there was another statementin which the club stated that 2 other [white] groups were told the club couldn’t accommodate them prior to ever bringing those kids to the pool as well.  The reason given was they the club didn’t have enough lifeguards to allow so many kids to swim there when the groups were there.  Funny, isn’t it their business to find out how large the groups are and assess the amount of staff necessary to accommodate the anticipated number of swimmers – didn’t they need this info to determine the fee they would charge the groups?  Seriously, how can this facility function at all given the ignorance, stupidity and lack of business acumen of it’s management?

swim clubs often have racist rootsIt should come as no surprise that many swim clubs around the country were created to provide an alternative to public pools where White children would otherwise be exposed to non-White children.  Our political system has scrutinized “country club” memberships of elected and appointed officials for several years, but the same attention has not been given to swim club memberships of these people and their families.  It would be interesting to know how many members of Congress, appointed Cabinet department officials, and state and local officials continue to support these exclusive clubs (esp in Virginia) with annual dues for themselves and their families.

Just A MisunderstandingYeah right.  Those kids know what they heard from the other white members.  I’m sure those white people were jeering them and slinging racial smarties.  It’s easy to see how this happened.  A load of black kids get off a bus and go to an all white club.  The white members are wondering what are all these lil black kids doing here.  Anyone can guess what happens next.  This would happen at most white clubs in America.  Black kids are expecting things to be different due to us having a Black President.  They learned a valuable lesson.  Nothing’s changed for them or race relations.  government grants for minority women

I grew up in the Philadelphia area, and I haven’t been surprised by this.  
Not at all.  (No, I was never a member of such a swim club or country club, but the unhealed racism in the Philadelphia area is fairly strong.)

“Nothing’s changed for them or race relations”I don’t know about that.
We’ll have to wait and see what the future holds. Perhaps more kids will be inspired to go into politics and make positive changes. The change may come from them — rather than things changing for them.

Exactly. Jesus pleasus, that guy’s a dumbass. I hope he keeps talking.

Bucks, Delaware, Montgomery, (& to a lesser extent, Chester) Counties have plenty of people (or the children and now grandchildren of people) who moved out of Philadelphia during the turmoil of the 1960′s.  

The best thing that could happen for these kids is that the racists get shouted downIf the kids [insert all minority groups HERE] see that others object to the way they were treated, that will help them deal with the pain the incident has caused. My immediate hope is that people will continue to shine a bright-ass light on these pool fools.
My long-term hope is that people address how we treat all minorities, not just racial or ethnic minorities, that minorities band together and see their common interests and work toward common goals. The ultimate goal is to live in a society where all are afforded the freedom to live a life with dignity and receive the respect of others.
And the courts exist to protect minority interests. Let’s use them.

my folks moved out because of the annual teacher’s strikes in the cityunfortunately, they moved to lower bucks and a school district that showed them what a strike could really do (we were out 13 weeks and the state had to change laws because of it).

Philly and its surrounds are nucking futs when it comes to race1. If you drive south on I-95, you cross part of the Mason-Dixon Line when you hit Delaware.
2. Mayor Frank Rizzo
3. MOVE I and II
4. This swim club is barely out of the city. The NE was hit hard by white flight, but some folks didn’t flee as far as they’d like, apparently.

Go get em, Arlen!Shut these fuckers down!

One thing has changed, perhaps – this is a major news story and the feds are investigating.It doesn’t seem like much, maybe, but it’s certainly a step in the right direction. The outrage from around the country, the number of news stories, the fact that a U.S. senator feels compelled to step in – these are all signs that more and more people won’t put up with racist crap anymore.
We have a long way to go, but it’s a step in the right direction.

Arlen is a…::cough:: moderate Republican conservative Democrat, and he’s running for re-election. Pfft.

Good PR for ArlenI wish I wasn’t cynical about Spector’s reasons for grandstanding on this… but at least the attention it is bringing to the swim club and the issue of discrimination is a positive side affect of his wish to look good.

