CNN had a story this morning about the Valley Swim Club, the one in Pennsylvania that kicked out those black and Hispanic children because of concerns about the “complexion” of the club.
It was written by Susan Candiotti and Ross Levitt, both white. I know some white readers will not like that I said that, but I think it matters in this case. I wish it did not.
Candiotti and Levitt wrote a story about an allegedly racist swim club but left out the most damning bit of racism in the whole story: that when the swim club president first gave an excuse for kicking out the black and Hispanic children he said nothing about concerns for safety but rather concerns for “complexion” and “atmosphere”:
There was concern that a lot of kids would change the complexion … and the atmosphere of the club.
That is completely left out of the story. Instead it repeats the club’s new line about safety. As if the club never said anything different.
Candiotti and Levitt also repeat the club’s claim that it is “very diverse”. Again without challenging it. They did not ask the members just how diverse it was. Like how many black members they have seen at the club. They did not even report how many blacks they saw or did not see while they were at the club themselves.
(I have a sinking feeling that for the swim club “diverse” means one black and “very diverse” means two.)
Lower Moreland, the township the club is in, is only 0.5% black. That is one black person in 200. It takes two minutes to find that out. But it never seems to cross CNN’s mind to check into that. Why?
They take the club at its word, give it the benefit of the doubt. I notice that white people will tend to do that when one of them is accused of racism. You know why? Because the appearance of racism makes all whites look bad but the fact of racism does not directly hurt them one bit. And because many of them believe racism is a thing of the past.
The American press mostly does not go looking for stories about racism, even though it is everywhere. Like how did Lower Moreland get to be just 0.5% black when 9% of the American middle class is black? But even when a story falls right in front of them they do not go in for the kill.
Another case from this morning: the New York Times reported that blacks in New York City are four times more likely to be out of work than whites. A year ago it was “only” two times. To its credit the article wonders why, but then it does the anything-but-racism thing that white people do. If blacks are getting thrown out of work way more than whites and even more than Hispanics and Asians, why is racism not a possible reason?
Note: This post grew out of comment I made on a post at Stuff White People Do: “Hate to admit that they’ve done something racist”.
– Abagond, 2009.
See also:
Lower Moreland, the township the club is in, is only 0.5% black. That is one black person in 200. It takes two minutes to find that out. But it never seems to cross CNN’s mind to check into that. Why?
Although Lower Moreland has a very low black population, it has a fairly high Asian population. Note also Washington George High School that is 2.1 miles away from Lower Moreland High School is 37% black:
http://www.greatschools.net/cgi-bin/cs_compare/pa/?level=h&area=m&street=555+Red+Lion+Rd&zip=19006&miles=1000&lat=40.123402&lon=-75.059601&sortby=distance&school_selected=1379&ids=1379,3263,4303,5020,4081,11184,7267,7277,2144,4703,6150,7427,6801,4228,7291,7476,5252,7421,4213,6738,4291,6590,5557,6753,2863&showall=1&tab=ethnic
So the area at least is clearly not mostly white. This, of course does not answer the question of how diverse, however that may be defined, the club is.
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Some humorous comments about Lower Moreland on the Urban Dictionary.. not quite what I expected..
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Lower%20Moreland
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The distance between the Huntington Valley Swim Club and Washington George High School (Which is 37% Black, 9% Hispanic and 12% Asian)
is 1.1 miles:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&source=s_d&saddr=10175+Bustleon+Avenue+Philadelphia,+PA+19116&daddr=22+Tomlinson+Road,+Huntingdon+Valley,+PA+19006&geocode=&hl=en&mra=ls&dirflg=w&sll=40.113589,-75.033237&sspn=0.023138,0.043731&ie=UTF8&z=15
Whereas the distance between the Swim Club and the Lower Moreland High (the town’s one public high school which 90% white with the rest most Asian..) is 1.2 miles away:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&source=s_d&saddr=555+Red+Lion+Rd+Huntingdon+Valley,+PA+19006&daddr=22+Tomlinson+Road,+Huntingdon+Valley,+PA+19006&geocode=&hl=en&mra=ls&sll=40.12208,-75.04894&sspn=0.011568,0.021865&ie=UTF8&z=16
So clearly the immediate area is diverse even if the township is less so.
