Wow, this must be embarrassing for the backwards Southern state where this must have...
Er, never mind.
A parent of one of the black kids, and who wasn't there, is not a particularly good source of what went on at the pool.
We should boycott whatever state Philadelphia is in.
3: I hear its Turnpike sucks too.
Philadelphia, Mississippi, I must assume.
Too bad there weren't any recent racism-related posts to which this post could have been a comment. Classy!
6: Now I feel like a bit of a jerk given the solidarity I felt with neb on brassiere-related eating establishment pronunciation confusion from the other thread.
Did someone mention this in another thread here? I know I saw it somewhere on the internet today. Oh well.
It's...something...that no sooner am I leaving a comment in the TNC thread than this pops up. God, I hate that my hometown makes national news for stuff like this.
2: I'm happy to agree that socially explosive news stories reported by local TV often get a great many of the particulars wrong, and are needlessly inflammatory. That said, I know this region pretty intimately (though not the club or the summer-camp program involved) and the behavior is entirely consistent with remarks and behavior I have seen here in the past 30+ years.
Motherfucker. I've been having people point this story out to me for hours now. I'm going to start telling people it was all a big misunderstanding and that I'm originally from Pittsburgh. Go Stoolers!
Because nobody from Pittsburgh has ever done anything stupid that made the news?
10 was me. That little "Name" box is getting on my last nerve.
11: Has anyone from Pittsburgh ever made the news?
12: I'm working on the world's largest perogie.
I had to Google perogie. Pretended to be a Pittsburghtarian is going to be harder than I thought.
Ah, this is quite interesting. Girard College, a private residential K-12 school with a mostly poor, mostly nonwhite student body, has stepped in to offer the campers a place to swim.
Interestingly, Girard itself only admitted black kids at all after a bruising court fight about the wishes of long-ago founder Stephen Girard, who founded a school for orphan boys -- whites only.
Wasn't that young lady who carved a backwards B on her face during the election from Pittsburgh? Because that was some world class stupidity.
16: She was in Pittsburgh (Bloomfield to be precise), but not from Pittsburgh. She was one of many outlanders who came to do the swing-state thing.
14: I didn't know what a perogie was when I got here either. I tell people they are Polish ravoli.
16: No, she was just in town as a campaign volunteer. Locals immediately spotted the gaping holes in her story.
15: Apparently the Professor (Russell Johnson) from Gilligan's Island graduated from there!
one of many outlanders who came to do the swing-state thing
Bizarro LB!
There is a half-bag of perogies that has been sitting in my freezer for close to two years.
How is this shit even legal? If they advertise an open membership policy, they're fraudulent; if they make the colour bar explicit, I'm sure there are laws against that.
There was concern that a lot of kids would change the complexion ... and the atmosphere of the club,
Someone obviously needs to tell this fellow that blackness is not water-soluble.
I'm glad that another pool stepped up. I kind of wish that it had been a more exclusive swim club that did it instead of one serving low-income kids.
Also, people in that area should go to Wayne-based Gumdrops and Sprinkles which is offering those kids a day of ice cream and candy making.
Folks might set their iPods to Gil Scott Heron's Johannesburg. What is the word?
(The lyrics for J. that I find on the web leave out the last bit, which was relevant. Huh.)
Would it be rude to post:
"Locals immediately spotted the gaping holes in her story face."
as a "Fixed!" type comment? I want to keep making fun of her because I still find it hilariously symptomatic of everything the Republican party embodies that someone would do what she did.
How is this shit even legal?
It isn't, I'm sure.
Wasn't Pittsburgh where that guy had to shoot the police before Obama banned his guns away?
Not that my hometown is covering itself in glory, or anything.
22,28: IANAL, but my general sense is that private clubs can do what they like. And they don't quite advertise an "open" membership policy; there are plenty of do's and don'ts in the list I saw linked somewhere last night. So I'm sure their lawyer can find a way to justify this.
Which doesn't mean they shouldn't get sued into the middle of next week -- just that this kind of racism usually happens in subtler, before-the-fact ways, such that the club would have said no to their initial request, rather than taking their money and then reversing course.
Mmm. The figleaf I'd expect is 'no daycamps', which is actually a pretty common policy (or, at least, some NYC public pools don't allow daycamps -- Sally spent a week last summer at a camp that sneaked into a public pool by sending in kids four at a time with a counselor, and not mentioning that they were all together), to the point that I wonder whether the daycamp disclosed its organizational status, or just bought a bunch of individual memberships.
Has anyone from Pittsburgh ever made the news?
That Andy Warhol guy made the news, but only for fifteen minutes.
Here's to the land you've torn out the heart of
Pennsylvania find yourself another country to be part of
If you miss me in the Delaware River, you can't find me nowhere...
Boy, I could go for some pierogi now. Alternately, haluski, except that I only really like the kind my mother and I make -- when I've had it elsewhere it's just been a pale damp tasteless blob. (We make sure the onions and especially the cabbage are sauteed until toasty.)
but only for fifteen minutes.
Sure was a long fifteen minutes though.
People haven't heard of pierogis, let alone eaten them? Bizarre! Somehow they're filed in the food-everyone-knows bin in my mind.
