SpiderQueenDemon: 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.


Sounds like a nice guy, too bad he's black.

C'mon, it's a pool, not a sandbox.

/window seat, please

eraser8: No wonder all the racists and crypto-racists are defending him.

well observed!

DarthBrooks: the General Managers are phenomenal in their ability to say JUST the wrong thing to news media when Something Bad Happens.



Wishes to inform you that you will get nothing, and like it!

Still trying to figure out where he's wrong.

eraser8

No wonder all the racists and crypto-racists are defending him.

Lol?

So you're positing some kind of racist conspiracy in which the other groups the clubs canceled are saying it had nothing to do with racism...because they're secret racists?

Nobody makes a farking mistake like that, nobody. He said what he meant and now he has to backpedal.

Seriously, just like with Mel Gibson and other racists, what slips is only what you're thinking anyway, if you're not racist that shiat isn't there to accidentally fall out.

No wonder. It's landlocked.

vabeard: Is this story going to be dragged out everyday?


/move on, people.

Its a follow up. Don't like it? Don't click it.

True statistic from the lifeguarding days when I worked a huge waterpark:

On the average day you'd have to go in about 1-2 times for a "save" (most of them frivolous)

On the days when the inner city kids were there, you'd have to go in about 7-8 times. The conversation was always the same: Can you swim? Answer: No. Why were you in the deep end then? *shrug*.

By the way, it wasn't uncommon to have to save the same kid more than once.

Conservationist: Did someone literally change the complexion of the pool water?

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 !!

Atheist? Pothead? Liberal?

Lorelle: "It was just too many kids on top of each other," said Duesler

Translation: "OMG, those dark-skinned savages are simulating coitus in the presence of innocent white children!"

Jeez Louise. He knew the group consisted of a whole lotta kids the day he accepted the check.

Knew or should have known. Unless this man is mentally defective how could he NOT have asked the question "How many kids are you bringing and how well can they swim?" when he accepted the farking check?

A pool is a potentially deadly environment, that's why you have life guards and other safety measures in place, which include knowing how many people you are going to have at any given time in the pool.

Frankly his explanation still doesn't wash because A)It's not at all what he said yesterday, and B) Eyewitnesses say that the kids were very well behaved and the trouble started when some soccer mom complained that her precious children were going to have to share the pool with these kids.

FAIL HARDER, RACIST COUNTRY CLUB.

/Jeebus.

White kids are not allowed on the basketball courts because they can't jump (and they have no butts). Seems fair to me.

Facetious_Speciest: So you're positing some kind of racist conspiracy in which the other groups the clubs canceled are saying it had nothing to do with racism...because they're secret racists?

What are you talking about? How the fark did you come up with that from what I wrote?

eraser8

What are you talking about? How the fark did you come up with that from what I wrote?

Your "racists and crypto-racists defending him" bit.

I obviously just didn't get the joke.

lordaction: I'll bet that guy is sweating like a slave right now. How could he be so stupid?

Krymson Tyde: Roook: I haven't seen anyone be this stupid in a coon's age

both good

I feel that I should put in an appearance here, as I made one in the pool the other day, y'know, just to be fair.

I also practice Laundry Apartheid. So I know I'm a racist.

HI i HAPPEN TO KNOW THAT BLACKS DON'T PLAY HOCKEY OR SWIM WELL

If what Mr. Suck-my-racist-a$$ Pool Director said is true, why didn't employees explain that on the day it happened. Why wait almost a week to pull that flimsy piece of dookey from his nether-hole?

OH YEA, he's full of dookey!

"get in the pool, shake"
"No!"
"Damn, you ARE black!"
/Paraphrasing
//Hilarious episode

________________ is racist!



(ANYTHING can be put on the above line... as long as you meet certain criteria)

THE Black has a extra bone in his leg that gives him some flexible ability and he is more athletic than most whites in such dry land sports like Basketball and Football. If you put a Black Person on a Surfboard you are looking for trouble same with Hockey or swimming we should all just chill and learn to call a spade a spade

I think this is the most racist thread I've ever read on Fark.

aerojockey: 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.

That seems to have nailed it.

On a related note, many faculty, staff, and Midshipmen refer to the dive well at the Naval Academy as the "Ink Well," as it is where remedial swim is taught.

That is all.

WaltzingMathilda: SushiJoe: it's a pool, not an ice skating rink. The owner should get his stereotypes right.

you've never heard the blacks can't swim stereotype?

