How about discussing the topic of "Blacks can't swim"?

Sounds ridiculous.

It’s not that they can’t, it’s that many of them don’t. Or, in the past that was more true anyway. They had less access to pools, because of poverty. Not only where they lived, but they didn’t vacation to the beaches as much either. Some black women don’t want to get their hair wet, so they aren’t fond of the swimming pool. If your mom doesn’t swim, you are less likely to swim. A lot of black people tend to live in the inner cities, and are less likely to have a pool nearby. They don’t go to camp like a lot of white kids do.

It’s mostly a socioeconomic thing in my opinion.

@JLeslie OK, logical enough. But the idea that “blacks can’t swim” because they just can’t is far different than that many of them never had the opportunity to learn.

It’s like that native Americans can’t grow a beard. Or thar Scottish people get sun burnt easily, while blacks are built for preventing sunburns. I do not know If it is true or not.

@talljasperman Those aren’t the same. Black people can physically swim; simply a lot of them don’t. They nevervhad the opportunity to learn.

My exboyfriend probably had a lot of “native” American in him, he was from Equador, and he could never have a thick beard, and he doesn’t have a hairy chest. My husband with ancestors from the mediterranean regio, has curly hair on his head, heavy 5 o’clock shadow, a hairy chest, and even some hair on his lower back and upper shoulders.

Native americans can’t really grow beards and I assure you northern European heritage is the bane of my love/hate relationship with the sun.

So the black dude that swims like a motherfucker is a fraud? Shit, I was so fooled.

Oh, they can. I taught two black kids to swim when they were 12 and 14. They were scared shitless in the beginning. The 14 year old was hanging on to me for dear life! I dated a black guy who was afraid of the water. He was convinced he’d sink straight to the bottom.
I am friends on FB with a black gal who I don’t know personally. Out of curiosity I asked her if she knew how to swim. She does not.
I get the impression it’s more of a cultural / fear thing, but I don’t know.

@Adirondackwannabe The 12 year old developed some mad swimming skills. He was powerful. I wish he could have been in a position to join the swim team, but he probably didn’t.

What the fuck.

It is true about natives though. That they can’t grow beards, or not big ones. I lived in Winnipeg a long time, there are a lot of natives there. Just about all of them can’t grow more than a bit of fuzz or a small stash. I know one native guy who can grow a bush if he wants though, but his dad is white. So he’s not full Indian.

@JLeslie What you’re describing is more than valid for white people too. Many of them are poor, live in inner cities and don’t go camping. Circling blacks about this swimming thing doesn’t work if they’re a minority since obviously they’ll stick out for everything they do or don’t do.

@talljasperman Blacks do tan. It’s just not as obvious as when a white person tans.

I’m going to go on record as saying that it was not a statement of fact so much as it was a joke some would deem to be in poor taste.

Regarding my joke that she can’t swim because she’s black: She can. Hence the joke.

As for the sweeping stereotype… It’s a cultural thing. Of course black people can swim, but statistically they are less likely to learn. USA Swimming Research (bullet points 5 &6)

I dated a beach lifeguard for a few years. She’s not at all racist, but will readily admit that she was specifically trained to keep a watchful eye out for black people going in the water for this exact reason.

It’s the real world people. Fucking live in it.

don’t even get me started on the Poles and Inuit . . .

@Blondesjon How am I supposed to live in a TV show that was cancelled 10 years back!?

Wait… It’s still on? Season 30!? Damn… Ok, nevermind…
=P

How do you stop a buncha black guys raping a white woman?
Toss them a basketball bro.
That gag was brought to you by justajokedontsoilyourself.com

Dibs on that url!

What about black cowboys?
You rarely see black cowboys but just like swimming, doesn’t mean they can’t or aren’t able to ride and rope. lol

Here, check this out.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmqtjusEWAQ

@Coloma . . . who you callin’ boy?

It is one more ridiculous, untrue generalization: Cullen Jones, Eric Mossambani. Maritza Correia and, finally, teacher Jim Ellis who has been disproving this nonsense for 35 years.

@Symbeline Of course it’s valid for white people, all people, in the same socioeconomic situation.

I worked at a public swimming pool when I was a teen. Some of the less affluent folks used it as a daycare center, despite the rules forbidding admission to kids under 12 without supervision of someone over 14 or 16 or whatever it was. Not fun for the workers or the other patrons, but at least those black kids grew up with no fear of water.

