This edition of my quasi-weekly blog is going to be about the group of Philadelphian youth that experienced discrimination at a local swim club. Rather than talking about the story, I will talk about the multi-colored, but mostly black and white, elephant in the room: Racism.

I must admit, when I first read the story or saw the headlines, I wondered “Is it real racism or were these kids actin’ up at the pool, got kicked out, and pulled the ‘it’s cause I’m black’ card?” Note that for me, to see a story about a group of black children getting kicked out of the pool because of racism, and my then first thought was to consider that that they were probably at fault—is racism in itself, internalized racism to be exact…I’ll get to that later though.

I think that black people grapple with deciphering through all of the inconspicuous ways racism rears it’s ugly head. There are most definitely institutions of schools, jobs, government, media, etc. that gives favor and privilege to people of European descent at the expense of people of color (“the man”), and then there are the perverse ways in which our institutionalized oppression manifests into a self-perpetuated culture where we abuse ourselves (internalized racism). My dilemma comes, when people claim to have experienced racism externally without considering their own self-limiting beliefs and practices that might make it easier to be targeted.

I chose the pool story because in the end I do believe that the club is at fault and should be held accountable for their discrimination and creating an environment where it’s members felt it appropriate to make “racist” comments in the first place.

More important than any pseudo-analytical explanation of racism, is what it feels like for people who are victims of it, in this case children. And simply inviting them to come swim where they were so obviously not welcome is not acceptable. Then again, there really isn’t too much after this point that I would expect the club to do that could make-up for this incident, and that’s when they should pull out their checkbooks. Reparations anyone?

That’s the segue into my pan-African-black-nationalist-spiel on how this should’ve never happened in the first place because we should have our own pools and then these racist crackers can’t kick us out…racism exists, it’s real. And as I say this, I’m almost trying to convince myself, because sometimes I get so caught up in strategizing our in-house tactics, our “offense” if you will, that I forget we need to play defense too. The point is, black people, when dealing with racism: always bring you’re A game!

“George Bush doesn’t care about black people.” -Kanye West
—Jazmyne Young