I hadn't either.

Well, honestly, if the people can't swim they should be regulated to the kiddy pool or forbidden from the water all together.

LouisvilleMale33: ________________ is racist!



(ANYTHING can be put on the above line... as long as you meet certain criteria)

Yeah, racism for one.

Who the hell cares?!

It's a private club, they can exclude whomever they want.

Stop crying and go some place else.

private club yeah but these people PAID their membership and were to be considered members, madblader.

go be ill-informed and ornery somewhere else.

IT was his original use of the word 'COMPLEXION' that pretty much farked it for this guy.

gadian

Well, honestly, if the people can't swim they should be regulated to the kiddy pool or forbidden from the water all together.

That's apparently what helped cause the problem. Only a third of the pool is shallow, the rest deep. You can't go in the deep part unless you've passed some swimming test (for liability purposes?). This resulted in all the visitor children being crammed into one end of the pool.

At least one of the other groups that was refunded says this was the entirety of the problem, and racism had nothing to do with it.

davynelson: private club yeah but these people PAID their membership and were to be considered members, madblader.

go be ill-informed and ornery somewhere else.

Yes, I do read, and they did get a refund...what's the problem?

madblader: Who the hell cares?!

It's a private club, they can exclude whomever they want.

Stop crying and go some place else.

Account created: 2009-06-18 08:29:54

Looks like we got ourselves another one of them Iran thread trolls

WaltzingMathilda: SushiJoe: it's a pool, not an ice skating rink. The owner should get his stereotypes right.

you've never heard the blacks can't swim stereotype?

You know, being Canadian, i never really heard of that stereotype... until i watched Survivor.

WhyteRaven74: Well the kids were part of a camp and they likely handled things like they did when I was in day camp. If you can't swim, don't go into the deeper water. And the camp counselors help keep on eye on things. To my knowledge, it's an entirely common thing. Accept Mr. Pool President isn't happy with such arrangements.

thomps: so you're advocating sectioning these kids off in a roped off shallow end and posting people in guard towers to keep an eye on them. i hate to tell you, but you might be racist.

How is that racist?? It is common sense that if you can't swim don't float into the deep water because you will drown. And the camp counselors also keeping an eye on things makes sense too. Are they not paid to watch the kids..? And most pools have some type of rope or line across the bottom of the pool indicating the shallow end from the deeper end of the pool. I don't understand how you pulled racist out of that?

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

G'head.

...Touche'

Maybe he should have opened with a joke.

Q: What did the kid from Creative Steps Day Camp get for his birthday?

A: My bike.

I LOL'd so hard I woke my room mates up.

The members just don't want to swim in a pool full of that smelly, greasy crap black people put in their hair.

Cross posting? Me?

Because everyone knows black people cannot swim, right?

I've seen a fair amount of kids who can't swim in my time...you can tell by the color of their skin....

/farging iceholes

The only thing I regret about dropping out of swimming when I got to university was that there was always two or three tall gorgeous Bermudian girls on the team.

/Men's and Women's team change rooms were linked by a door...
//couldn't keep up with the drinking, studying, and swimming; something had to go...

What bothers the hell out of me is not the pathetic racism angle, but the fact that "day camp" is NOT in any way, shape, or form a "camp". It's urban/suburban adolescent day-care and nothing more.

A "camp" involves CAMPING!!! I.E.

1) - sleeping in some type of primitive shelter that is NOT your own home

2) - eating junk food on a stick that was carbonized by the flames of a wood fire

3) - cavorting in bodies of water bound by dirt and rocks, not tile and concrete.

4) - doing battle with blood-sucking insects and woodland creatures

5) - taking a dump in the woods and wiping your ass with poison ivy or stinging nettles

Most importantly, "day camp" leaves out THE most important aspect of "camp" - that parents get to unload (for money) their rotten devil spawn on trained professionals who take them out in the wilderness for a week or more, giving said parents a glorious 7 days of peace and quiet!

vertiaset: My apologies to the African Americans in Farkistan. I know racism is alive and well. Thank God, we have reached the stage when we can look back with bemused detachment at the type of racism which was so prevalent in our country just a generation or two ago. Now if we can only keep moving forward to the point where we never have to read a story like this again.

THIS.

CigaretteSmokingMan: No wonder. It's landlocked.


My dad calls it..how do I get around the fark filter?..."N-wordgeria"

..hopefully that did it.