Fashion Week Flash: Tracy Reese Fall 2012 (PHOTOS)
54 Ways to Say "I Love You" In Africa
First thing this morning, I opened my email to find this headline waiting for me: "Pool Boots Kids Who Might "Change the Complexion - Campers sent packing after first visit to swim club " I clicked on it and felt a kick to my stomach as I read:"I heard this lady, she was like, 'Uh, what are all these black kids doing here?' She's like, 'I'm scared they might do something to my child,'" said camper Dymire Baylor.
The Creative Steps Day Camp paid more than $1900 to The Valley Swim Club. The Valley Swim Club is a private club that advertises open membership. But the campers' first visit to the pool suggested otherwise.
"When the minority children got in the pool all of the Caucasian children immediately exited the pool," Horace Gibson, parent of a day camp child, wrote in an email. "The pool attendants came and told the black children that they did not allow minorities in the club and needed the children to leave immediately." Source: NBC Philadelphia
As distasteful as individual comments like that are; who really cares, right? If folks want to live bound up by fear, that's their choice. But when racist fears become the basis for institutional policies, then we of good conscience are called to stand for what's right and to push to dismantle any biased apparatus; especially when it comes to our kids.
The next day the club told the camp director that the camp's membership was being suspended and their money would be refunded.
"I said, 'The parents don't want the refund. They want a place for their children to swim,'" camp director Aetha Wright said. Campers remain unsure why they're no longer welcome.
"They just kicked us out. And we were about to go. Had our swim things and everything," said camper Simer Burwell.
The explanation they got was either dishearteningly honest or poorly worded.
"There was concern that a lot of kids would change the complexion ... and the atmosphere of the club," John Duesler, President of The Valley Swim Club said in a statement. Source: NBC Philadelphia
Sounds like possible breach of contract to me, but I am not a lawyer. I don't think you can unilaterally break a contract without paying damages. And further, don't even bother leaving comments about it being a private club. The Valley Swim Club accepted $1,900 from the day camp in exchange for swimming privileges.
If The Valley Swim Club needed to hire an extra lifeguard or two to handle the kids, then they should have done so. If club members had a problem with so many kids coming to the pool, then the contract should never have been established in the first place.
When I lived in the projects, the pool was my salvation. I taught myself to swim at 8 years old and spent most days of summer in the pool. It was the only place outside where I didn't get beaten up and didn't get teased. But my Takoma Park, MD housing project also had an activities and recreation center. We went on field trips all the time and it offered us kids living in Belford Towers an escape from hot concrete and an assortment of anti-social behavior that surrounded us.
I would have been one of those kids evicted from the pool. I just don't know how incidents like this sync with the exultations, from many on the right, that "We are a Christian nation."
Vintage Racist Advertising
Top left LOS ANGELES - DECEMBER 1: Brigitte Nielsen and Flavor Flav present onstage at the VH1 - Big in '04 on December 1, 2004 at the Shrine Auditorium, in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images) Top right: 1899 -- Uncle Tom's Cabin: Topsy Illustration --- Image by © CORBIS; Bottom right: 1930s AC spark plugs ad in The Saturday Evening Post -- Photo by The Authentic History Center; Bottom left: This cartoon image provided by the New York Post appeared in the Post's Page Six Wednesday, Feb. 18, 2009. The cartoon, which refers to Travis the chimp, who was shot to death by police in Stamford, Conn. on Monday after it mauled a friend of its owner, drew criticism Wednesday on media Web sites and from civil rights activist the Rev. Al Sharpton. (AP Photo/New York Post) ** NO SALES ** Credit: Getty Images / Corbi / Authentic History Center / AP
Getty Images / Corbi / Authentic History Center / AP
Advertisement for an African-American slave sale.
Although the enslavement of mankind in general has been recorded as early as 1200 BC; the first African slaves were reportedly transported to the 'New World' in 1517. This is 76 years after the first black slaves were captured and taken to Portugal.
Bettmann / Corbis
African American Stereotypes: Products and Advertising c.1880s Tin of Nigger Hair Tobacco
For decades this product was sold in stores as chewing tobacco or for smoking. It was advertised as 'pure, unadulterated, fine old burley leaf.'
Photo Source: The Authentic History Center
The Authentic History Center
1888 -- Seal of North Carolina Tobacco - The Darktown Bowling Club Poster -- Image by © Swim Ink 2, LLC/CORBIS Seal of North Carolina Tobacco - The Darktown Bowling Club Poster
Swim Ink 2, LLC / Corbis
ca. 1890 -- Zoulou Powder Poster (French advertisement)
Because offensive advertising was permeated throughout the world for many years, (and still is, as you will see in a few upcoming slides) it should come as no surprise that in more modern times 'racism has become the scourge of European soccer stadiums.'
Swim Ink 2, LLC / Corbis
ca. 1899 --- Uncle Tom's Cabin: Topsy Illustration --- Image by © CORBIS Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
Topsy was a stereotypical pickaninny character in the book, 'Uncle Tom's Cabin.' Uncle Tom was a slave in the book. The term 'Uncle Tom' is recognized to be offensive and a derogatory name for a black man who is abjectly servile and deferential to whites.