CathyG took the wordsright out of my mouth

I wish I wasn’t cynical about Spector’s reasons for grandstanding on this… but at least the attention it is bringing to the swim club and the issue of discrimination is a positive side affect of his wish to look good.

better than crickets.  and it is completely appropriate for the senior senator from pennsylvania to show outrage for such an outrageous event in his state.  even if it does serve his interests too.
and if we’re assuming that it will serve his interests, that says something good about where he sees the majority of pennsylvania: in opposition to racism.  that’s not the image that much of white penn. has nationally.

Well, I’d say he’s courting the African-American Dem vote and other liberals for the primaryI’m happy he’s spearheading an effort to address this nonsense, but I’m not going to lie: Philly is racist*.*
My son voted for the first time in the presidential primary, and the poll worker looked at him and said, “I bet I know who you’re going to vote for.” O_o I said, “Even I don’t know who he’s going to vote for in the privacy of the voting booth.”
Don’t get me started.

a poll worker?how obnoxious. i suppose they thought they were being supportive, but presumption in a poll worker is really out of place.
i know the black vote is significant in philly, but is it significant statewide?  because he’ll be facing a state-wide vote.  this is what makes me wonder if he really is courting the black vote.  if he wanted a safe vote, he’d court the white vote.  the optimist in me says he’s courting both by making a statement over the pool thing, and that he thinks more (democratic) whites than not are not racist.  or at least not racist enough to condone that pool crap.  
i don;t know enough about the guy to have any clue as to whether racism could be a genuine concern of his.

PA’s cities are blue, some of the outskirts are purple/red. The rest of the state is red.But major areas like Philly, Pittsburgh and Erie have significant minority populations, and the Obama campaign caused many minority and younger liberal voters to not only register but actually march their very happy asses to the polls. The red areas are large in the aggregate, but much less populated than the blue. We still have a lot of union, yellow-dog Dems here.
Here’s the rub: Specter would have lost the Republican primary to Pat Toomey, and most liberal Dems do not like Arlen at all.
One name: Anita Hill.
We would have preferred someone like Joe Sestak (who unseated an annoying dude named Curt Weldon) to run. Maybe even Patrick Murphy who is trying to get the DADT repealed. But he’s really junior and not all that polished…yet.
We were stuck with Santorum FOREVER, it seemed, and people finally came to their senses and voted that joker out. Dems are going to hold their noses and vote for Spector or stay home. I don’t know if Republicans will vote for him. I suspect he’ll be re-elected and just keep on voting and writing legislation like he always has.
Oh, and that poll worker — no, she knew exactly what she was saying. She needs to free her mind.

Mayor Frank RizzoWho when he campaigned for mayor (or campaigned for re-election, I no longer remember which) promised “to make Attila the Hun look like a faggot”.  
(For those who don’t know, he had been the City Police Commissioner during the 1960′s when Specter was the City District Attorney.  They ran against each other for mayor, and Rizzo won in a blowout.)  
“Kinder, gentler” Frank Rizzo was not!  During his time as mayor he also switched parties.  Before Watergate he admired Nixon quite a bit if I recall correctly.

I was living in CA when he diedAnd I did a little happy dance. There’s a photo somewhere of them strip searching several black men in alleys. 911 was a joke. Rizzo was a nightmare.

ExactlyI would think that the owners of any pool for rent would know the capacity of their pool and how many swimmers their staff can accommodate. At best, the management of this club is ill-trained for the job.