Everywhere I've ever been, pierogies take up at least 2% of the space in the grocery store's freezer.
36: "He says he's 'measuring', should we call security?"
Everywhere I've ever been, pierogies take up at least 2% of the space in the grocery store's freezer.
Come to think of it, you don't see many of them here, but that's because the freezer space is taken up by Tamales. They do exist though. Kolaches are a regional thing here I hadn't run into anywhere else, but pierogies are are pretty much everywhere.
Mmm. The figleaf I'd expect is 'no daycamps', which is actually a pretty common policy (or, at least, some NYC public pools don't allow daycamps -- Sally spent a week last summer at a camp that sneaked into a public pool by sending in kids four at a time with a counselor, and not mentioning that they were all together), to the point that I wonder whether the daycamp disclosed its organizational status, or just bought a bunch of individual memberships.
I think the day camp paid $1900 so the kids could go once a week. There really was not any figleaf here.
30: just that this kind of racism usually happens in subtler, before-the-fact ways, such that the club would have said no to their initial request,
This is the the sort of thing that makes me hopeful about the future, and about the salutary effects of social pressure not to be openly racist. Speculating about what happened here: twenty years ago, the management of the pool would have had a (possibly elliptical, but clear) talk with everyone in memberships about keeping 'those people' out, and would have felt comfortable doing so. Here, you figure that whoever processed the application honestly didn't know that keeping black kids out was an organizational goal, presumably because it's a lot harder to have a 'everyone's racist here' conversation now than it used to be. So this turned into a public mess for the racist organization, rather than a quiet, before the fact, refusal.
I figure that whoever processed the application was visualizing a summer camp filled with well-off white children, actually.
Maybe. In NY, my stereotype about summer day camps is that well-off white kids take a bus to a facility with its own pool and so forth, and that a day camp schlepping the kids around to various facilities open to the public is going to be mostly brown/black/sprinkling of white kids. Even if the person processing the forms just never thought of race, though, or had different stereotypes than I do, that means they hadn't been coached effectively in how to screen people out.
I'm a big believer on the virtues of PC in that it makes it hard for racists to coordinate behavior and maintain social networks, because they don't know which white people they can trust. It's not everything, but I think it helps.
38: Kolaches are one of the things I really do miss about Houston. There were a couple of great little shops that specialized in them.
Sacramento is hurting as bad as the rest of the state, so they reduced all their pool hours this summer. The kids used to swim from 1-5; now the hours are 3-5. This is so sad, because I used to see kids lining up at 11:45 for the pool to open at 1:00. They obviously loved every minute of it.
(On the other hand, it makes my experience just a little more pleasant. I was surprised at how openly rude some of the little girls were to me as I changed after swimming. I didn't mind the girls who stared openmouthed, but I didn't like the ones who'd say "nasty" and "gross" as I stood there naked and toweling myself. Darlin', you're gonna look something like this in the foreseeable future.)
Czech kolač are really nice. I assume the Polish version is similar? A sort of sweet round pastry with plums or similar fruit on top? Or the best kind, with mak [a sort of sweet buttery poppy seed paste].
I have a dream that one day children of all races will sit together and eat stuffed Eastern European dishes with difficult to pronounce names.
45: The "Kolache" you get around here are originally the Czech version, bu they've mutated. You can still get the fruit types etc., but a lot of them here have meat in them I think.
or perhaps I should say "meat", as it seems to be of the hot-dog variety, but I can't be sure not having tried those ones.
44: I was surprised at how openly rude some of the little girls were to me as I changed after swimming.
You must have been surprisingly sheltered when you were a little girl, if you weren't one of the mean team. I'm never surprised at how openly rude little girls can be: I just like having the Voice of Authority I lacked when I was a little girl, and telling them off for being rude little bullies.
Last Christmas I got into one of the ferris wheel cages, and when it stopped up high, two of the three little girls started to gleefully rock the cage and taunt the third little girl about how she was scared of heights, as she hung on to the edge of the seat with both hands and said in that quiet little voice that she evidently knew wasn't going to be listened to "Don't" and "Stop it".
I don't actually like the cages being rocked either, and told them so. "Aw, but that's no fun!"
"Too bad. Two of us who don't want the cage rocked outvote the two of you who do want the cage rocked." *voice of authority* *glare*
They stopped. I enjoyed the view and their silence.
Hopefully the third little girl did not go up with them in another ride.
While I would never be surprised at how openly rude little girls can be to one another, or even to adults that they know, that particular variety of rudeness right to the face of an adult, under the locker room circumstances Megan describes, would still surprise me.
51: Hopefully the third little girl did not go up with them in another ride. will take horrible revenge on them years from now on Prom Night.
*voice of authority*
I was shocked the first time I realized that I had the voice of authority. Some kid (like college aged) was writing in fresh cement. Not small-time writing either. He'd written (presumably) his name above a heart that was at least a foot across. I said 'hey' from 100 feet away and he took off running. I waited until he was gone before writing 'Ralph Nader' below the heart.