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CNN and the other big cable news networks have a whole host of problems when it comes to their brand(s) of journalism. Neutered reporting on acts of racism or discrimination is just one of them.
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The word and usage complexion.. obviously in this context.. a very bad choice.. I am wondering if the person who issued the statement meant it in the way that was more commonly used in Latin:
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/complexion
4: overall aspect or character
I am guessing this is as much if not more so an issue of class as race.
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I also read that NYT article and I asked myself the same thing.
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Uncle Milton,
Even if the local population were 37% black and 10% asian… that would certainly still be mostly white. Beside that Philadelphia area schools are very often not indicitive of the local demographic. My mixed race daughter will not be attending our local school, but another public school on the opposite side of town.
I can’t help but wonder that if the large group of kids were white, and the club still had safety concerns, would they have acted the same way? Would they have kicked them out of the pool as they did the black kids or simply let them finish the day and then asked them not to return? Would the white folk who complained, and everyone there before the kids got there were white, have done so so quickly?
And now the club, while not admitting any racism, has invited the kids back. No where have I seen any plan on how the “safety” issue has been resolved.
Don’t fool yourself.
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Even if the local population were 37% black and 10% asian… that would certainly still be mostly white.
The school population is 37% black and 41% white.. so whites are a plurality but not a majority.
I can’t help but wonder that if the large group of kids were white, and the club still had safety concerns, would they have acted the same way?
Depends upon the kids I am guessing.. I’ve met some redneck kids that I wouldn’t want my kid around.
No where have I seen any plan on how the “safety” issue has been resolved.
It was part of their statement to readmit the kids.
“Amy Goldman, a member of The Valley Club, said those able to attend a hastily called meeting Sunday afternoon voted unanimously in support of reinstating the memberships of the Creative Steps day camp and two other camps as long as safety issues, times and terms can be agreed upon.“
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Since 1972, the U.S. Department of Justice has conducted a National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) to determine the frequency of certain crimes. One category is interracial crimes. Its most recent publication (1997), “Criminal Victimization in the U.S.,” reports on data collected in 1994. In that year, there were about 1,700,000 interracial crimes, of which 1,276,030 involved whites and blacks. In 90 percent of the cases, a white was the victim and a black was the perpetrator, while in 10 percent of the cases it was the reverse.
Another finding of the NCVS report is that of the 2,025,464 violent crimes committed by blacks in 1994, 1,140,670 were against whites – that’s slightly over 56 percent. Whites committed 5,114,692 violent crimes; 135,360, or 2.6 percent were against blacks.
In 1997, there were 2,336 whites charged with anti-black crimes and 718 blacks charged with anti-white crimes, so-called hate crimes. Although the absolute number of white offenders was larger, the black rate per 100,000 of the population was greater, making blacks twice as likely to commit hate crimes.
Regardless of race, criminal violence is despicable and deserving of condemnation. But far more destructive are the official and unofficial attempts to mislead and conceal. Roughly 400 members of the major print and electronic media were invited to the press conference on “The Color of Crime.” According to Mr. Taylor, several asked for advanced copies before they’d consider sending anyone. Only 14 people stayed for the briefing and only a couple reported on the study, most notably The Washington Times and C-Span. One reporter said that he’d like to write a story but he doubted he could get it by his editor.
If the facts were the other way around, everybody from The New York Times and President Clinton to the NAACP, Jesse Jackson and the Congressional Black Caucus would be shouting about it and demanding that something be done. Some might want to keep silent about the facts for fear that publicizing the true nature and magnitude of interracial crime might give, as I’ve been told, “aid and comfort to America’s white racists.”
To the contrary, silence is perhaps one of the most effective recruitment tools for racists. They can use our silence for proselytizing disaffected whites with demagoguery about how hate crimes are not important unless a black is the victim, and how no one cares about blacks raping white women and assaulting white men.