i know the black vote is significant in philly, but is it significant statewide?Unavoidably.  Pennsylvania shares much with Michigan in its politics (it’s just less extreme with regards to those similarities).  Unlike Michigan, Pennsylvania has two nationally prominent cities, however Pittsburgh (& metro Pittsburgh) are – by far! – the smaller.  Philadelphia is not at all in the free-fall that is Detroit, but it plays the same prominent role in the state politics, and just as Michigan must contend with Detroit even though the rest of the state is so unlike Detroit, Pennsylvania always has to contend with Philadelphia, even though the rest of the state has nowhere near the same proportion of Black American voters.  
I just checked the US Census Quick Facts for PA and Philadelphia.  Some 45% of Philadelphia is black.  Those same residents constitute just over 5.2% of the population of Pennsylvania.  That is, slightly over one in every twenty Pennsylvanians is a black resident of Philadelphia.  
That’s more than enough to put someone over the top in a close statewide race, and when you consider that much or most of rural Pennsylvania (the “Alabama in between” T of Pennsylvania politics) is also not just Republican, but wingnut, that means that in the Dem. primary that Specter must win first those Black American Philadelphians matter like hell!  
They didn’t matter so much to Frank Rizzo, but that was 1968 and 1972.  The world is a different place now, and those Black Americans did make a difference to Wilson Goode, who won the mayoralty in 1984 (after beating an older Frank Rizzo in the Dem. primary).  
Specter’s been navigating Pennsylvania politics for over forty years now.  There’s no way he doesn’t understand all of this as if it was child’s play.  If he and Rep. Sestak have debates I think you can count on this incident being brought up by Specter, should he feel the need to trot out his civil rights creds. (now that Specter’s responded to it in a matter that garners him publicity he can exploit).

The red areas are large in the aggregate, but much less populated than the blue.I don’t know if it’s still true, but twenty and thirty years ago Pennsylvania had the highest population of people living in “rural areas” (as defined by the Census Bureau) of any state in the country.  
I’m certain other states had greater proportions of their populations living in rural areas, Wyoming, Vermont and Alaska, just for starters, but in terms of sheer number of people, Pennsylvania’s rural population was the biggest of any state.  In terms of proportion of area Pennsylvania’s urban and metro areas aren’t really all that large a proportion of the state’s area.  As a percentage of the state’s square mileage its rural area is quite large.

One name: Anita Hill.I was born in 1960, and was too young to have known (& never really investigated) Specter’s role in the Warren Commission (regarding the Kennedy assassination).  My initial impression of Specter (in the late 1970′s when I was an undergrad. at Penn State and as a child had watched my parents wish Specter had won over Rizzo, and also seen more or less a succession of moderate Republican senators from PA: Scott, Schweiker, Heinz, etc.) was that Specter was another of that line.  
Watching his disgusting behavior when he grilled Anita Hill and obliquely suggested she was committing perjury was when I first began having second thoughts about him.  
At the time I was still a Republican, but while I wasn’t sure what to make of Anita Hill’s testimony about Thomas, I was damn sure that the suggestion she was committing perjury was wildly inappropriate!

Oh, and that poll worker — no, she knew exactly what she was saying. She needs to free her mind.WORD.

Of course. Note my words – “feels compelled to step in…”Of course Specter is doing this for political gain. My point is that it’s a big enough story where he feels that it’s politically gainful for him to take up against the club. That wouldn’t have happened in the past.  

I concur with the folks above…Philly, Pittsburgh, and parts of Harrisburg (the capital) and now parts of Scranton/Allentown go blue-to-purple in statewide and national elections.
But I do think this is not just about the “black” vote. A lot of people I know who are white and Latin@ and politically liberal are also appalled by the whole thing and are picking up the same nuances as everyone else.
I do think it’s about courting the liberal vote, since a significant portion of the moderate people who previously had voted Republican and supported Spector supported Obama and switched parties in the primary to do so (and haven’t switched back… and I for one welcome our new moderate Democrats). It’s the liberal Democrats who remain suspicious of Spector, for valid reasons.  

Isn’t it illegal for a poll worker to express a voting opinionWhether it’s for or against an opponent, assuming who a voter is voting for, or telling them who to vote for?
If someone pulled that on me, I’d be sure to tell them off and hope a supervisor heard me. The last 3 presidential elections and lots of local ones have sorely tested my patience WRT people outside the polling booths deciding whether to talk to me or not/pass out information based on their visual assumptions about how I’m going to vote. If someone INSIDE the voting place tried that, I’d feel doubly annoyed.

