Jack: Well, well, well Lemon. Steven's a good man; he's on partner track at Dewey, and he's a Black.
Liz: A black?!? That is offensive.
Jack: No, no, that's his last name: Steven Black. Great family.
Liz: Oh, yeah, of course.
Jack: They're remarkable people, the Blacks; musical, very athletic, not very good swimmers. Again, I'm talking about the family. Black is African American, though.

Tried to find the clip on Hulu, couldn't.

maybe the guy is an asshat but then again maybe he just chose his words poorly. Look at at all the things you CANT say or automatically be considered a racist. Oh, and add 'complextion' to that list becuase thats new.

FTFA: PHILADELPHIA, July 10 (UPI) -- The head of a swim club said Friday he regrets how he explained why his site would not host kids from a predominantly minority day camp in Philadelphia.


Philly? Seriously? The city of brotherly love?

Alabama I could see, even Florida.....but Philly?

Did he kick the Urban Youth out before the shooting started? Maybe he deserves the Hero tag.

Donald_McRonald: This guy really should've quit while he was behind.

I LOL'd

ScottHimself: This entire situation has been impossibly hysterical.

someone needs to link all the fark articles in a comment so we can show everyone the progress.

In related news, the other groups the club canceled don't think racism has anything to do with it.

well first off,,,if you could get em' to keep there pants from baggin, like there back in da hood with 3 inchs of hip and crack showing, they might make it off the diving board without losing their drawers. That would be the biggie to tackle. Next plenty of lifeguards, cause everyone knows the brothers don't swim worth a hoot.

What? Black people can't swim.

I worked as a lifeguard for many a years -

Whenever the day camps of under privileged kids came, we had the hardest time. Without money none of them had the swim lessons most of the white kids were getting since they were 2.

As an LA beach lifeguard we are practically taught to be racist. We are told to look for latinos who are wearing jeans and wifebeaters in the water becuase they are the most likely to drown.

There is a huge safety concern when they have young minorities all jumping in a pool when they don't know how to swim. Just because it is racist does not mean it is not true.

The swim club president:



/now we know
//unless it's too obscure
//hot

We had an African-American kid join our almost-entirely-white suburban summer swim team when I was 12 years old.

He had grown up in the inner city and his mother had managed somehow to finish college and get a good job as a C.P.A. despite having two kids and being all alone, and his new stepfather was a local lawyer who also coached JV basketball -one of maybe three black families in our whitebread-with-occasional-Asians neighborhood.

Said kid did not know how to swim. There were no pools where he'd grown up, and yet his mother insisted he learn -and the fastest way, she thought, was to put him onto the summer team.

He learned in one hour and was promoted to third-lane in practice despite being only eleven. (For perspective, sixth-lane was 17-year-olds who swam varsity during the schoolyear. Most eleven-year-olds were only in first.)

Today, he is enjoying a full-ride athletic scholarship to a prominent university for swimming and diving, majoring in computer science and seeing a lovely Indian-American girl who was in the second lane on said swim team so long ago. His record for the 300-meter freestyle still stands and last summer he worked as a lifeguard while coaching the team for his second triumphant year. He is the only man I trust with the task of teaching my autistic godson to swim, especially given that only two weeks after he joined the team, I slipped and hit my head on the cement edge of the pool and he saved my life. He was eleven and I was a clumsy, pudgy twelve, yet he still managed somehow to haul my unconscious carcass out of the water before the grown lifeguards had a chance to see what happened.

Point being, just because a kid hasn't tried a sport before doesn't mean he isn't perfectly capable of kicking enough ass in it to make racist club presidents look stupid. And then some.

Is this story going to be dragged out everyday?


/move on, people.

sonder: Show me an inner city black kid that can swim.

G'head.

This. His concerns were valid as many of them have never had lessons and with any large group like this there will be behavioural issues. Unless they were offering swim lessons with plenty of lifeguards, his ass should be covered.

It's also harder to see black people in the dark. However, they do have rhythm, so there's that.

But seriously, did they clarify (when they were offering their facilities to the general public) that everyone has to know how to swim, and did they further take steps to see that there was a proper ratio of lifeguards/attendants to the number of children so as to ensure safety? If not, why not? If someone paid you nearly two grand and told you they were gonna show up with 60 kids, wouldn't you make some attempt to prepare for that? Rather than make excuses afterwards as to why you decided to kick them out and refund their money?

