to an annual income of $154,992 for a family of four.
The people who call Huntingdon Valley home come from a variety of different races and ancestries. The most prevalent race in Huntingdon Valley is White, followed by Asian. Important ancestries of people in Huntingdon Valley include German, Irish, Russian, Italian, English, and Polish.
The most common language spoken in Huntingdon Valley is English. Other important languages spoken here include Russian and Korean.
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