Annette John-Hall: So much for the benefit of the doubt

I wanted to believe that it was just a big misunderstanding, a splash that turned into a tidal wave.

Black and Latino campers disinvited from an all-white swim club, perfect feed for a media frenzy in a slow summer month.

The kids will be scarred for life, Creative Steps camp director Alethea Wright said at the time.

No, it was a safety issue, said Valley Club president John Duesler, who had earlier explained that the campers' presence would change the "complexion" of the club.

Enough was enough, I wrote then. Regardless of what happened, forgive and move on.

Everything isn't black and white.

But then I read the 33-page investigation by the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission, released Tuesday night.

There they were, in black and white, damning e-mails to the club board from irate members, even one with the throwback subject line: "bussing."

The club did discriminate, the report concluded. And what the HRC found was worse than I ever wanted to believe.

In truth, I wasn't surprised.

Because I just couldn't forget what 12-year-old camper Jabriel Brown told me when I talked to him in July.

He could feel the tension that day, when the campers came to swim. He noticed how club parents took their kids out of the pool when his group got in.

So Jabriel was relieved when he saw a familiar face. Miss Flynn. She had been his teacher at Laura H. Carnell Elementary in Oxford Circle.

But rather than welcoming him with a hug and sending a message - as most teachers would have done - she shunned him.

"I tried to say hello, but she gave me a [gesture] like, 'Whatever,' " Brown told me then. "I felt bad because I had her for math last year."

His own teacher.

"What are all of these black kids doing here?" Flynn reportedly said.

My heart broke for him. After all, kids can't distinguish a race card from a flash card.

But they can feel ignorance.

What Jabriel didn't know and what the report exposed was that his teacher, Michelle Flynn, was one of most vocal opponents of him and his friends being in her club. "I am pissed that they are here. This is my swim club," she reportedly told one staffer, and alleged that one of the campers was a "known thief" who had stolen a teacher's cell phone. (The report noted that none of the campers had ever been "charged, disciplined, suspended, or expelled" for theft at school.)

Later that day, Flynn e-mailed members: "I personally know these kids because I teach at their school. . . . I don't feel comfortable with my children even going to the bathroom" while they're there.

Which inspired board member Mary Jane Gormly, not even at the club that day, to fire off an e-mail to the board. "After talking to teachers who taught some of the children, many of them were removed from school" because of "stealing and severe behavioral problems." She felt misled, she said, "with the type of camp this was. This camp is a city camp . . . that is not going to bring any new members into the club."

At least their type of members, I guess.

And, of course, she had a disclaimer: "This has nothing to do with the children being African American."

Seems she wasn't the only one.

"Discrimination has been raised previously and this should not be dismissed in a cavalier fashion," wrote board member George Whitehill, one of a group of members who supported the campers, according to the report. "Race is an issue, since every e-mail of complaint mentioned race, although [every e-mail states] race has nothing to do with the complaint."

Denying what consumes you. What else is new?

But in the end, it's not about monetary damages or the right to swim.

It's about showing our kids how to do the right thing - no matter what color they are.

To speak up for what is right. To tell the truth. To not cave to the loudest gripe.

And, yes, to forgive.

No matter how frustrating.

Valley Club board member Bret Wescott probably summed it up best. In an e-mail to the board president, you can almost hear Wescott's heavy sigh:

"The narrow-mindedness [among some members] is, in hindsight, to be expected. I am naive enough, I guess, to have thought that this wasn't going to happen. I thought that all of our membership would be above this.

"Silly me."