These people are clearly way more stupid than they are racist. I know that's a fine distinction, but...

Pezfel: There is a huge safety concern when they have young minorities all jumping in a pool when they don't know how to swim. Just because it is racist does not mean it is not true.

Though I agree with this, is there any evidence that these kids didn't know how to swim? Wouldn't a swim club ask a group beforehand if the kids could swim or not?

I think what he actually meant to say is that he was worried they would be urinating in the pool excessivly after drinking all that grape soda.

12349876: Pezfel: There is a huge safety concern when they have young minorities all jumping in a pool when they don't know how to swim. Just because it is racist does not mean it is not true.

Though I agree with this, is there any evidence that these kids didn't know how to swim? Wouldn't a swim club ask a group beforehand if the kids could swim or not?

and one other question, did the group have supervisors that were watching them and also trained as lifeguards?

Maybe he was afraid of too much Soul Glow clogging the filter and making the water smell funny?

Alleyoop: //unless it's too obscure

for a lot of Farkers, yeah that guy isn't a part of their memory, but for those old enough, I'm in my mid 30s, not obscure at all. Was for many of us the first example of someone nuking their own career we can remember.

AbbeySomeone: Unless they were offering swim lessons with plenty of lifeguards, his ass should be covered.

When I was in day camp during the summer, I don't recall many kids actually swimming in the pool. Chasing each other around and stuff? Yep. Actual swimming? Not so much.

Poorly chosen words, indeed. Unfortunately, he's probably right about the simmer/lifeguard ratio. He saw a bunch of lawsuits come walking into his club and did what he thought he had to do. You know the first time Ja'Neesha slapped M'leeqwa upside her damn fool haid and and caused her to drown he would have immediately been sued for failing to provide an adequate number of lifeguards.

/and some more from me

I really don't see how this issue warrants an "investigation" as it states in the article. Should we investigate the KKK for not allowing black members in their group too? When did it become illegal for a private organization to discriminate certain people from their group? It's not like they were applying for a job or trying to buy a house.

So this the thread where all us white Farkers bring out the racist jokes they've been collecting, because we can just say "this is the kind of joke this asshat would have made". I mean, we'd never make these jokes ourselves or anything.

For example, I'd never make a joke like, "We can't let them in the pool because our insurer doesn't accept food stamps." Not me.

Shadow Blasko: sonder: Show me an inner city black kid that can swim.

G'head.

I don't see any water in that picture. That is obviously some sort of tribal jumping ritual.

12349876: 12349876: Pezfel: There is a huge safety concern when they have young minorities all jumping in a pool when they don't know how to swim. Just because it is racist does not mean it is not true.

Though I agree with this, is there any evidence that these kids didn't know how to swim? Wouldn't a swim club ask a group beforehand if the kids could swim or not?

and one other question, did the group have supervisors that were watching them and also trained as lifeguards?

As to the evidence of whether they did not know how to swim, of course not, there have been 2 articles. All I know is from my experience, many of the kids coming from those type of camps are not strong swimmers.

Most of the camps that came to my pool the supervisors are not lifeguards. The pool I worked at always had a ton of extra lifeguards on duty whenever we had the inner city camps come in.

When we had camps from more affluent families we did not have as many lifeguards on duty. Is that considered racist?

TSE: Unfortunately, he's probably right about the simmer/lifeguard ratio.

I agree, but unless those black kids are lying, there were definitely some racial sentiments floating around the club.

Also, something about Gordon Ramsey and never overbooking would be applicable too.

Pezfel: When we had camps from more affluent families we did not have as many lifeguards on duty. Is that considered racist?

If you know ahead time what kinds of swimmers there are going to be then no.

When I was a youngster, and we joined the local YMCA, I had to prove to the life-guard that I could swim well enough to be allowed in the "free swim" sessions.

Also, the they guy say "Many of those *insert plural racial epithet* couldn't swim, or did he say "Many of those children couldn't swim"?

It's a matter of liability.

Honestly, I think he meant "many of them couldn't swim" in regards to the number of children in the pool. There was no room.

This is the same reason the club gave to the other groups that were refunded their money. Only the "black" group is complaining of racism being the cause.

"GET OUT OF THE POOL!!!"
High in temp, Yadda, Yadda...