All of our wonderful state of Pennsylvaniais like this, outside the city limits of Philly and Pittsburgh.  And there are plenty of places inside those city limits where I would not want to walk holding my boyfriend’s hand, either.  Pennsylvania is part of the Northeast only in a narrow, geographic sense.

We’re really the “North South” in a negative way. More Mid-Atlantic than North EastApologies to Hot Lanta and other pockets of not-so-bad racism in the south. Hell, the Quakers, instrumental in the underground railroad, owned slaves at one point. At least they admit it.

Thanks for the research, statistics and analysis.Also Latino kids got kicked out of the pool. Latinos are a significant population in Philly and in the rural areas. (Hello, Hazelton and Order in English Philly BS!)  

Well…I have legal training and let me tell you, I was intimidated when we went to vote (we’re the only AAs in our neighborhood). I was so afraid something would pop off around here that I was going to skip the presidential election. Yes, it was that bad. My friend in Harrisburg was going to drive to my house and go with me, but we texted while standing in line, so all was good.

ADD: A bunch of people heard her and chuckled.

That’s messed up…Is any of it documentable?
I mean, I’m in a predominantly white area now (Lansdale… yay…), and I’m biracial and ambiguous-looking at best. The last few primary and presidential elections, I’ve been ignored by people outside who were clearly profiling who to talk to, and I had a weird conversation with someone running for the school board. But I feel comfortable enough that if something more serious happenned, I’d be able to speak up.
It’s damn scary if you’re in a prescint where you don’t feel safe enough to do that, and where voter intimidation is unchecked.

No, not documentable. My son’s primary experience colored (heh) my general election woesAnd all the Palin raillies rallies (Freudian, I swear) — it was just horrible. I had never been afraid to vote before, but I live a little too close to Chester, know what I’m saying? I wasn’t worried about anything happening to me, I was worried about my son’s safety, whether people would say shit to him. He didn’t care, but he’s a little more laid back than I am, and he doesn’t really know Philly racial history. He grew up in the SF Bay Area of CA and went to school/lived on the Main Line. Now we’re a little more east and south, and that has made all the difference.

“That wouldn’t have happened in the past.”How far back are we talking? I bet he and Casey had a little chat before Specter ran with it or Casey is annoyed that Specter got the jump.

PA has Philly and Pittsburg, and ALABAMA in the middle

even in progressive MA, Boston has militant racists too

The way you’re wording that I’d guess you live in Delaware County, most likely in Sestak’s district, yes?  
That’s a big GOP area (that most unfortunately for a couple of decades decided that buffoon Weldon was a terrific candidate for Congress).

Specter was just doing his job when he launced this investigation. Let’s see how he behaves tomorrow.I don’t give him props for doing the right thing. He is supposed to be looking out for folks in PA.
I’m interested to see how he behaves with Sonia Sotomayor.
A blast from the past:
(Video whoring) This is about Specter, Anita Hill and Sonia Sotomayor (not my first pick, BTW): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…

Yes, but I was in DE County on the Main Line, tooThe Main Line is the nexus of Delaware, Montgomery and even Chester County. Things are all fucked up in Philly and outside.

Even Piitsburgh is Alabama-ishMy sweet home town was originally considered part of Virginia.  It’s described quite clearly in Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia.  There were slave plantations not thirty minutes from where I’m sitting as I type this.  The Mason-Dixon line was drawn, in part, to settle the dispute about which state had claim to this area.  
And even though all of that was in the past, the city’s cultural roots are quite Southern–and can still be felt.  It is quite rare (though not, thankfully, unknown) for friends of different races to socialize here, for instance.  I’ve witnessed considerably more “race-mixing” in upcountry South Carolina, for instance, than I’ve ever seen here.  
Pittsburgh can be very progressive in some surprising ways.  It only took us two years to get our gay rights law passed, for instance.  In other ways, the city is quite backward.  Just sayin’.

the city’s cultural roots are quite SouthernI’ve heard before, although I don’t know for sure that it’s true, that Pittsburghers’ informal pronoun for the second person (the infamous “yuns” of Pittsburghese) migrated there from New Orleans (where it was “you ones”, rather than the “y’all” more common in the rest of the South), traveling up the Mississippi and Ohio to get there.