Interracial crime has other devastating effects on racial relations. Whites are apprehensive of blacks, and blacks are offended at being the subjects of that apprehension. Whites are less willing to live in black neighborhoods. For the unthinking among us, these and other responses to racial disparities in crime translate into simple racism.
Multi-ethnic societies are inherently unstable, and how we handle matters of interracial crime is just one of the ways that we’re contributing to that instability.
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My impression of the MSM is contra to this post. They tend to report readily on crimes by whites vs. blacks, but not vice versa. Same with hate crimes by Muslims. My theory, long held and repeatedly affirmed by what I see in the MSM, is that the MSM actually profits by inflaming passion about white racism and white crimes vs. blacks, under a version of the “if it bleeds it leads” theory of journalism.
That said, I’d agree also with the thesis that the MSM is “soft” when it comes to detailed, pithy reporting. This applies across the board. My experience with the MSM has been that about the best they acheive is “wildly inaccurate.” More often, in addition to “wildly inaccurate” they are also pitifully deficient in terms of salient detail.
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Jack:
I have to look at that report you cited, but I always thought that most black crime is, by far, black-on-black and that it is greatly underreported, as if it does not matter much, while black-on-white crime on television is played up.
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Uncle Milton, you said:
Are you serious? You called the area the swim club is in “diverse” because it is about half-way between a school that is 90% white and one that is 37% black.
The mere fact that you can have a school that is 90% white school that close to one that is 37% black tells me that some sort of racial segration is going on to keep the school so white.
Sure, the houses in Lower Moreland might be priced out of range of most blacks in the city, but there has to be more than just that going on when only 0.5% of the town is black. One black person in 200. That is way too low to be natural market forces.
It is not like Lower Moreland is in the middle of Utah.
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You called the area the swim club is in “diverse” because it is about half-way between a school that is 90% white and one that is 37% black.
I said the area was more diverse than the numbers you posted for Lower Moreland. The school that is 37% black and 41% white is actually closer to the swim club than the high school for Lower Moreland. It’s 1.1 miles away, ie walking distance. As I stated in one of my earlier posts the reporter should have followed up with more questions as to the racial breakdown of the club members as opposed to accepting the comment that it’s membership was very diverse.
Arguably my workplace is very diverse but is heavily Asian and there is currently one black man and no black women working in my building which can house around 250 people. My immediate workplace is about 30% white. (about half of which are foreign born..) I used to joke that diversity in Silicon Valley is two guys from Hyderabad, two guys from Bangalore and two guys from Bombay. Diversity is in the eye of the beholder.
The poster Brohammas indicated that Philly schools are not indicative of the local demographic so I looked the demographic makeup for the zip code of the George Washington High School (19116)
http://zipskinny.com/index.php?zip=19116
It has about the same percentage of Asians as Lower Moreland but has a much lower percentage of blacks than George Washington High School. (3.9% as opposed to 37%..)
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What can I say. Eric Holder is right. This is a nation of cowards. That’s why the press is soft on racism.
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you know abagond…the more i read your blogs, the more i am starting to dislike liberals.
ive always been moderate, but leaned towards liberal on things at times…and in a few rare instances i would lean conservative.
i already know conservatives are some of the most ignorant and hateful people….
but your blog is helping me see liberals are the exact same, they just hide it and pretend to be everyone’s hero.
i dont trust media…neither side reports things accurately….
i guess one has to accept there is no such thing as equality, and racism will always be the worst against blacks, and nothing can be done to change it. MLK tried and died because of it….the greatest fighters we had, have since died.
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There are people who are ignorant and hateful and those who are NOT ignorant and hateful in EVERY race, gender, religion, political ideology, etc..
Ultimately, you have to treat people (REGARDLESS of race, gender, religion, political ideology, etc.)as INDIVIDUALS in order to get to know who/what they really are.
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im not talking about all races.
i am talking about white people who are ignorant and hateful.
