Ah, that America...

Recently, I published a post discussing how different the world of public swimming pools is over here in Germany and in my hometown of New Orleans. It now seems that Philadelphia is not much better:

"When the minority children got in the pool all of the Caucasian children immediately exited the pool," Horace Gibson, parent of a day camp child, wrote in an email. "The pool attendants came and told the black children that they did not allow minorities in the club and needed the children to leave immediately."

The pool denies all charges of racism:

We had originally agreed to invite the camps to use our facility, knowing full well that the children from the camps were from multi-ethnic backgrounds. Unfortunately, we quickly learned that we underestimated the capacity of our facilities and realized that we could not accommodate the number of children from these camps.

Those in charge apparently came to this realization when the kids were literally jumping into the pool for the first time.

Hang in there, Philadelphia. With any luck, you may also one day learn to live with each other.