Black Children Are More Than Twice As Likely To Drown Than White Peers

[KittyWampus]

L.A. Effort Narrows Swimming's Racial Gap
by Karen Grigsby Bates (NPR)

African-American children ages 5 to 19 years fatally drowned at 2.3 times the rate of white children in this age group during 2002–2003. As children get older, drownings often occur in open water areas such as ponds, lakes and rivers.
Source: Federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Day to Day, July 3, 2006 · Statistics show that black children are more than twice as likely to drown than their white peers. But at the John Argue Swim Stadium in Los Angeles -- built for the 1984 Summer Olympics -- an effort is under way to teach all children how to swim.

Andre Brent oversees the pools at the stadium, located in Exposition Park, just south of downtown L.A. His job is to turn splashers into swimmers, and he's firm with youngsters who may not grasp all the dangers at hand.

"They think they're superman," he says. "And they're not."

In fact, according to the Centers for Disease Control, accidental drowning is the second-leading cause of death for children from 1-14. And black children run the highest risk of all.

To narrow the racial gap in swimming, the L.A.-based Amateur Athletic Foundation gives grants to swim facilities in Southern California.

Especially in a city full of pools, "economics should not be a barrier to learning to swim," says Patrick Escobar, the foundation's vice president.

During the school year, the foundation's grants provide money help transport children to pools for lessons. And they help public pools give low-cost or free lessons in the summer. Escobar says the foundation is providing the training for which public schools no longer have the resources.

He's also a member of USA Swimming's diversity task force. As such, he sees the foundation's initiative creating new options for children of color. Many colleges and universities -- especially in California -- offer athletic scholarships for water sports.

Kalif Muhammad, 11, learned how to swim in the Exposition Park program. Now he scuba dives and plays competitive water polo. He's also a junior lifeguard.

Programs such as the one at Exposition Park might turn out thousands-more Kalifs, reducing drownings in summers to come... and narrowing swimming's racial gap, one child at a time.


Related NPR Stories
June 20, 2006
Diversity at the Swimming Pool Aug. 18, 2005
First Black Woman on Olympic Swim Team
July 30, 2004
For U.S. Swimmer Maritza Correia, an Olympic First
May 19, 2004
Florida Program Encourages Black Swimmers

[Rabrrrrrr]

1. How bizarre - I just assumed that, at this point, pretty much anyone

under the age of 40 or 50 knows how to swim, since the schools teach it.

Apparently not all schools do.

If you had asked me, "Are black kids more likely to drown than white kids?" I would have said no way. I thought that was just a very old racist stereotype.

[ContraBass Black]

2. I've never been taught to swim in school.

[Rabrrrrrr]

7. yet another lesson about assuming that our own experience

must be normative.

Son of a gun.

We started with swimming in gym class in seventh grade, and I don't think there was a single person who didn't already know how to swim. All our non-elementary schools had pools.

We also swam naked (the boys did), which I *have* discovered that, while it is not normative of all boys, it is amazingly consistent all over the country. That is, there doesn't seem to be any particular geographic area that doesn't have schools that have nude boy swimming (or at least, that didn't; I think it's gone out of popularity).

[Yupster]

35. Nude swimming (boys only)

in schools and YMCA's was the norm until the 50's. It was pretty much eliminated by the late 60's.

Boys and girls swam at different times.

There were all kinds of reasons given for it, none of which make much sense today.

The official US government health handbook recommended it for decades - nude swimming for boys and suits for girls.

One reason was the poor filters in the early pools. Another was the fear of polio. None of that has anything to do with why boys and girls were treated differently. That was just the way things were before the 1960's.
People just didn't question the way things had always been done.

It's one of those weird things where I bet most people would never believe it happened, yet it was the accepted norm not too long ago.

[Rabrrrrrr]

39. My school was still doing it into the 90s

Suits for the girls, nude for the boys. I was swimming nude in the late 70s and early 80s.

[Yupster]

45. In the USA?

I had never heard of the practice lasting near that long.

Do you mind saying where that was?

[Rabrrrrrr]

61. It was in southern Wisconsin

[fleabert]

59. whoa. nt

[Hell Hath No Fury]

9. Good heavens...

no school I ever went to had a pool! :) Even our City College doesn't have a pool.


SF has a handful of city pools where you can take classes but you have to get there. Until recently, there wasn't a pool near our largest black community -- Bayview/Hunters Point.