They can run like the wind, boy can they sing and dance and do a host of other things! Music is put into them at the moment of conception. Who cares about swimming when you have so much more going!

If you look at the more advanced levels, the Olympic levels, and professional levels, Ice skating and skiing are still dominated by white people, running is more equal, maybe even dominated by black people, basketball has a lot of black and Hispanic, and on and on. A lot of that has to do with economics, tradition, culture, and availability of what is necessary to learn the sport. How is a girl in a radically religious Muslim country or Religious Muslim family going to be very advanced in gymnastics or swim team? They aren’t going to let her do either sport for a week during the month. The Arab girl needs to be covered from head to toe. I used to see them in my gym in the pool here in America. My MIL couldn’t dance, or do gymnastics, in her Catholic, Hispanic, family, but that was many years ago. Girls can’t have a big sanitary napkin on under their leotard or swimsuit even if they are allowed to do sports, and those conservative groups aren’t going to be fond of a tampon.

@ZEPHYRA Oy. A lot of Jews went into acting and comedy, which was looked down on back in the day, because people would not hire them for other jobs, they were poor, and you know, Jewish people are very funny.

@CugelTheClueless Could they swim? I’m just curious if they could do laps across the pool, or if they just knew how to hold their breath under water. Having no fear of the water and wanting to go into the water counts for this Q I think, so I’m not criticizing your answer, I agree with you that in areas with public pools for the community the pool becomes a place for the kids to hang out in the summer time.

For some kids growing up, we’re also raised to believe that water is dangerous. We’re told to stay away instead of teaching us to swim.

@Blackberry That’s interesting. That would be an example of what I mean by it being passed down from generation to generation.

My MIL is very afraid of the water. She almost drowned (or that’s how she perceived it, I don’t know what happened) as a child and since then is afraid. She put all her kids in swimming lessons, because she knew she could never teach them, and I guess she wanted them to be ok in the water. However, it is a sadness of mine that my husband does not enjoy going to the pool and beach like I do. He can swim, but it wasn’t a place his mom took him for fun, and he grew up in a city where swimming was not a regular thing to do. One time my husband was playing by the side of the pool, he was very very young, I think 2 or 3, and one of his toys went into the pool and he jumped in after it and went right to the bottom. His mom just stared at him paralized and his 9 year old brother jumped in and pulled him out.

Anyway, the way for water to be less dangerous is to know how to swim. But, I can see if the only option is swimming in the Atlantic or the Pacific that can be scary. I was with my friend and his two little girls at the beach once and I was paranoid about them getting pulled in, because the waters were rough that day.

Not to mention a close friend of ours lost her 2 year old grandson when he drowned in her pool in her backyard. Another friend of mine’s nephew almost drowned in her backyard pool. He only lived because she suddenly asked where the kid was, and they found him at the bottom of the pool and were able to revive him. They were both white. I just mention their race, because of the original question.

I wonder what the statistics are for drownings in public pools vs. backyard pools? When I was little all the pools I went to were public (meaning for a community of people, they were not necessarily government) and had lifeguards. Even the summer resort we went to had a lifeguard.

@JLeslie, surely not just poverty but I’m almost certain that the signs on the pool entrance kept African Americans out of pools too. You know the ones.

@JLeslie I agree, we also had a river where I lived that was notorious for deadly rip currents. That further increased my mother’s desire to see me not swim lol.

@JLeslie I worked in the concession stand, so I couldn’t see if they were swimming or just splashing around. I now live near Lake Michigan and I see plenty of black kids at the beach on hot summer days, even though there is no funding for lifeguards.

@Blackberry Does your mom swim? If not I think she would feel more terrified, because she wouldn’t be able to save you even if she was right there with you.

@cazzie I really don’t know the ones. 50 years ago yes, is that what you mean? In the south. Not where I grew up. The black kids who lived near me all were in the pools too. There weren’t that many black kids in my “village” though at the time. We were part of a city, but only the people in the village could use the pools. If you do mean the segregation laws, then I do think that created a circumstance that black people had less opportunity to swim and so even when they were allowed to swim, not swimming was still part of the culture. They just didn’t do it. Just like some people don’t go ice skating when the lakes freeze over. They just don’t. Their parents don’t, or never did, so they don’t, and so on.