Can Obama's kids swim?

SpiderQueenDemon: Point being, just because a kid hasn't tried a sport before doesn't mean he isn't perfectly capable of kicking enough ass in it to make racist club presidents look stupid. And then some.

And if he had been one of a mass of 50 or 60 kids who all came into the pool at once and started raising hell, he would have gotten kicked out.

Ah, good 'ol Bruce Willis.

He's someone in Hollywood I'd actually invite into my house.

I worked in a water park in NJ.

Every 4th of July we would get people from Brooklyn, Bayonne, Edison, Elizabeth, etc, who had never been in a pool in their lives.

This didn't stop them from going on the big slide that dropped you in a 10 foot deep pool.

If you worked that pool, you just stayed in the water all day.

AlanSmithee: Can Obama's kids swim?

Yea, they're only part black.

/had to say it.

We had a big school group come to the local KOA pool and waterslides. Little (insert minority name here) couldn't swim, drowned due to not enough lifeguards and the family sued and won. No more KOA/Waterslides/Campground. And the school district paid out considerably too.

Glad to see the American tradition of witch hunting is alive and well.

Scant evidence, a couple kids making accusations...he must be a !!

skinink: "The day camp kids are ni***BONNNNNNNNG***!!!"


"What'd he say?"


"He said 'The day camp kids are nice!' "

Ha! That's on AMC right now!

My dad, a research scientist and professor, worked at an HBU (historically black university) in Durham, NC for years. He said that his colleagues told him that their families and friends enjoyed being down in the South more because racism there is more overt than being up in the North, where its an undercurrent of everything. In the South, people don't hide it and so you know who to stay away from. In the North there is this low-tension boiling under the surface and it erupts sometimes without warning, like in this article. That was the main reason behind black families returning to the South after the great migration up north after the Civil War.

He also said that each semester without fail he'd have undergraduate students come in and say if he didn't give them an A they'd go to the Dean and claim he was a racists... but that's a story for another day.

Funny, eh? Oh multiculturalism and its crazy viewpoints.

/Yankees, as a group, are as racist as anyone else in this country
//they just think they aren't because of the lack of opportunities to be racist

gulogulo: Glad to see the American tradition of witch hunting is alive and well.

Scant evidence, a couple kids making accusations...he must be a !!

His public statements are not helping the case much. Someone get that guy a Twix.

TSE: He saw a bunch of lawsuits come walking into his club and did what he thought he had to do.

Thing is, the club accepted the money from the camp. I highly doubt they weren't told upfront how many children would be showing up.

If most of those children were raised in urban areas--especially economically opressed areas--they probably can't swim. There's just no where to learn. I was lucky to grow up in well-funded suburban neighborhoods and/or military bases where there were well-tended pools and swimming lessons for little or no cost.

During the summer, if too many kids showed up at once, everybody swam in 1/2 hr shifts. You sat on the side until it was your turn. Kids who couldn't swim played in the shallow end. If you were unruly or if a kid unable to swim tried to go to the deep end, they got a 1 hour time-out. What's so hard about that?

However, my parents and other black parents had to be there to make sure all us black kids got our turn.

They did everything they could to keep us out of the water. Kids would say, "My mom said black people are dirty."

But that was 35 years ago.

HappyLittleTree: His public statements are not helping the case much. Someone get that guy a Twix.

His first public statement was highly truncated and one in which he admitted was a poor choice of words. Someone trying to hide their racism doesn't use words like "complexion." The rest of the story was a lot of "He said/she said" with no one substatiating it..just running with the story.

And what he said today? Forget the stereotype for a moment. Having been a camp counselor that had to use private swim club pools, it is a madhouse when you bring 60 campers in. If the majority are showing poor swimming skills how many life guards do you think you are going to need? After their first swim he realized that it was a bad idea and he didn't have teh support staff to watch all of them. That makes him a racist now? Or are you pushing his words into a racist context because that's the story that's selling now?

Oh come on...

Everyone knows apes can't swim.

/What?

12349876: I agree, but unless those black kids are lying, there were definitely some racial sentiments floating around the club.

The thing about kids, black or not, is that they lie like hell. I don't know what to believe about this story (the public statements aren't helping at all), but I don't trust kids one bit.

/huge liar as a kid
//not that bad anymore
///...OR AM I?