[JohMunich99]

10. 25, never taught how to swim in school

My parents had me take lessons at the Y.

[Dorian Gray]

36. Me too.

None of the schools I knew of had a pool, though I was brought to the YMCA and to the beach for swimming lessons in the summer.

In urban areas, the beaches are a hike away, and the neighborhood pools are very crowded. It's not uncommon for city folk not to know how to swim well. My husband can swim, but he's awkward in the pool. He grew up in Queens and didn't have the exposure that I did. It's not that uncommon.

[alcibiades_mystery]

41. Also not uncommon for city kids not to drive

Seriously. I grew up knowing families that didn't own a car, and plenty of guys that didn't drive even into their early twenties.

My brother is 34, and if he's driven more than six hours on his own in the last five years I'd fall down flat. Now, his wife drives (she's from the suburbs), but my brother grew up in NYC, and lives there now, and doesn't see the need for driving himself, period. Subway and cabs work fine.

[Dorian Gray]

44. Is your brother my husband?

Seriously, he just had his fourth driving lesson this morning! Ever! And he's thirty five. I am from the suburbs, so I've driven since I was 17. (In Jersey, the driving age is 17 years old!) I had to blackmail him in order for him to get off his duff and get his license. I'm sick of driving everywhere!

It is funny the skills New Yorkers can get away without having well into their thirties! :)

[Sapphocrat]

79. Nearly 45 here, and ditto.

It wasn't at the Y, but it was at the only public pool in the area. In fact, I'm the only one in my family who ever learned to swim properly.

For the record, my mom especially wanted me to take swimming lessons, because neither she nor my father could swim (at least, not with any degree of skill or safety).

Neither of my sisters (now 53 and 58, respectively) were ever taught to swim, either -- and certainly never had the opportunity to learn in school. Too, I have countless adult friends who never learned to swim.

Must be nice to take swimming lessons for granted, eh? Next somebody's going to assume we're all master horsemen...


On edit: typo

[Berserker]

11. Believe it or not

Not all schools in America have pools.

[alcibiades_mystery]

13. The schools teach it???LOL

Lucky you. Had a swimming pool at school?

I went to school in NYC. We didn't have a parking lot, much less a swimming pool, and the only reason everyone could fit in on any given day was that we had a 30% truancy rate, which planners relied on to keep the population in line with the building code.

Swimming? :rofl:

That's rich! No really. It's rich.

(Luckily, I learned to swim when I was three. Dad threw me in the deep end of a pool at hotel pool and said "swim." I damn well swam.)

[Rabrrrrrr]

15. And of course, everyone I knew in NYC went to nice schools

with pools (Packer, Stuyvesant, etc.), so it never dawned on me that most of the schools wouldn't have pools.

And I grew up swimming in lakes and rivers and ponds and community pools and the neigbor's pool. But, I grew up in Wisconsin with farmers and outdoorsmen/women for family, so of course I grew up in water. :-)

[alcibiades_mystery]

17. Must be nice...

...

[Warren Stupidity]

14. Which schools?

As far as I can tell most schools do not have facilities and do not offer swimming as standard PE.

[HarukaTheTrophyWife]

21. I never had swimming in school.

I grew up pretty inner-city as a young kid and we just played in fire hydrants. Once we moved out to the suburbs, there was still no swim lessons in schools, even though it was a pretty rich district.

[Gormy Cuss]

31. How bizarre - schools teach swimming?

Not where I grew up -- not even the private schools taught swimming and we were living on the Eastern Seaboard. Of course here in CA burbs, every high school has at least one pool if not a full blown aquatic center. This area is a hotbed for synchronized swimming and Olympic swimmers.

[alarimer]

42. I learned to swim at the Y, not at school

most of my schools did not have swimming pools, even in Cobb County, GA, an relatively affluent place.

Most of the time I went to schools in small towns. Until middle school in Puerto Rico (a private school), none of them had pools. And then my large suburban high school didn't either. In Cobb County, the schools' swim teams all practiced at a local junior college.

[calico1]

53. I was never taught how to swim in school.

I was brought up in the Bronx. I still don't know today. Wish I did. When you grow up in an urban area you just don't have the access that other areas do. I agree kids should all learn to swim even though for me at the time my access to possible swimming areas was limited to the public pool and the beach and only in the summer. It tends to not be a priority when it isn't something you would get a chance to do very often. And no, my parents were not irresponsible to whoever made that comment. :eyes: Fact is, I knew very few kids my age who knew how to swim.

