BBC - Why don't black Americans swim

reply to post by Starbug3MY


Yeah it is definitely a divide and conquer tactic. Race is acceptable as a descriptive term.

The people that promote racism so heavily are the ones who are supposedly trying to stomp it out and the media as well as the races themselves.

Originally posted by nunya13
reply to post by dbloch7986

 

I'll give you credit because at least you quoted the poster in context, but to the poster's credit, he/she did say this was likely a myth. The poster also never inferred this tidbit was in the article so I'm not sure why you had to mention that is wasn't. Anyone reading what this poster said would know this was not in the article because, a you said yourself, he/she used the old "well I heard..." opening line.

The topic of this thread is the article. Not someones stereotypical assumptions or propagations of stereotypes.

This article is not addressing the fact that black people are not as adept at swimming as white people. This article is addressing the issue that black people in the United States do not learn to swim in the same quantity as white people. If you actually read the article it is actually a pretty big discrepancy between the two.

The issue at hand is that black people have not had access to swimming pools or were segregated from swimming pools. As a result of segregation black people in the United States started to believe that swimming was a "white" activity, and so they refused to teach their kids to swim or learn how to swim themselves.

I am a very strong believer in the divide and conquer technique of TPTB. I believe this demonstrates it. I also believe that it is inappropriate of the parents to pass on their own prejudices by not teaching their kids to swim instead of just letting bygones be bygones.

well considering that in america until the 60's and 70's black people weren't allowed in the swimming pool if white people were there. i also heard of that stereotype that black people can't swim because their bones are denser and live in canada. i think it's because most black people are from african descent where water is scare and highly valued, swimming recreationaly is like playing with food. also most river and water sources in africa are heavily populated with crocodiles and sharks, making swimming an extreme sport. so swimming is not in their culture therefore not passed on from generation to generation.

I know some black americans who swim rather well. I know some black americans who don't swim well. I know many non-blacks that handle themselves on the dancefloor. I know hispanics who hate tacos. I know asians who are no more than average in IQ.

And? We are individuals at the end of the day are we not? Maybe there is a proportion higher for blacks when it comes to swimming but then again thats a cultural attitude that has been instigated and motivated in part by racial division.

[edit on 6-9-2010 by Southern Guardian]

reply to post by Starbug3MY


I think it is a regional thing. I lived in the USVI for many years and all the black children could swim. Many became fisherman and boaters.

One of my girlfriends was in the military service and for her scuba diving training I remember her telling me she had to hoist a black man from the bottom of a pool.
A black man was considered heaviest and had the densest body mass and so was the greatest challenge for the students.

I figured this post would incite an emotional response and debate rather than a scientific productive one. Many people simply cannot discuss these things without shouting the bigotry battle cry.

Don't you guys in America get taught to swim at school?

I've always heard it was something to do with bone density and it's not that black people can't swim, but that they simply don't float as easily. If this is true (and I have no idea whether it is or not) I can sympathise, as I have dense bones too and I can tell you that you have to work twice as hard as most people just to stay afloat!

Type in "black swimming champions" into google-images and you`ll get plenty of results.

Thank you for this thread. Reading this BBC article reminded me of another article I read on this topic, printed in the Los Angeles Sentinel newspaper, the largest Southern California newspaper that focuses on the African American community. Written by African American Joy Childs, it details her own traumatic experience in the early 1960s as a child taking swimming lessons. Here is that link:

www.lasentinel.net...—-or-Sink.html

Briefly, she relates a horrific swimming "lesson" taught by an instructor who was either incompetent, sadistic, or both. I am white, but I remember feeling anger and disgust while I read her account of the swim instructor's horrific "methods." I remember thinking "Where was this swim "instructor" 's supervisor? Where was the high school principal?" (Note: Los Angeles High School, founded in the 1800s as the first high school in Los Angeles, was moved to its present location in the 1930s and has fortunately featured an ethnically diverse student body from the beginning.)

I was so angry about this story, which I read after eating lunch with a friend at an African-American health food restaurant (Simply Wholesome) near La Brea Blvd, that I started to read it out loud to my friend. Unexpectedly, when I got to the part about the "swim instructor's" sadistic methods, I started to cry. Now, the article does not state the ethnicity of the swim instructor...but the fact that an incompetent or sadistic swim teacher was first hired and then left unsupervised with vulnerable children made me feel, not just angry, but also overwhelmed.

The common element between the L.A. Sentinel first-person account and this thread's BBC News story is the question they raise about the dominant culture's priorities in teaching swimming at all, teaching swimming in a competent way, proper management and infrastructure to insure the availability of swimming pools with deep ends and, just as important, qualified and properly supervised swim teachers and state-of-the-art swimming teaching methods. If these key values are not made a reality, then we in North America remain burdened with the problem of White Privilege.

Why White Privilege? When the number of non-swimming African American children approaches a doubling of that of white kids, it's time to take a much harder look at the values of the dominant culture. Otherwise, as the BBC News article points out, 3.1 times more African American kids ages 5-14 will continue to drown. The statistic on Hispanic/Latino and well as white nonswimming kids is also too high, but the statistics on African American nonswimming kids and drowning kids are an abomination.

[edit on 9/7/2010 by Uphill]