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Local swim club not crazy about The Coloreds
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For way too long, Philadelphia has just been cold retarded when it comes to race relations. (Seriously, try re-reading Buzz Bissinger's "A Prayer for the City" -- depressingly little has changed.) So it's not a terrible surprise that when a group of black and brown children visited a suburban swim club, the swim club's white members freaked out.
According to an NBC 10 report, at least one of the Northeast-based Creative Steps Day Camp campers said they heard a white club member asking what "all these black kids" were doing there. So far just hearsay, and this corner of Pa. enjoys a particularly vivid history of exaggerated racial claims on all sides. But then the club's president, John Duesler, goes ahead and says this in a statement:
"There was concern that a lot of kids would change the complexion... and the atmosphere of the club."
That is either a most unfortunate choice of words or a brutally honest confession. Thanks to underdevelopment and that pesky brain drain Philly seems stuck in the 80s, segregation-wise. And all of our local ethnic groups are really awesome at living up to their worst stereotypes. Still, Valley Swim Club: the No Coloreds in the Pool thing, really?? Brave.
[NBC10]
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