They aren’t as prominent or as influential as they were 10, 20, or 30 years ago, but yes, they’re here.

This is a perfect time to build some bridges. It might help repair some of the damage caused by Bush’s Karl Rove and Obama’s Joshua Dubois who try to use religion and bigotry to play divide and rule games. GLBT groups, especially those in the region should issue denunciations of the kind of racism at work here. It’s one of the most insidious kinds of attack because it targets children.
If it involves pickets or rallies everyone in our communities should be asked to participate. Maybe we can offset some of the damage caused by the ugly racist reactions of some in our communities after Prop 8 passed.
Whatever, we need to build those bridges when incidents like this occur as HRC, of all people, did by supporting the Jena Six.  
 

It’s not guaranteed to happen in the future, either, unfortunately.If Specter is reelected he probably won’t feel obligated to put himself out for civil rights until close to another election. I don’t think that we can count on very many politicians to do the right thing. We the people must lead the way.

It’s not guaranteed to happen in the future, either, unfortunately.If Specter is reelected he probably won’t feel obligated to put himself out for civil rights until close to another election. I don’t think that we can count on very many politicians to do the right thing. We the people must lead the way.

Structly for the record, the word is YINZ, as any good Pittsburgher could tell you.  And several local linguistics wonks, including a former professor of mine, have done studies tracing the Pittsburgh accent/lingo to Southern roots (though they tend to argue more for Piedmont roots–this is the first I’ve heard of a NO connection).  Yinz see?  

OK here goes, I have another theory to this whole thing.  Some of you may get upset with me but here goes.
Say the pool holds 200 kids and it has 150 in it. Then another 200 kids show up so it then has 350 kids in a pool built for 200.  Now if the pool was filled with 150 and all of a sudden 200 boys jumped in people would ask, where did all of these boys come from?  From what I understand this was a predominantly white club, which is NOT against the law and a large number of non-members wino no one knew suddenly came from no where who were African American.  Naturally the other kids would wonder what was going on.  The pool would be overcrowded, parents would be concerned, etc.  I don’t think that everyone at the club or everyone at the club or the club itself is necessarily racist. I do think that the politicians and news media are making a bigger story out of it than it needs to be.  But then again I was not there and neither were any of you.

It’s not impossible, but on the other hand if the matter were as simple as overcrowding wouldn’t that have been something mentioned immediately by the club management?

If you’re in the business of running a swim club, you make allowances for attendance.If you know 65 kids are coming at, say, 1 PM, you make sure the pool is either open only to them or you hire more life guards, whatever.
The owner is a dumbass, but if you’re in the business of running a swim club and renting out space, don’t contract to be available for X number of kids if you can’t support them. I’m gonna call bullshit on the safety issue. Or their fucking negligent and unsophisticated dumbasses who need to get out of the pool business. I think they’ll be sold or shut down.

And I don’t think everyone at the pool was racist either.Does that let the owner off the hook? Hell, no. Does that let the racists the kids overheard off the hook? Hell no.