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laromana’s comment:
There are people who are ignorant and hateful and those who are NOT ignorant and hateful in EVERY race, gender, religion, political ideology, etc..
Ultimately, you have to treat people (REGARDLESS of race, gender, religion, political ideology, etc.)as INDIVIDUALS in order to get to know who/what they really are.
My comment INCLUDES whites.
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well MY comment, i am only talking about whites. i dont need any corrections or scoldings.
i dont see the point in lumping everyone, when you are directly talking about one specific group.
there is no such thing as equality out there. and every group is different. therefore i will refer to each group differently.
this is about white people. so its only staying about white poeple.
i dont go with that nonsense, that EVERYONE is blah blah blah.
who gives a crap, that doesnt have anything to do with the actual subject at hand.
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alwaysright101,
You’re the one who is “scolding and correcting me”, as well as misrepresenting my comments. NOTHING that I’ve said contradicts what you’re saying, but even if you feel it does, I am entitled to comment just as much as you are. Enough said.
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well im not talking about all races. im only talking about the white race, and you were trying to correct it….
in the end, if you want to comment fine. just dont try to tell me what to say. in the end, this is about white people not other races. take that “we are equal” and “all races do it” junk somewhere else..
i didnt comment on here for any responses…
other races have nothing to do with this issue…and you are trying to avoid the situation at hand.
instead of responding to what i said, stay focused on the article.
im not asking for corrections. cause there is no corrections needed. what i said is correct, and i have no reason to change it. i know what i am saying, if i wanted to talk about all races, i would have.
so dont lecture me about that equal stuff. cause i dont believe there is such a thing as equality, and i am not going to lump all races in a topic that is about 1 specific race.
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you are trying to contradict what im saying. nowhere did i mention other races, but somehow you got on the topic of other races, when i made no mention of other races.
dont comment towards me, and then get off topic like that.
also, i didnt ask for you opinion on my opinion in the first place.
in the end, you stuck your nose in, because you want to lecture.
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alwaysright101
I suggest that you go onto youtube. It’s more applicable for someone of your age.
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no i am fine right where i am. i am an adult. i dont need to be told where to go. and why are you even chiming in? you arent involved in this. this is between me and laromana. so mind your own business.
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in the end, my views are not up for debate. so you guys can forget about trying to make a debate out of nothing.
i dont need to be lectured, since i know what i said is correct.
if you are going to comment at me, stay on topic. if i am talking about white people, dont start talking about other races…cause that has nothing to do with it.
i dont debate my views, especially when the people wanting to debate, are either rude or stay off topic.
in the end, go lecture someone else…because im not changing my views….what i said was final, and you guys didnt want to accept that. you prefer to argue about something that has nothing to do with what im talking about.
you guys should be respectful next time. or just butt out all together.
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Laromana did go off topic. I too get annoyed by people who can not stay on topic.
This article is about White people. So this is not about other races.
The problem in all of this is everyone is going too far with their opinions.
Everyone say their opinion on the article. But don’t start giving your opinion on other peoples’ opinions. that is not necessary.
A person posting their opinion on the article is not opening the doors for discussion start respecting people by just leaving them alone.
And like its been said, if you have the uncontrollable need to shove your opinion or lecture someone, do not stray from the real topic at hand.
This has nothing to do with other races. Its about White people, and the press. So keep it about that.
There is no reason for you guys to keep discussing this any further.
Its final. You guys should have respected Alwaysright101.
Now stop talking about it. And get back to the article.
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alwaysright101 and 1010p
You both incorrect! This is about white people, the press AND black people.
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well i am only talking about white people and i dont want someone trying to start a argument with me, when they cant even stay on topic.
i agree with 1010p, if you are going to respond to my opinion, then respect it, by staying on topic and not being rude. otherwise do not respond. its that simple
i am not debating this. in the end. i am strictly talking about white people. i refuse to talk about other races, because this is about white people and what they are doing in the press to black people.
and i will not discuss this with people who are rude, and also try to avoid the whole situation by making it about others, when we arent talking about others.
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