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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]This is confusing. Why would Fairfax integrate everything else, but draw the line at pools.  And, if private pools only allowed white people to join, I think we'd be hearing about this in the real estate forum.   [/quote]

Many of the pools your kids swam in this summer were built in the 50s and 60s, when black people were systematically prevented from living in your neighborhood.  Literally not allowed, and it was legal to exclude them.  DC had some public pools, and white people didn’t want to share them.  They moved out to VA and built private pools. This is not controversial, it’s just history.

Today, yes, we have fair housing laws and our neighborhoods and pool memberships are more diverse.  However, some neighborhoods and pools have old policies that might have had discriminatory impact even after desegregation if you were to look closely.

For example, there was a discussion in the sports forum on the differences between MCSL and NVSL swim team practices and policies. Did you know that NVSL recommends that teams NOT share seed times for competitive duel meets? MCSL makes that information available.  Why the lack of transparency in NVSL?  Why is it that swimming has such low participation by black families in NoVA? How many families tried to get their kids into swimming but were harmed by racist coaches and leagues?

Obviously, the kind of discrimination I’m talking about would have been more rampant in the late 60’s and 70’s. Today, we just operate old systems without looking too closely at why they exist.  But thinking a little more critically about this won’t hurt, I promise.[/quote]

Explain the connection between seed times and racism-- why black families would say to themselves, well, if I don't know what another swimmer's previous record for this event is, it's not worth participating.

Racism was rampant in the 1970s. But you've not addressed any of my points at all, so please rebut them so we can be on the same page about why neither climate, nor the actual rate of swim team participation, should matter. Otherwise we are just talking about racism that existed 50 years ago. [/quote]

It is easy for a coach to hold back a fast swimmer from the “wrong” family, if their times are secret. If you are involved with competitive swimming, you would have some idea about how conteoversial seeding decisions (who swims what strokes at which meets) can be.[/quote]

I'm extremely familiar with competitive swim.

What you're saying- the coach's discretion about which swimmers to put in which events-- is separate from displaying seed times. You can choose not to use seed times to organize the heats/lanes, but it is impossible to hide swimmer performance. You gave the example of NVSL not using seed times-- but look, here is the entire league's time records. https://reachforthewall.org/summer-pools/Northern_Virginia_Swimming_League/

So you have to explain why not using seeding is racist. If anything, not using seeding reduces intimidation and bias by not making it obvious which kids have better records. When a swim meet uses seed times, you know which kid is "supposed" to win based on their heat and lane position.

So try again. NVSL has public records of their times for ALL their swimmers. There is no hiding.  Now explain why this is racist.

[/quote]

This was discussed at length in the sports forum. So, I’m not going to get into again after this.

While NVSL publishes times on their website, their written guidance to team data managers instructs them NOT to provide meet sheets with times on them (except for the Divisional champs meet) while MCSL does this as a matter of course.   If you want to know how a meet was strategized as a parent on an NVSL team, you must look up individual times manually, after your team distributes the meet sheet on Friday.  Only the most involved parents will do this, and usually only for their child’s events, not the whole meet.  
So, it is quite easy to hide any discriminatory decision making.

I never used the word racist by the way.  I said that certain policies might be leftovers from a time when people were more likely to want to keep black children from succeeding at swim, and it might be a good idea to ask what purpose the policies serve now.  I don’t think your argument against transparency is compelling.[/quote]

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