Corbis
ca. 1899 --- George Thatcher's Greatest Minstrels Poster --- Image by © CORBIS George Thatcher's Greatest Minstrels Poster
Early definition of minstrel: a medieval poet and musician who sang or recited while accompanying himself on a stringed instrument, either as a member of a noble household or as an itinerant troubadour.
The black-face minstrel act was a very popular form of entertainment in 19th-century America. White audiences were receptive to the portrayals of Blacks as singing, dancing, grinning fools. T.D. 'Daddy' Rice, the original Jim Crow, became rich and famous because of his skills as a minstrel. Interestingly though, when he died in New York on September 19, 1860, he was broke.
Corbis
African American Stereotypes: Products and Advertising 1899 Durkee's Salad Dressing advertisement, Harpers Magazine
Notice the broken English purportedly spoken by black Americans, 'We're gwine ter live high ter-night ...'
Photo Source: The Authentic History Centerr
The Authentic History Center
Advertisement for Clarence Brooks and Co.'s Fine Coach Varnishes uses racist stereotypes to depict a group of African-American adults and children as they cheer and watch two shirtless boxers, one of whom appears unconscious, accompanied by the text "the Championship Fight, Sullivan Wins," late 1800s. The Sullivan in the text is a reference to boxer John L. Sullivan, who fought bare-knuckled in several famous bouts.
Transcendental Graphics, Getty Images
Advertisement for the St. Louis Beef Canning Company features an illustration of a stereotyped African-American character sitting on a can of beef, accompanied by phonetically rendered, stereotypical dialect-style text that reads: 'No Sah! dont jine no Exodus so as dis Beef lasts,' late 1800s.
Showing blacks to massacre the English language, further perpetuated the false idea that African Americans were somehow unable to be educated.
Transcendental Graphics, Getty Images
Comments: (102)
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By: ED on 7/08/2009 6:44PM
WOULD YOU PLEASE CORRECT THIS ARTICLE! THE POOL IS IN LOWER MORELAND TOWNSHIP, MONTGOMERY COUNTY PA., NOT PHILLY. YES I AM SHOUTING. WHY DOES EVERYBODY DUMP ON PHILLY? RAISE HELL WITH LOWER MORELAND TOWNSHIP, THEY DESERVE IT.
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By: SANDRA A. ROSE on 7/09/2009 7:15PM
PHILLY, MORELAND, CHINA, AFRICA, JAMAICA...IT DOES NOT MATTER, JUST BECAUSE THE USA HAS A BLACK PRESIDENT DOES NOT MEAN THE COLOR BLACK....AS A PEOPLE WILL NOT CONTINUE TO BE THE SCAPE GOAT FOR THE FEAR AND THE LIES TOLD AND TAUGHT TO THOSE LOST SOULS FROM THE BEGINING OF TIME TO MAKE THEMSELVES THINK THERE IS SOMETHING REALLY CALLED "WHITE SKINNED" PRIVILEGE. TO SAD... BUT NELSON MANDELA SAID IT BEST DURING HIS PRESIDENTIAL SPEECH - OUR GREATEST FEAR IS NOT THAT WE ARE INADEQUATE OUR GREATEST FEAR IS THAT WE ARE POWERFUL BEYOND MEASURE...SADLY TO SAY THESE FOLKS ARE ALSO BEING EDUCATED BY US AS TO WHO THEY THINK ...AS THE COLOR BLACK....THEY THINK WE BE....WHERE BY THOSE OF WHO FEAR OUR TRUE GREATNESS BY PARADING ON THE EVENING NEWS IN A LINE UP OR HUMPING THE STAGE, SPITTING AND CUSSING ON BLACK ENTERTAINMENT TV...ONE OF THE MAIN STAGES THAT IS STILL ALLOWED TO EDUCATE THE WORLD AOUT WHO WE ARE AS A PEOPLE...BUT SHARES THE WORST SIDE...THRU THE ILLS OF A VERY NARROW OF THE CHAIN SEGMENT OF OUR COMMUNITY. LIKE IT OR NOT ...BILL COSBY WAS RIGHT.. AND NO I AM NOT EXCUSING IGNORANCE AND RACIST VIEWS BUT .....WHILE WE ARE COMPLAINING ABOUT POOLS....WHAT ARE WE DOING OR SAYING ABOUT ALL OF THE PLACES, SPACES AND MY FACES, ALL THOSE WHO ARE PERPETUATING THE STEREOTYPICAL N.I.G.G.A. RULES.... WHEN I WAS A CHILD, I STOOD UP FOR MYSELF AND INTEGRATED MY POOL...WHY BECAUSE I WAS RAISED WITH PRIDE AND THE ROLE MODELS I SAW ON TV WERE MOSTLY N.I.G.G.A.S WHO WERE SELF RESPECTING FOLKS JUST LIKE YOU AND ME....THE BLACK MAJORITY ~NonImmigrantsGodfearingGainingandAchieving.