[WI_DEM]

55. Really?

[fleabert]

56. I grew up in Texas Oklahoma and Kansas- not once did a school have a pool.

at any grade. I was taught how to swim at Hippie Hollow in Austin TX, by a naked woman. :-) My dad took me there and this chick decided it was high time a six year old knew how to do more than splash around.

After that, self taught in neighborhood pools, friends backyards, local lakes and rivers. Never had a 'lesson' in my life. I ended up a lifeguard and lifeguard instructor in my early twenties.

And the stats my licensing company got over 25 years of research bear out that young boys, esp. black boys, are the most at risk of drowning, statistically.

amazingly sad if you ask me. I applaud the folks in the article, as I always have asserted ANYONE can learn to swim, they just need the opportunity to learn. (emphasis added because of some insane comments yesterday - thread is gone, btw- about blacks not being able to swim- fucking ridiculous.)

[Scout1071]

76. My Kansas high school had a pool.

But, it was the wealthiest school district in Kansas.

[Broken_Hero]

63. We had a pool at our high school also...

I'm from an island in SE Alaska, and water was our life basically. One of our elementary schools had a swimming pool as well. I learned how to swim the hard way..

Dad grabs me, throws life jacket on me...throws me into ocean...

Swim son, swim!!!

Okay, dad...swim, swim, swim....

Son, had me your life jacket...

Okay, dad..(hands over life jacket), and continue to swim on, and worry about Jaws stalking my ass. I was a natural I suppose, just took to it.

[Fleshdancer]

69. there are schools that teach swimming?

wow. I honestly had no idea. :shrug:

[hughee99]

70. When I went to college...

You could not graduate unless you had taken the beginner's swimming course, or passed a pretty easy 20 minute swim test. We had a goalie for our hockey team who had finished his classes and was leaving school early to play in the AHL. Since he had never take the class or the exemption test, the school told him that they would not give him his degree until he took the swim test. He had to come back in the off season to take it before graduation.

[muriel_volestrangler]

82. Teaching swimming is compulsory in English schools

Primary school pupils who are unable to swim by the age of 11 will be given additional swimming lessons under a new scheme launched today by Schools Minister Jim Knight in partnership with the Amateur Swimming Association.

Swimming lessons are already compulsory for primary school children, leading to 83% of pupils able to swim competently by the age of 11. However, intensive swimming lessons will be introduced for children who are unable to swim the 25 metres required by the end of Key Stage 2.

http://www.britishswimming.org/vsite/vcontent/content/news/0,10869,5026-142698-159914-28293-259241-news-item,00.html

They do it by sharing facilities, including those belonging to private schools, or using municipal pools.

[B Calm]

3. When I went into the Navy I couldn't help but notice

most of all the guys who couldn't swim were black. I'm not trying to sound racist, but I found this odd.

[azurnoir]

22. goes back to inner-city schools

most don't have pools, a number of those that did had to close them due to budget cuts same thing with summer park or municible pool programs and as far as lakes and rivers, these days there are too many worries about water quality or what kind of rash do you want this week?

[pooja]

4. Swimming is something all children need to learn.

It is just hard because pools face a lot of insurance problems.

[KittyWampus]

6. My father ran lifeguard at beachs for about 30 years. He was adamant

about need to have kids learn to swim.

[Yupster]

5. Doesn't surprise me

I was a lifeguard all through high school and college.

A couple of reasons why, but if you'd ask me if whites and blacks drowned at statistically equal levels, I would say not even close.

[Crabby Appleton]

8. I was a lifeguard and taught swimming

in the early '70s at a black inner-city pool - pool admission was 10 cents a day, swim lessons included. Red Cross Water Safety Instructor.

[Kiouni]

12. wasn't there recently

a lawsuit against a university because they required all students to pass a swim class and some of the handicapped kids couldn't pass?

[Dervill Crow]

16. I can't swim.

I should learn how now that I'm fat and buoyant. It's difficult to keep my derriere planted in a hot tub, so I could probably float pretty easily.

:bounce: :bounce: :bounce:

[aikoaiko]

20. I don't know about other parts of the country, but in the deep south ...

... its a fairly clear cultural dividing line.

In fact, in my city there are two state universities -- one was historically black and the other white. The white one, until recently, required a swimming requirement for graduation.