Intended or not, these sounds like strawman arguments.I’m not assuming that you’re doing it diliberately, but as someone who has gotten far more incidents of the “uncertain/subtle/blink-and-you-miss-them snubs, comments, and acts that are likely race-related but cannot be proven in a court of law” type of incidents than the outright-racial-slur type, here’s my response to your hypothesis so you can hopefully see where I and many others are coming from:
1. “Now if the pool was filled with 150 and all of a sudden 200 boys”
Why do they have to be boys? It’s not a boys-only camp, is it? There is a perception of young black and brown men (even kids) as inherently dangerous, and the debate (and nasty comments online) in this particular case has fed right into it. That is immediately where my brain took me when I hear a hypothetical about “boys.”
2. “where did all of these boys come from?”
Unfortunately, that’s not the question that was asked. The club member as quoted by the campers referenced their race, i.e. where did all these BLACK kids come from. That automatically makes race and race relations a factor in discussion. And it makes it clear that the campers stand out and are unwelcome (whether those 2 are linked or not) and it’s not because of their water shoes.
Also no proof that the campers “jumped in,” displaced anyone, or misbehaved. In fact, if misbehavior on the part of the campers was an issue, it would have been cited as the first reason for the refund, and this whole case would be a non-issue. Instead, NO REASON WAS GIVEN to the camp for the refund, until it became a news story. And then the story from the swim club changed. Often.
3. “From what I understand this was a predominantly white club, which is NOT against the law and a large number of non-members wino no one knew suddenly came from no where who were African American.”
Then the onus is on the club members to ask what is going on, not to make verbal comments (the pool member(s), and also reportedly a lifeguard), or take hostile action (and removing your kids from the pool and standing there staring with arms crossed at the “offenders” is passive-aggressive hostility).
A smart club manager would also have posted a sign up front for the day saying “Welcome Camp XXX!” or otherwise noting that camp kids were coming that day.
Also, the camp has Latino kids. It’s not just a white/black issue. It’s a non-brown/brown issue and a socioeconomic class issue (or perception thereof – those kids from “the city” are not necessarily poor, and not everyone who is a regular of the swim club is necessarily rich – this is likely a comparison between lower-middle-class-1 to 2-income households and upper-middle-class-1 to 2-income households.
4. “The pool would be overcrowded, parents would be concerned, etc.”
Sure – but there are ways to express that concern without making it an “us vs. them” “white vs. black” thing. There is an epic FAIL here certainly on the part of the club members who were vocal on the day, and possibly on the part of any club members who spoke to management during the July 4th weekend, but most certainly on the part of the swim club management for not expressing their concerns before terminating the contract, for not
5. “I don’t think that everyone at the club or everyone at the club or the club itself is necessarily racist.”
Of course not. And I don’t think the general debate has been that absolute. Instead a lot of people are discussing (here and elsewhere) the history of race in Philly, social and socioeconomic trends, current makeup of the burbs vs. the city and how they got that way, personal stories, etc.
However, that doesn’t mean that people involved are not racist. And regardless, we LIVE in a racist society. As Melissa McEwen puts it, “we’re soaking in it.” People do not have to be members of the Aryan Nation or the Black Panther Party to have racist imagery influence their interactions, especially when they are ill-equipped to deal with difference in whichever form it takes.
6. “I do think that the politicians and news media are making a bigger story out of it than it needs to be.”
Which is better than than the alternative – when this behavior was typical and normal and NOT considered a story worth dealing with. That happened for centuries, which is why there was an alternative press and a black press in mroe metro areas to begin with. The Big Media in the bad old days was not covering lynchings. Big Media was not covering disparities in bank lending for housing and small businesses. Big Media wasn’t talking about hiring practices and who was being promoted. What Big Media was doing was giving white citizens a “Mr.” or “Miss/Mrs.” before their last name, while black and brown citizens were written about using their first name, if named at all.
So that awareness affects my response when anyone tries to say what types of racial issues should or shouldn’t be covered in mainstream media.
Whether the story “needs” to be big is dependent upon the actions of those involved. This story could have been kept “small” or non-existant if the club manager had been more considerate and expressed any “safety” concerns with the camp, and/or worked for a compromise solution.
Those compromises could be any/all of the following: hiring more staff for that 90 minute session, breaking the campers into smaller groups/swimming abilities by pool area, working /w the counselors to have organized activities outside the pool (sprinklers, slip-and-slides), or simply letting club members know ahead of time so they could make their own (internal, silent) choices about how to spend their time that particular day and when to attend the pool.