Mintz: Lines in sand, bias at beach

Elana Mintz, who grew up in Atlantic Beach, lives with her family in Washington, where she is a writer and editor for a research organization.

Beach clubs, restaurants, and local communities all over Long Island have been preparing for the Memorial Day onslaught, but my mind is still stuck on last year.

That's when my husband and I packed up our children and our 11-year-old nephew, who was visiting from India, left behind our lives in Washington, and headed to New York to show our little houseguest a good time. Before he went back to Delhi, we wanted him to experience some of our favorite places: Chinatown for dim sum, Jay and Lloyd's in Brooklyn for pastrami, and of course, Atlantic Beach, for a dip in the ocean.

We got all that, but my nephew also departed with an unintended lesson in racism, courtesy of a member of one of Atlantic Beach's private beach clubs. We were visiting my family, and so we made our way to the beach through the "residents-only" entrance, settling on a good place near the water to set up chairs and towels and dash off for a swim. But before we could put down our bags, a member let us know that we didn't belong there -- that we could not sit down because the property belonged to a private club.

The clubs, which dot the beach along this small village on Long Island's south shore, literally draw lines in the sand to delineate where local residents can plant their umbrellas and chairs, and where club members -- nonresidents who buy entry onto the private beaches -- can put theirs. Without the clubs, the village's private beaches would be completely closed off to nonresidents.

The lines between the residents-only parts of the beach and the areas owned by the private clubs have always been decidedly blurry in Atlantic Beach, where I spent summers working as a baby-sitter alongside my brother, who was a cabana boy. He actually made one of the signs that mark the border -- a hand-painted wooden post, stuck in the sand. Sign or no sign, residents sit alongside club members. In my 38 years in Atlantic Beach as a resident and visitor, no one ever questioned where I tried to sit.

The club member who confronted us was not an official, but a self-appointed enforcer who seemed to look right past the mismatched chairs and umbrellas all around him and focus on us.

I am white, but could pass for Hispanic. My children have my skin tone. My husband and his nephew are brown. I told him I was familiar with the rules, having grown up there and worked at the beach clubs. He backed off and I walked away, angry about the things I didn't say. I went back and told the club member I knew exactly why he said what he did, and that he'd set a terrible example in front of my children. He didn't deny it -- and he apologized.

Regardless of whether you agree that any natural setting can be deemed "private," Atlantic Beach's clubs have a legal right to shoo away nonmembers. My family was about to sit down just above the high-tide water line, an area that is owned by the club. Even though we entered as guests of residents, the club's property is technically restricted to its members. Federal law secures the area below that water line (and of course, the water itself) for everyone else. Or at least everyone with a residential permit.

The Atlantic Beach line-drawing game amounts to a lot of dividing without much point. The beaches are not open to the public, and everyone on them gains access because of some kind of "private" status -- whether they are residents, club members or guests of either. But if you enter the beach with brown or black skin, you might just be told, as we were, to go away.

Every person of color has a story, or several, about being a victim of race-based assumptions. But it is still shocking to see the creative ways people find to try to mark their territory.

Last summer marked the first anniversary of my husband's U.S. citizenship ceremony -- a journey that began 15 years ago with a journalism fellowship. Along the way, he got a PhD, we got married, and we almost held our wedding at that very same private beach club.

Our experience in Atlantic Beach was a poignant anniversary present -- a reminder that we should never become complacent about bias, assumptions, or our ability to be truly free. Welcome to America, but beware: This sand is my sand.