For many black students who were willing to endure explicit racism, the swimming requirment was the deal breaker and they went to the other school.


eta: sorry, I meant to respond to the OP. I hate when I do that.

[elehhhhna]

74. ALl children need to learn to FLOAT. Swimming, fine, but even a 3 y/o can

learn to float.

Our 4 y/o neighbor swims like a seal but we've been training her to FLOAT immediately when she feels at all panicky....and she's got it down. She also knows she MUST count down loudly before jumping in (it's a heads up for nearby adults). Common sense goes a long way, if you have any!

[Retired AF Dem]

18. Sounds like a parent

irresponsibility to me.

[azurnoir]

23. really not

you'll find that most of the parents can't/don't swim either. This is another Black/White cultural difference. Think about alot of kids first contact with water is at the beach, why do White people go to the beach? This is not a racist statement, it is the simple truth. If you want to get some usually friendly sh** try being White in a predominately Black neighborhood and laying out to tan.

[MadMaddie]

19. I never learned to swim as a child....

It is one of my to do's this summer and I am 40. In black communities swimming pools are not of abundance and the activity is not pushed.

I am happy to say my sister has sent her son (my nephew) to learn how to swim and he is proficiant and has respect for the water...

[Skittles]

43. get to it, MadMaddie

I believe everyone should learn how to swim and of course ideally they should learn as children. I was taught how to swim by University of Wisconsin students on a public beach - yes. LOL I remember one of them saying to me, you really can't swim well but you'll never drown because you float like a cork. To this day I can fall asleep floating in the water. :D

[notadmblnd]

49. I thought I was the only one who fell asleep while floating

only problem with that is I'm usually woken up when I smack my head on the pool wall.

[Skittles]

51. oh I am much, much worse

I will swim a mile into a huge lake in the middle of the night for fun and fell asleep once and drifted a looooong way - very stupid

[MadMaddie]

72. Thanks Skittles.....there really is

no reason for me not knowing how to swim....I am as athletic as they come soccer, basketball, volleyball, softball.....but can't swim. I plan on accomplishing this goal this year.

:hi:

[Scout1071]

75. I helped teach a co-worker last summer. 29 yr old male.

Breaks my heart that so many people don't know the joy of swimming in the summer. It is great. And, from a safety factor, it's a must. I highly recommend you follow thru and take some lessons. I think you'll enjoy it.

Anyway, like all 20-30-40 something yr old partiers, my co-worker likes to go to the lake on the weekends. He and his friends rent a boat and go to "party cove" where literally hundreds of boats tie-up together and party all weekend. I would beg him to take lessons. Drinking on a boat and not knowing how to swim? Insane. Truly insane. Someone could be fooling around and throw him in, not knowing he can't swim, someone could accidentally bump him, boat accident, or any other ways he could accidentally find himself in the water. Last year he came around and really made an effort to learn.

I have an Indian friend that learned when he came to America. He and his wife. They are a bit awkward, but they are learning. Just takes practice.

Good luck to you. I hope you find the joys of swimming soon!

[slaveplanet]

24. here's Financial Times's take

Different strokes
By David Owen
Published: July 29 2005

I first noticed Malia Metella at a little after 7.30pm on a hot Saturday in Athens. It was August 21 2004, Britain’s best day in modern Olympic history. I was covering the games for the FT, and had taken up station beside the open-air Olympic swimming pool to see whether a young Welshman called David Davies could add to a gold rush that included oarsman Matthew Pinsent’s fourth Olympic title. Davies’ event was the 1,500 metres, Olympic swimming’s ultra-marathon, a test of endurance that takes even these oddly-shaped sporting specialists with shoulders like Parma hams about a quarter of an hour to complete. But first there was the small matter of swimming’s ultra-sprint: the women’s 50 metres, less than half a minute of dash and splash and wafer-thin victory margins.

As the clock ticked down, the focus of attention was Inge de Bruijn, the favourite and eventual winner, a muscular blonde Dutchwoman in royal blue swimsuit and black goggles and cap, windmilling her arms furiously. But I had eyes only for a less flamboyant figure in an adjacent lane. This was France’s Malia Metella, the soon-to-be silver medallist. My fascination was simply explained: Malia Metella was black.

(...)

