  For my civility day post, I wanted to connect a few dots...third-rail dots that are quite similar, but often seen as unrelated. In my own blogging I have tried to made it safe to discuss race by saying no question is dumb, and that mutual understanding can be gained only be holding discussions, not shouting sessions. What this requires from me, though, is a lot of listening, and self-censorship to a degree -- with those who disagree or are coming from a place of anger, resentment or fear, I really have no latitude to become angry or defensive. If I do, it only affirms the belief that the topic cannot be discussed and worse, they can't trust engaging any black person on the topic. While that seems ridiculous, it has played itself over and over, as an entire race is colored by a single negative interaction with a person -- as if class, education, local, family history has no bearing on the individual in question. How ludicrous would it be to say that if I were mugged by a white man that I would then fear all white men? But don't have to look far -- look what happened at the Valley Swim Club, to see that even black children are seen as a threat because of ignorance and fear imprinted on those white club members.
I'm sure none of the members of The Valley Swim Club believe that they are racist, despite the outrageous act of denying minority children access to its pool, because, as John Duesler, president of the club said "There was concern that a lot of kids would change the complexion ...and the atmosphere of the club." I'm sure it was just a poor choice of words, right? Or the sentiments of one mother, who, upon spotting the group of children said 'Uh, what are all these black kids doing here? I'm scared they might do something to my child.'" That label "racist" is clearly radioactive to most people. In their minds they rationalize away such incidents because a real racist burns a cross on someone's lawn, or ties a black man to the back of a truck and drags him until his limbs fall off.
They just want to be with "their own kind," right? The justification for self-segregation has lent itself to uncivil behavior and comments in the name of preserving a feeling of comfort for the members of the club, to ensure privilege doesn't get examined or dealt with. As you saw in the comments of one article written about this story, all sorts of strawman arguments came out -- too many kids, too rowdy, not enough lifeguards, etc. For those who enjoy lobbing uncivil bombs into the public discourse, calling these children animals gave them a sad, sick level of satisfaction. We can do better than this.
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A lot of uncivil discourse is tied directly to the anonymity of the Internet. It provides people the opportunity to cloak themselves and go buck wild online in the most bizarre and embarrassing ways they would never engage in offline. It's gotten so outrageous that a whole new lexicon has been developed to deal with the phenomenon -- flaming, trolling, sockpuppeting, meatpuppeting, astroturfing, comment-spamming, threadjacking -- as people engage in all kinds of unethical idiocy that they can't get away with in the real world (I highly recommend reading "Dealing with hate speech, flaming, and trolls," by Jon Pincus).
More below the fold.
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