Today is June Jordan’s birthday and I was going to write about her, but I think she would understand:
I wrote about whites-only proms not too long ago and now this: There is a whites-only swim club. In America. In 2009. In supposedly post-racial America. In the supposedly Enlightened North. Just outside of Philadelphia. Right now.
Our story:
About 65 black and Hispanic children go to a day camp in Philadelphia. They spend most of the week in the city in the basenment of a grade school. But one day a week they get to go swimming. Out in the suburbs. The camp paid $1950 so they could go to the Valley Swim Club in Hungtindon Valley, Pennsylvania just outside of city.
They went there for their first day of swimming on June 29th. When they got in the pool all the white children got out. One white mother was overhead saying:
Uh, what are all these black kids doing here? I’m scared they might do something to my child.
She was not the only one talking like that. But it got worse: the pool attendants came and told the black and Hispanic children that minorities were not allowed in the club and that they need to leave immediately.
Well, maybe it was all just some big misunderstanding. But no, the president of the club gave back the $1950 (you know, like the year this club still lives in). He said he was getting too many complaints from (white) parents. The complaints had nothing to do with racism, he said. He put it this way:
There was concern that a lot of kids would change the complexion … and the atmosphere of the club,
By the way, they had signed up online.
Some good news, though: Girard College, a school in the city, offered their swimming pool, free of charge even, so they will get to swim.
It is like what I said about the whites-only proms:
Note to white people: Small-town and working class whites often come off seeming racist and backward in the press, but that is only because they do not have the money to move away from blacks. I mean, why have a whites-only prom if you live in a place that is less than 1% black, like nearly all suburban whites do?
Well, this club is in one of those places where white people do have the money to move away from blacks.
Somehow I get this feeling that white Americans feel free to be more openly racist now that there is black man as president. It is kind of like how white people think that if they have a black best friend then it is all right to go to a whites-0nly prom. Or say nakedly racist things. Like some commenters on this blog, not to name names. It seems like the same kind of strange, twisted moral thinking.
See also:

The burka – or burqa as some write it – is the head-to-toe covering that some Muslim women wear over their clothes when they go out in public. Sometimes all you can see is their eyes, but sometimes even their eyes are covered (with a netting that they can see through).
She is one of four children of a Los Angeles police officer, growing up in Canyon Country north of the city. She is part black, Cherokee Indian, Puerto Rican and Jewish. Her father’s father came from Barbados.
Gabon (1960- ) is a Colorado-sized country on the west coast of Africa right on the equator, not far north of the Congo River. Compared to most of black Africa it is stable and well-to-do. The reason: oil and French power.
In Ricci v DeStefano (2009) the American Supreme Court ruled in a 5 to 4 decision that white firefighters in New Haven, Connecticut were denied promotion based on their race. It has become a well-known case of reverse racism.


The shah of Iran fell in 1979, overthrown by Ayatollah Khomeini, a 76-year-old religious scholar who did not fire a shot.
Neda Agha-Soltan (1982-2009), also called Neda Soltani, Iranian martyr, died on the streets of Tehran on Saturday June 20th 2009 during the violent crackdown by the government on protests against the 2009 election for president. It was put on the Internet and people all over the world saw her die.