It was then that I spoke to Simon Underdown, a lecturer in biological anthropology at Oxford Brookes University. What he told me appeared to undermine the theory I had developed. His argument, in essence, was that the human skeleton is more dynamic than I had previously supposed, changing in structure in line with the nature of our lifestyles. If you led the life of a hunter-gatherer, for example, your skeleton would become denser. And this would happen within your lifetime; it would not require the passage of generations for the change to become apparent. Citing the now extinct indigenous inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego, he said the relative harshness of their living conditions was reflected in their “enormously dense skeletons”. If Underdown was correct, then of course those studies of comparative bone density that I had taken as proof that black swimmers laboured under a physiological disadvantage reflected only the difference in the respective lifestyles that the owners of the tested skeletons led. His conclusion, therefore, came as no surprise: “I cannot think of a skeletal reason why black people should be handicapped as elite swimmers.”

So can the paucity of top black swimmers be blamed on economic and sociological factors alone? Not necessarily: even if the bone density theory is wrong, it doesn't mean that people weren't influenced by it. Brian Pote-Hunt, a consultant on equal opportunity issues for the UK's Amateur Swimming Association, certainly believes that such “myths” once played a part in discouraging sports instructors from promoting swimming as even a recreational activity for black people. Physical education instructors at schools sometimes used to take the view that since there were not many black swimmers, they would push black students towards other sports such as athletics and football,” he says. “Everybody kowtowed to the stereotype that black people were not good at swimming.”

A South African colleague showed just how unquestioningly this received “wisdom” was accepted. Under apartheid, he recalls white racists using the term “non-swimmers” as a euphemism for blacks.

We may not have long to wait for something approaching a definitive answer to the question of whether top swimmers can be identified by their genetic make-up. A team in Scotland has been gathering the material it needs to examine this issue. “We have collected close to 80 DNA samples from elite swimmers,” says Yannis Pitsiladis, the University of Glasgow scientist who is leading the team. “We hope in the next few months to bring this up to 200.” Pitsiladis is further advanced on a similar study of east African runners aimed at determining whether there is a genetic explanation for the extraordinary dominance of Kenyan and Ethiopian athletes in recent times in long-distance running events. To date, however, this remarkable concentration of running talent “does not seem to be genetic”.

So is there any sign of change?

Ellis Cashmore, professor of culture, media and sport at Staffordshire University, is hopeful. “The problems of access were even greater in tennis and golf, and yet they have been surmounted,” he says. “If one black swimmer breaks through, the likelihood is many more will follow.” But Chuck Wielgus, executive director of USA Swimming, says that, as with golf, access to facilities and coaching is critical. “USA Swimming is currently seeking for ways to expose our sport to a wider and more culturally diverse audience of youngsters, but it's an uphill struggle.” One cannot help but wonder how many national associations would have spotted the talented Metella in her obscure corner of South America and put her on the path to the Olympic podium. I, for one, will be delighted if she can go one better at the next summer Olympic Games at 2008 in Beijing.

The story of which she is part highlights the complex cocktail of biological, economic and attitudinal forces behind the, at times, surprisingly stark national and racial patterns we observe in top-level sport. I think it also illustrates the importance - in any field - of pinning down a coherent and rational explanation for the phenomena we see. Even if the truths we stumble upon in the process are unpalatable or politically inconvenient.

David Owen is the FT's sports editor.

http://www.jonentine.com/reviews/financialTimes.htm

[Name removed]

25. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[aikoaiko]

28. :-)

[KittyWampus]

29. did you forget the sarcasm indicator?

I hope

[Name removed]

30. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Akim]

33. Basketball IS the favorite sport of black youth.

Basketball is overwhelmingly the favorite sport of black youth. It's not "sarcasm" or a "stereotype" if it's the truth.

[Akim]

34. It's not "sarcasm" or a "stereotype" if it's the truth.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

67. Oh, it's a stereotype.

It can be racist to, if used a certain way. Which apparently it has.

[Name removed]

32. Deleted sub-thread

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Horse with no Name]

26. I had a patient several years ago

He was a young black man that was 15 years old.
Apparently, he and his friends were goofing around. They mocked throwing him in the swimming pool--he told them not to do that because he couldn't swim.
They didn't believe him--so they pushed him in.
He couldn't swim.
Turns out, none of them could either.
It was about 15 minutes before anyone could get back with help (the days before cell phones).
He was resuscitated, if that is what you want to call it.
Basically we kept him on life support until the family could make the decision to pull the plug.
It was very sad. None of the boys meant harm--they were just goofing around.:cry:

[DemoTex]

27. Generally true in my childhood days! Here is why ..

AFRICAN-AMERICANS WERE NOT ALLOWED IN PUBLIC POOLS!