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By: Jimi Mo on 7/08/2009 7:30PM
For cryin out loud ,they have just destructed a way to bring about change,as well as evil can do.
Just remember its like this,hate is like swallowing poison and expecting the other person to die.
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By: Gpowell on 7/08/2009 9:54PM
That disgusts me wtf? seriously wtf?
Sue them and then build a new building for your organization with a pool in it.
Didn't those idiots see the movie "Pride" I mean their words and actions are so ignorant.
We are NOT living in a post-racial America people!
Racism is not dead!
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By: troubled on 7/09/2009 12:18AM
I wanna know why, after more than 5 decades of "integration" and "advancement," our children are still begging white folks for a spot in their pool? Why don't we have plentiful, established institutions that reach beyond class and kinship lines to service ourselves? ALL of ourselves? Instead of spending decades trying to get the world to see (and law to reflect) that we were indeed worthy of the privileges of humanity, we should have been focusing our efforts, our money and our talents on achieving a level of independence and autonomy as a people. Instead we have been working to assimilate as individuals, building the black bourgeois E. Franklin Frazier dissected so well, while the black poor and incarcerated expands, all middle ground disappears and ties uniting us disintegrate.
Maybe if we had stopped asking for permission to be equal long ago, we would be in a 2009 where black kids don't walk home from summer camp hurt and dejected, wondering what's wrong with being who they are. A 2009 where our children aren't excluded from white pools - not because people stopped slamming the door in our faces, but because we stopped knocking. Because we took the power into our own hands and put in the work to make sure our kids had their own.
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By: Daniel on 7/09/2009 4:20PM
Black people are not begging for anything from white people. Never have. Getting that notion out of your mind would be the first thing to help this situation. If something is available to anyone in this country, then it is available to all in this country. That's the meaning of 'this is a free country'. That private club needs to be abolished and disbanded or it's members that objected to any children swimming in the pool should be extrapolated and expelled from the club. There is no place in this country that is too exclusive to allow children to participate. Unless it is an adult only facility. What's amazing to me, is that people don't get the fact that if you're that racist, then your momma and sister are probably the same person. You are retarded and need some mental health treatments. If not that, and the club doesn't stand up for whats' right, then nobody should use the pool. Pour some crude oil in the pool and everytime they clean it out until these people realize their stuff stinks like everyone elses.
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By: Lisa on 7/10/2009 3:15AM
Troubled,
Well put! It saddens my heart that a child has to deal with any type of social labeling and ignorance. This level was over the top. The parents of the white children should be ashamed; the Club should certainly be sued. I am a white woman, who grew up in a small town in Massachusetts, but my great fortune in life was to have a single mom raise me with one thought about others: if they treat you right they are your friend, if they don’t, they aren’t. It was real simple with her. Color was never an issue or topic, until, what I about to say. I say with great reluctance, but a young girl I bused with called me a cracker, (confusion covered my face)honky B****(by this time I am sure I looked like Scooby doo). I went home and asked my mother what all those words she called me meant. She asked" where did you hear that from?" I explained. She marched me out to the car, drove to this girl’s house, and we all sat in her parent’s living room. My mother asked if her parents were aware of what went on. Much to my horror within minutes her mother explains "you are poor, white, and a divorced mother and probably uneducated, then BLAH BLAH BLAH (is all I remember)" well that did it for my mother. She further explained her daughter owed me no apology and to please leave their home. I must admit, and I am sure some will view this in many ways. All I really heard was because my mother was white, poor and (she assumed) uneducated I was not a worthy child. I was all of 13 at the time maybe 14. This woman was a school teacher in another school, so I thought she’s the teacher, this means I am nothing in her eyes. It hurt me and I felt belittled,and degraded for the first time in my life(certainly not the last). I didn’t see color, but I remember her hurtful words most of all to this day and I am now 51. People certainly haven’t come far. I am not sure what will make a change in our country, but I pray things improve. I stopped feeling accountable for people such as those at that Country Club, but it some how makes me feel ashamed and certainly brings back memories. (Not so good ones)
I know both of us could probably say many things on here, but the bottom line is it wont matter to the truly ignorant. You have to touch people one on one, one at a time to make people re-think. With that may come change.
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By: Bro. Lee on 7/15/2009 2:33PM
With all the Pro Ball Players we have
why can't they get together and build a pool for these kids. I agree we need to stop begging and buying jerseys of Black athletes.
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By: taadow0007 on 7/09/2009 9:08AM
AND THEY SAY THAT RACISM IS'NT IN USA EVEN WITH A BLACK PRES.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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By: Lynneanne on 7/09/2009 9:17AM
the kids...it is all about the children and how this will affect them. My heart is breaking for both the black children, who suffered injustice, hostility and the inability to play on a summer day...also, the white children who were taught hatred and white supremacy... I pray both the black and white children teach the rest of us, that they will not let this affect who they are and whom they shall become. May both black and white children rise above this injustice to all.
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