One more bit of back-to-basics

A private club that had taken money from a summer camp to allow a bunch of African-American kids the use of the club's pool and then humiliate that same group is one of the most disgusting displays of racism I have heard of. The perpetrators of what I consider to be an assault should immediately and sincrely apologize for being such ugly racists.

I'm not a vindictive person but the club staff or members that promoted or permitted that kind of humiliation to occur should be exposed to a tailor-made public humiliation that really hits home in their own (obviously little) world. Wealth can sometimes protect people from being held accountable for abusing children in the way they did it, but I am hoping that the thinking people of the club kick them out. After all, who would want to associate themselves with that kind of trash?

I feel very sorry for the parents/caregivers of those kids who will likely have to explain that despite the election of a black President, it has not ended the civil rights movement and all of the work that entails.

The white parents have an even harder job - to tell their kids what happened and that it was wrong and if they had anything to do with it, that they are profoundly sorry. If they are unable to do that and their children end up carrying around that kind of racist bile, they will surely have more limited opportunities in the workplace and elsewhere.

More than 10 years ago, there was a suggestion that my sister's high school should be named for Harriet Tubman, who settled in her retirement in my hometown. She settled there, as I understand it, because the community and surrounding towns were at the forefront of the civil rights movement, including the women's suffrage movement and her decision to live there gave her some comfort that she could live out the rest of her days among people who understood the corrosive effect of racism. Over 100 years later, the town apparently had forgotten its past and summarily dismissed the idea. Those decisionmakers can say whatever they want about their failure to barely entertain the idea.

I said then (I couldn't believe that the local newspaper published my letter to the editor) that such a public outcry over something as seemingly innocuous as naming a school would probably lead lots of students to believe that it was okay to be racists. I'm a pretty practical person and if memory serves, the primary theme of my letter was concern for the students who were as racist as their parents. I predicted that they would be excluded from some of the best schools and workplaces in the country and would be socially ostracized if they decided that they wanted to live in any major metropolitan area. Unless you have dynastic wealth and can wall yourself off from the reality around you, there are few places to hide.