Swim club president changes the complexion of his story
Valley Club board president John Duesler is not a happy camper. His swim club is now synonymous with blue state racism, and he has to go on television to defend his membership, some of whom turn out to be throwbacks with no idea of what is and isn’t appropriate to say around children. Duesler, with his wife standing by his side, told television cameras that kicking out 65 Black and Hispanic campers wasn’t about race at all! Heaven forbid! The word of the day, kids, is “safety…”
Duesler claims that the kids were ejected because there were just too darned many of them, and that while, sure, he knew 65 kids were coming, the club “saw a number on a piece of paper” and “had no idea of what the implications would be” live and in living color … so to speak … Duesler insists that the incident was not about race, and that the club was simply concerned, because as we all know, Black people can’t swim … I mean, many of those lovely urban children couldn’t swim. And there were only two lifeguards on duty.
Problem: Duesler is the same guy who when initially asked about kicking out the minority campers, told Philadelphia TV station WTXF:
“There was concern that a lot of kids would change the complexion … and the atmosphere of the club.”
Duesler now calls that a poor choice of words. And he and his wife insist they kicked out other clubs as well (and that those clubs were “multi-ethnic.”) Verdict: not gonna work. Duesler and company knew how many kids were coming, to be sure (and yet, they only put two lifeguards on duty?) But he can’t claim to have known how many of them would be black and brown, how many would have cornrowed hair, and how his members would react to them. Apparently, all but three white parents at the poos reacted by yanking their kids out of the water, according to Creative Steps Camp director Alethea Wright:
“A couple of the children ran down saying, ‘Miss Wright, Miss Wright, they’re up there saying, ‘What are those black kids doing here?”‘
Wright said she went to talk to a group of members at the top of the hill and heard one woman say she would see to it that the group, made of up of children in kindergarten through seventh grade, did not return.
“Some of the members began pulling their children out of the pool and were standing around with their arms folded,” Wright said. “Only three members left their children in the pool with us.”
Several days later, the club refunded the camp’s $1,950 without explanation …
Oh, there’s an explanation all right. And it’s not about “safety.” No one, so far, is denying that the children were subjected to those ugly comments. And Duesler’s story of grievous and frightening overcrowding is contradicted by one of his own members, who was at the club on the day of the incident:
Amy Goldman said she has been a member of The Valley Club, located on Tomlinson Road in Lower Moreland Township, for two years. She said the pool wasn’t particularly crowded and the children from Creative Steps Day Care were “well behaved and respectful.”
She said there had been black members at the club in the past, though she couldn’t remember seeing any this year.
So if the pool wasn’t overcrowded, and the kids weren’t misbehaving, what prompted those parents to extract their kids from the water? And what about the meeting with board members, at which some allegedly said, “let the chips fall where they may?” What chips?
While Duesler’s apologies are compelling to some, probably white, members of the blogosphere: he seems like such a nice guy!! He voted for Obama! … (the wingers love that one) … that line of reasoning is interesting only in that it is beside the point. Mr. Duesler is not being called a racist. And who cares if he is a nice guy who voted for Barack Obama (the more relevant question might have been, would Obama’s children be welcome to swim with 60 Black and Hispanic friends at the Valley Club?) Duesler is being accused of presiding over a club that both sanctioned, and put racism into practice regarding these campers. Duesler’s personal racial attitudes, which we know nothing about, are less relevant than his actions, namely, that when confronted with complaints from white club members who were alarmed by the sight of 65 mostly Black campers splashing about in the pool, rather than piss off those members or standing up to them, Duesler played the coward and gave Creative Steps its money back. If he is in fact, the “good liberal” he is being portrayed as in some quarters, then Dr. Duesler is the embodiment of the notion of the “limousine liberal” — able to champion tolerance and racial reconciliation in theory, in writing, and in the voting booth, so long as too many of “them” don’t show up all at the same time.
Comments
9 Responses to “Swim club president changes the complexion of his story”
Leave a Reply
Connect
Book deals
Links
Finalist: Best Liberal Blog
Poll
Loading ...
Excellent write-up!!! I know every day as a white person I have to try to live what I say I believe, and you just have to acknowledge when you make a mistake or are a coward. Why can’t people err on the side of NOT being racist? This swim club president clearly didn’t. Instead he acts like a misunderstood victim. Ugh.
Wow I didn’t know there was that much to the story. Thanks for the info!
To be fair, this story may have NOTHING to do with racism at all.
When I was younger, I worked at a daycare that sent 30+ kid classes to the pool with 3 adults daily. In 10 years, the pool staff & patrons NEVER lodged a single complaint about our kids & often praised them.
The camp down the road, which had 50 kids and 6 or 7 teen “counselors”, would get 1 or 2 complaints DAILY and got kicked out at least twice.
Same racial and socioeconomic mix, different supervision, different experiences. So yes, I can believe its not about racism.
Seeeing the little boy cry because of what he heard some of the members say was enoughfor me. It is evident that this child is scarred for life. The club should be closed down immediately. This people should pay a hefty price for their un- American activities!
Seeeing the little boy cry because of what he heard some of the members say was enoughfor me. It is evident that this child is scarred for life. The club should be closed down immediately. This people should pay a hefty price for their un- American activities!
PS: Wanted to say great post!
To Guy Loving and the other knee-jerk reactionaries out there: First of all, we don’t know all the details. We’ve heard various opinions from people who were there, but opinions can vary widely and be completely different than fact.
Second, I am a parent of young kids. We frequent the community pool, parks and kids’ museum. We have been disrupted several times by large school and camp groups who descend on us and are not monitored adequately by their teachers. We’ve had to leave because either I couldn’t keep an eye on my kids through the commotion or because we were just plain annoyed. And that goes for groups of all colors. So I suspect the Pennsylvania pool situation isn’t as “black or white” as some are saying. Perhaps 2 lifeguards would have been adequate if the counselors were doing their job better. Perhaps not; the point is we weren’t there.
Just a suggestion- why don’t we all butt out and let the people involve handle this?
To all who think this story is not about racism: I listened to their “own side of the story” on cnn.
It was pathetic.
The club admitted this number of children at a given moment knowing their capacity and staff could handle it.
The only thing that happen was when the club members actually saw the children, and their color: racist panic and comments.
Every time the couple open their mouth on this subject, they say more terrible things:”It was for safety issues” ? really!!!!.
So it wasn’t necessary to revisit safety when they admitted and received payment for the camp members?
It’s hard to argue that this was not about race. The club knew how many children were coming, and common sense would have dictated what kind of “atmosphere” 65 splashing, laughing, excited kids would create. What changed was that the club members and staff actually SAW the kids who showed up, and clearly, from all the anecdotal evidence, they weren’t pleased with what they saw. What this club did to these kids was cruel, and it will stay with the kids a long time, unfortunately.
[...] … after two more tries; in a lame statement on their website (which is now down) and another in front of television cameras for 14 minutes, Duesler is trying for his fourth bite at a pretty rotten apple: belatedly inviting [...]