It looks as if there will be no friendly or common sense solution to the Valley Swim Club controversy. Once lawyers got involved how could there be?
One parent is calling for every board member at the club to resign. Club president John Deusler Jr. said he would gladly do so if that will resolve the matter.
It won't.
"These children are permanently scarred," claims Creative Steps camp director Alethea Wright.
Really? Permanently scarred? Because at least one of them heard an alarmed club member ask "What are all these black kids doing here?" Well maybe. But if so, the kids were helped along by a media frenzy and a culture of victimization that was bent on twisting the story into one of racial hatred.
It has been written that the kids endured "racial slurs" at the swim club that day and yet I can not find a single reported reference to such an accusation.
Since when is "black kids" a racial slur?
That the campers were led to feel unwelcome at the pool is a tragedy and the stupid fault of a very few people.
Most at fault is Duesler, who admits his responsibility in inviting a number of camps, including Creative Steps to use the pool without adequately considering how crowded and overwhelmed the facility would be.
Another camp director who contracted to use the pool for her 25 kids said it was obvious to her that the facility was overwhelmed with her campers. She accepted Deusler's apology for misjudging things and the camp's money back.
Creative Steps took another approach. It was supremely stupid of the club to unilaterally cancel a legal agreement with the camp and leave the campers without a place to swim for the summer. Whosever idea that was should be bounced from the club and asked never to return.
Now the camp and some of its parents want more than their money back. They want a payday. And they will encourage in their kids a sense of racial vicitimization completely out of proportion with what happened here to get it.
So a handful knuckleheads at a private pool did a bad job masking their surprise and consternation at the sheer number of kids (65) who arrived at their club's pool that afternoon. Maybe a couple of them really don't like the idea of their own children swimming with "black kids," although in this day and age that number seems to getting smaller and smaller.
The vast majority of the club's members it can be safely assumed are anything but racists. And they are terribly embarassed to be accused as such. Certainly, John Duesler is anything but. It has become pretty well-known that he was and is a big Barack Obama supporter and peace activist. He was the chairman of a group called Peace-Action Philadelphia, which is to say his credentials as a well-meaning progressive are fairly impeccable.
Would he be president of a club that was or is full of black-kid hating racists?
Who cares. There's a payday in here somewhere for somebody, the feelings of kids to exploit and moral superiority to be felt.
Beautiful.
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