@CugelTheClueless I’ve never been at the Lakes when there was really high waves or a strong undertow like the Atlantic or Pacific ocean, but I guess it does happen? I always laughs that the Midwesterners are here in Tampa and Naples, because they drive down I75, look out at the Gulf, and say, ” this looks like a Great Lake,” and then they settle in. Lol.

That is interesting, @Blackberry. In my family we’re taught to swim ASAP. I had all my kids swimming by the age of 2.

Are you sure about “rip currents” in the river? Pretty sure rip currents only happen in the ocean. Maybe it was a rumor that got started by adults trying to keep kids away from the water.

@JLeslie you brought up the past reasons why you thought ‘blacks’ didn’t swim. I was just adding one fact from the past you missed.

@cazzie Got it. I agree with you, I missed that one.

Today at the grocery store, a man behind me in the check-out line struck up a conversation as we waited for our turns. Once I was outside, I waited for him and posed this question. While discussing this, a woman walked out and joined the conversation. Both of them were black.

When asked, both said, “Black people can’t swim.”
Me: “Can’t or don’t?”

The rest of their input covered just about everything @JLeslie said in her first statement on this thread. Neither swam nor ever had any interest in it. The guy said that the only places available in his youth were lakes or a stream/river, and that he just wasn’t interested. The woman said that she was deathly afraid of swimming. The reason? Her mother feared it and instilled this fear in her when she was young.

The guy even brought up that some women might not want to mess up their hair. This wasn’t even a topic of consideration by the woman as she never had any desire to get in a swimming area.

It was a random poll of just two people. Still, it surprised me that both immediately said, “Can’t”.

I grew up in a town in southern Virginia back in the 60s. There was a swimming pool area in the centrally located park that was free to the public. The kids who primarily used it were black. Why? Maybe because it was free, but it was also the closest to where they lived. They could definitely swim though.

There was another pool downtown in the YMCA. At a minimal cost, one could take swimming and life-guarding lessons there. I took all of them. I don’t recall ever seeing a black person in any of those classes. Nor do I recall ever seeing a black person at the free and local lake where I life-guarded for a summer.

@All Thanks for taking the time to contribute to this thread. A special thank-you to @Esedess for providing some statistics.

@JLeslie Exactly, she can’t swim either.

@Dutchess_III Yea that’s the best way to handle it.

@Blackberry Everybody can swim.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IHtY5ONeDM

Okay..lets put this to rest once and for all. lol

Watch it all the way through for Cullens full swimming story.

@Coloma Thanks for finding and sharing that video. A black Olympic gold medalist who not only speaks to children about the importance of learning to swim but teaches classes. The “Make a Splash” program sounds wonderful.

@Dutchess_III I, too, was curious about the term “Rip Current”, so looked it up.

Rip currents are powerful, narrow channels of fast-moving water that are prevalent along the East, Gulf, and West coasts of the U.S., as well as along the shores of the Great Lakes.
...
While the terms are ofter [sic] confused, rip currents are different than rip tides. A rip tide is a specific type of current associated with the swift movement of tidal water through inlets and the mouths of estuaries, embayments, and harbors. Source

Also, not everyone can swim. A college friend who became a quadriplegic after a tobogganing accident wouldn’t have been able to swim. I doubt that Stephen Hawking can either. For the vast majority of us though, we can and choose not to for various reasons.

Interesting. So, I guess the Great Lakes can have the same pull as the oceans. I hadn’t remembered that.

The leaner you are the harder it is to stay afloat. That’s why skinny kids have trouble floating on their back while their heavy parents keep showing them how to do it and can’t understand why the kid is having so much trouble. LOL. Mr. Lean muscle man is going to sink faster than rubenesque, curvy, 35 year old woman.

My mom slowly swims a long lab. When I was a kid if I went as slow as her I struggled to keep my head up and I swam well.

In camp we practiced treading water. That was more important than swimming in my opinion. I can tread for hours.

I remember starting to drown in a pool once. I was about 4. I remember fighting, being disoriented. Then my dad swooped me up and saved me. Within the next hour I became a competent swimmer.

I married a black woman, but I still can’t jump!

I almost drowned my swimming instructor when I was 6. We had to jump off the diving board in the deep end and swim to the teacher a few feet away. I latched onto her around the neck and damn near drowned both us us. lol

Correlation is not causation.