I learned to swim in the tax-supported city pool in Griffin, Georgia. I got my Senior WSI badge in the same pool, after the beautiful Kay C___ (a former Olympic swimmer and my HS European history teacher) almost drowned me.

My high school class was the last segregated class in our county (1966). The summer before integration was mandated, the city pool was bull-dozed. The same thing happened at tax-payer supported facilities all over the south. In Greenville, SC, seals (the aquatic mammal!) were placed in the city pool.

Now, WTF does all this have to do with the ability of African Americans to swim or not? Nothing.

WTF does all this have to do with the opportunity of African Americans to learn to swim? Everything.

EDIT: Changed title from "Certainly True"

[TahitiNut]

38. That's a fact, Mac.

Even growing up in northwest Detroit in the late 40s and 50s, the most popular public (privately-owned) pool didn't allow blacks despite being on the north side of the "red line" (Eight Mile Road). I don't know what I'd have done without Crystal Pool - it was a young suburban teen's summertime "Mecca". Even as a teen, I thought it was disgusting that the black kids couldn't go there.

I never went to a grade school with a pool, and I went to about seven different schools, all in Michigan but for one in Glendale, California, through 12th grade. I remember the YMCA (the 'nude' days) in Michigan failing to teach me how to swim - and then learning at the public pool in Glendale (also all-white).

[Karenina]

58. Thanks, Mac!!!

I learned as a Brownie Scout when the parents of one of my classmates smuggled me through the gate house and taught me off their private pier. When mom saw my interest, I was signed up for the Y pool on the days blacks were allowed. I perfected my technique with the help of classmates who were competing. I was 10 when I enraged several teenaged boys by crashing their race and beating them all by a good 2 lengths. Good thing my white-extended-family daddy was there, hardly able to contain his laughter.

My little sister learned after doing a PERFECT JACKKNIFE DIVE (for a 6 year-old; she'd seen it on TV :rofl: ). The lifeguard stood and applauded; my mom started HYSTERICALLY SCREECHING "SHE CAN'T SWIM!!!" The lifeguard immediately fished her out and spent the rest of the day sitting on the pier putting her through drills. My mom checked the roster and we went to Truxton Park on the days he worked. He trained a very successful student. She participated in the diving team while at Harvard. I SO WISH he could know that.

MY kids were pool-trained at 18 months.

[nealmhughes]

37. It is a cultural/historical thing.

A legacy of African-Americans being excluded from urban swimming pools, and swimming being basicly a skill one learned either as a country boy, someone who grew up near the coast, went into the Navy or Marines or else went to a YMCA, summer camp or univeristy or country club where they learned.
Even beach resorts were once segregated, and many of them are now "prime" resort real estate!
If there is noone with a body of water that is safe enough to swim within and older people to teach one to swim, then how does one learn to swim?

I would imagine that someone growing up in the middle of the Great Plains with no water in site, for generations and no pools would never have an opportunity to learn to swim unless they went to a place that had a lake, ocean, pool or river.

I live in the Southeast where nearly everyone knows to at least dog paddle, since we are blessed with creeks, rivers and lakes and the Gulf and Atlantic. But one still has to get to the water...and if young and inside a city with no pool, how could a kid in segregated Birmingham learn to swim if the black kids were kept out of the pool?

The dumbest showing off thing I ever did in my life was passing the USN swim test in 100F heat in Orlando FL in 1999 laughing at the city boys and black kids who had to go to swim class every day. Well, I found out later that many of them could swim, but had been warned to fail as it got you out of the heat an hour every day and in the water!

[alcibiades_mystery]

40. LOL

Well, I found out later that many of them could swim, but had been warned to fail as it got you out of the heat an hour every day and in the water!