50: I need one of those rude bumper stickers along the lines of "My Mongrel Kid Can Kick Your Kid's Lily-White Ass." Not that that would have much resonance around here.
44, 51, 52: I'm doing my part to combat that sort of behavior by exposing myself to little girls whenever possible. Helps them develop an appreciation for the marvelous variety of the human body.
See, the problem is the Swedes have pure genes. Because they marry other Swedes .... Finns marry other Finns, so they have a pure society
Bbbbut... They're socialists!
"We are -- we keep marrying other species and other ethnics and other ..."
I have not yet ceased to be surprised at how rude some of my daughters' little urchin friends can be. They respond favorably when I bark at them, though, so they're not exactly out of control.
Further to 54, I would love to hear Brian Kilmeade on the subject of Finnish-Swedish intermarriage.
48: [Kolaches] but a lot of them here have meat in them I think.
Yes, my two favorites (this was late 70s/early 80s) were the cheese and sausage. But the fruit were good to.
we keep marrying other species
This is why we have cat-human hybrids. Which is a good thing, IMO.
More people should have sex with ducks. (Cue duck penis jokes. Except that Emerson is gone.)
61: cat-human hybrids . . . a good thing
The widespread acceptance of this view on the Internet puzzles me. I have owned (a share in) several cats, and I don't dislike the species, but a partially feline being that could not be locked up in the spare bedroom when necessary seems like a really bad idea to me.
63. Agreed. A cat-human hybrid would be very like the Cat in Red Dwarf. Do not want.
Somehow, I had completely forgotten about the Cat in Red Dwarf. Ah, memories.
Cat-human hybrids would expect to rule the world, but would then run off crying any time someone sneezed.
Cat-human hybrids would expect to rule the world, but would then run off crying any time someone sneezed.
Wait...are you saying...SARAH PALIN ISN'T FULLY HUMAN??!!!
Do not want.
But think of the economic benefits in the clothing sectors alone!
...and thus she may not be qualified to be president under Article II, Section 1!!!!! All she has to do is submit to a karyotyping to clear up this controversy!!! Clearly she has something to hide!!!
67: I take it you are referring to the stimulus from increased production to replace clothing damaged by widespread shedding, marking, and shredding?
69 & 70 haven't seen Cat's wardrobe.
71: Is it worth googling in a heteronormative, NSFWish way?
I clearly don't know from Red Dwarf.
73
What are you thinking?
Furries, probably.
2 bugs me. Every time I click on the thread.
A black parent can't be relied upon to report accurately what happened - even though what the black parent is reporting is backed up by all the other evidence.
A black child can't be relied on to report accurately what they saw happen.
The only reliable witnesses are white.
I was charitably reading dismissing 2 as silly in a didn't bother to actually read the article sort of way.
Interracial Roomates is good for you. Yglesias's links.
True story. I had a black dorm roommate in one of my vacations at college. Way back around 1970 somewhere. Can't say it educated me, because I don't think we said ten words to each other the entire first semester. Might have been the tiny tiny room, like 5 foot wide by 15 long, with a bunk bed, two desks, two dressers, an easy chair, and a closet. You walked sideways. I'm saying it might have been that we instinctively granted each other a whole lot of space.
Messages were passed via mutual friends in the corridor. "Dude say he's sorry that he broke in on you with the girl last night." "Tell him it's my fault, and I appreciate the way he handled it." This is despite spending 10-12 hours together in the room, sleeping and studying.
In any case, the amazing thing is that even though we barely knew each other's names, had nothing in common, and never spoke, when January came around we each looked at each other and signed up for another shared semester.
I have never again found such a soulmate.
True story.
The cockles of my heart are warmed.
Bob, that may be the sweetest thing you've ever shared here.
If you added a puppy or something, it could be a movie.
77: 2 also bugs me in that bjk has deviated from his regular style of phrasing his weak-ass trolling in the form of questions that can easily be dealt with thusly.
||
Just a failed romantic sentimental slob. But you knew that.
Here is IOZ on True Blood
Yglesias is now a TB fan, because Michelle Forbes became a part of the show. MY was embarrassed by his nerditude, Forbes in many SF TV shows. I had not watched those shows, but I knew I knew that face from something
|>
84: I still think of her as the ME on Homicide.
79, 81: bob says sweet things all the time! It's just hard to tell. Great story. I'm tempted to call you bm, but that would be too much, seriously too much.
85: Me too!
I just got to the scene on True Blood where she shows up (I mean, JUST - I watched it perhaps 5 minutes ago). First thought was, ah, Dr. Cox, that fox.
I think of her as the Paul Weston's wife from In Treatment. No one else seems to have watched that show, though.
In Treatment is excellent. When she showed up there I thought "Hey! It's Admiral Cain!"
Why the hell did HBO take a week off of TB last week, anyway?Anyone who needs to catch up with the season so far can do on on demand, no?
In college (in the 80s), I swam with a guy who had been one of the first really fast swimmers for Jim Ellis.
At a meet, a guy from Apo's beloved school thought it would be funny to call him a n--ger. Our teams almost came to blows, but our Philly friend composed himself with class and dignity, and we stepped back contemptuously from the offending guy.