You may not learn how to swim growing up in a city, but you damn well learn how to work a system. NYC raised. Of COURSE you fail the swimming test! Those guys probably thought you were a damn fool! :-)

[nemo137]

46. We've noticed this at the pool I work at.

I'm a gaurd and Learn to Swim instructor at an urban, public pool. On our save report forms, we have a box for race along with age, height, and water depth. A large chunks of our saves (defined as a lifegaurd having to interrupt scanning the water to get in and help a patron to the side) involve black patrons. I have relatively few black LTS students, and they tend to be older. It comes down to opportunity and location. 2 of our park district's 3 pools are on the (predominantly white) east side of town, while only one is on the (heavily black) west side of town. The other pools are attached to the YMCA/YWCA (east side), Boy's and Girl's Club, or country clubs. Our public schools offer swim lessons, but I can say (being a product of that system) not very well, and they begin at middle school, not elementary school.

Just as an aside, looking at the sociology of pools can be neat. Mine is largely lower-class white, with substantian numbers of immigrants from the Balkans and Latin America. My friend's work at a pool attached to a community center near a housing project, which has nearly all black patrons. All the lifeguards there are white, and all the support staff (concession workers) are black. One of my friends is hoping to do his senior thesis on it.

[notadmblnd]

47. really, we must jsut be lucky then. Our kids seem to come out swimming

in fact my 13yr old pulled three white boys out of a pond this past spring. The State, city and School district all awarded my son, but the boys parents never even said thank you. Even the latest addition to our family, my great neice is swimming in my pool at 18 months. Next spring we'll have another new baby, although he/she may be too young to learn, I'm sure that they too, will be in the pool by next summer.

[nemo137]

48. Good!

Get the 13 year old in junior lifeguarding, and see if it takes. It sounds like it will. If he likes it, he'll be set for a summer job for high school and college, and even if he doesn't, he'll get a decent first aid training.

Be sure to keep the younger ones in swim lessons!

[colinmom71]

50. I was born and raised in rural south Georgia...

And there were NO public pools there. The local YMCA was treated like a frickin' country club - admission to the facilities (and pool) was a minimum of $350 for a year's membership! And that was almost 20 years ago. Every pool there was privately owned, either by a club (like the Y or the Elks Club), a hotel, or a family's home. Sounds like a Republican's/neo-con's wet dream, huh?

I believe the city had one municipality run pool, but as far as I remember it was almost never open due to "maintenance costs". I think it was permanently closed down around the time I entered high school (again, over 15 years ago). And not one white family ever went there. But then again, I had a professor who said he never realized what the phrase "wrong side of the tracks" meant until he moved to my home town. Care to guess which side of the tracks the municipality pool was located?

Given what I saw growing up there, I can definitely see where lack of access to swimming facilities could develop a statistic showing poorer swimming skills amongst minorities. So, it's not a matter of an inherent lack of ability alongst racial lines to be able to swim but rather an issue of social neglect...

[SmokingJacket]

52. Not surprising at all.

I'm sure you'll find that upper class children with their summer camps and private swimming lessons are much better swimmers than poorer children, too.

There's probably also a correlation between drowning and single-parent families, too -- it's much harder to take kids to swimming lessons if you're working full time.

[InkAddict]

54. Settingup for some possible flames here, but

here goes--More white congressmen, possible BushCo whistleblowers, and biochemists croak under "suspicious" suicides than....

I didn't learn to swim until I was one of Dylan's untrustworthy > 30-somethings--taught by my neighor as our children swam like fishes in the local community pool, something I made damn sure they learned because it's an indispensable life skill, like driving, and one which I wasn't aware was an unnecessary skill, until now, for the "poor."

God, NEVER let it be said that my folks inconvenienced themselves on their children's behalf, i.e., seeing that we had necessary skills to mix comfortably with our peers. When will those parental fundie comments of my childhood GO AWAY and leave me in peace!

[ecstatic]

57. can you provide the link? nt

[KittyWampus]

66. link

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5529180

[liberalitch]

60. Unfortunately, we see here again the costs of poverty....

... horrible accidents happen in all communities, but face it in communities with "means" parents have time to supervise their children in the water or money for swiming lessons. Summer after summer kids whose parents are forced to work three jobs to make end meet drown... SICKENING!!!!!

[DarbyUSMC]

71. More to it than poverty or inner city living etc.

Pools? Would that there were pools back in the day. Out in the country and in small town America, kids went to swimming holes, ponds, lakes and creeks. Some were dangerous and there might be a drowning every other summer that scared parents for a while till it got too hot again, and then things went back to normal. How'd we get to these places? Parents, neighbors, relatives, bikes, foot power. Also twice a week there was a free bus taking any kids who wanted to go, to a lake over the hill twelve miles where swimming lessons were given by someone from the Red Cross. Even those who knew how to swim went along to cool off in the lake and walk around the small penny arcade and concession stand. No one had any money to speak of but somehow we came up with a dime for an ice cream cone once in a while.

This is beside the point though. We had no black children in our town but we had many kids who lived in houses where grandparents were present. These kids had a fear of the water instilled in them by their grandparents from the old country. In that I'm older than dirt and based on living in various places surrounded by an assortment of people, I've observed that kids "learn what they live" as the saying goes. Fear of dogs, fear of water, fear of spiders blah, blah can be passed on by osmosis or by example albeit not intentional.

[liberalitch]

73. Opportunity to learn and attitudes..... I have a friend right now...

Who has a kid (about 20 months) who is sooooo attracted to water..... I asked "Why no swimming lessons yet?" she's convinced he is too young.

My nephew's kids were taught ASAP and were crawling over and throwing themselves in the rec center pool to swim before they could even walk.... they're such water babies now, one of them wants to be "like costeau"

[Karenina]

80. I taught both my kids starting at 18 mos

to relax and float. I drilled them with diapers, to REMOVE THEM, lie on their backs, relax and float, followed by drills on how to scramble OUT of the pool. "Water is your FRIEND, it WILL support you!" We called it "drownproofing" back then. It was indeed a matter of CULTURE as pools were UBIQUITOUS. A close friend lost her 2 year-old to drowning, an event that caused such pain and anguish that everyone in our circle became pro-active.
Any child who did not know how to cope with water WAS TAUGHT.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

62. Seems to me the obvious culprit would be...

the lack of lifeguards in areas where many black people swim.

Institutionalized racism is the explanation for just about any such racial disparity, seems to fit here to.

Public pools are like any other public place, good in the nice neighborhoods, poor in the poor neighborhoods.

Furthermore, drowning deaths skyrocket when heat waves hit and people are driven to outdoor rivers, lakes, and swimming holes where lifeguards aren't on duty. And it seems to me the people most likely driven there are people who live in hot places, and cannot afford a well air-conditioned house. Again, something that would disproportionately affect black people.

Furthermore, drowning deaths are rare enough that something like Katrina can significantly alter the statistics.

[Yupster]

84. I don't think much of a percentage of

drownings occur in public pools with lifeguards.

I could be wrong though.

I think private pools, and lakes, rivers, beaches would be more likely.

However, I was at a resort as a lifeguard when a kid drowned though so I could be all wet. The kid was about 3-4 years old and was in a daycare program at the resort in the Catskill Mountains. It was the indoor pool and I was at the outdoor pool at the time so I don't know what happened.

[bigtree]

64. wow. this isn't an extention of another thread is it?

just wonderin why you posted this old article without a link . . . I know I saw it somewhere else . . . where could that have been?

[KittyWampus]

65. Some asshole GOP'er used term "non-swimmer" or such like and I'd heard

this report on NPR in June whilst driving in my car.

It's interesting to read this thread and all the info about how the term "non-swimmers" came into being... and the tragedy behind black youth not having equal acess to swimming facilities.

[MrSlayer]

68. No pools in my schools growing up. My dad taught me.

I am fortunate that I have a great father. He taught us to swim when we were little more than babies and in turn I have done the same for my children. I doubt a lot of the poor inner city youth have much chance to go to a beach or to a swim club. Most of the public pools in the city here have been shut down. I was lucky that my grandparents had a summer home on the beach. I learned a lot of stuff down there as a child.

[Yupster]

77. Funny timing that we started this thread

a day before the guy made the comment about African-American swimming abilities in Alabama.

Looking back, I wonder how many of us on this thread could be accused of racism?

I'm probably one of them with my first post on this thread. I said something like I wasnt surprised African-American kids drowned more because of a number of reasons. I purposly didn't list those reasons because I didn't want to risk making a list of African-American shortcomings which could look racist.

I bet if the timing was one day different, this thread would have never started.

[sgxnk]

78. clearly

water is racist

dihydrogen monoxide subject to affirmative action grievances

film at 11 :l

[undeterred]

81. Learned to swim because our parents took us to the YMCA, nothing at school

[breakaleg]

83. Swimming lessons can be expensive and I can see how it wouldn't

be a priority for someone on a tight budget. But I find it surprising that it's an issue in California, just because of the location and weather.