When you talk about black folks and swimming, you unfortunately run smack dab into that drowning rate. Black children are three times more likely than white children to drown.

I knew a victim. My friend Della came from a family of six kids. She had a little sister named Alexis. They called her PooPoo. One summer, the family went to Woods Lake, the ghetto swimming hole in town. I say ghetto, because 1. It’s free, and 2. it’s on the bus route, and 3. it’s often closed for e coli. But this was the 80s, so it was more likely to be full of jheri juice than e coli bacteria.

The lake is probably man-made, a land locked lake. It’s dark and murky with seaweed and muck underneath. There is no beach. No sand. Just grass and acorns. Della nm went to the beach one summer, when PooPoo was 10, and PooPoo got lost in the muck. She drowned.

That was one of the saddest funerals I’ve ever been to.

There’s lots of crap out there as to why black folks have such a high drowning rate. There’s the buoyancy argument, which I used to believe. There’s all the poor-mouthing about ‘we don’t have pools or access,’ etc., but I don’t buy that one either. I think it comes down to two things: priorities and bragging.

Our priorities lean towards the ‘momma can’t swim, so it must not be important’ extreme. There’s also the deal with the hair. Our hair is a straight up nightmare when it gets wet. If we wear it natural, it gets all tangled and overwhelming. If we have a perm, the chlorine literally makes it fall out. So, yeah. It’s not a superficial issue.

But the thing is, swimming is a life skill, not a lifestyle choice. You never know when you’re going to need to know how to swim. The hair issue can be overcome.

Now there’s that bragging piece, not knowing that you don’t know. Anecdote alert! Last summer, Imani, my 8 year old, took part in our church’s day camp. When the all black camp went swimming, the lifeguard asked the children who could swim. Everyone raised their hand. Then, when he gave them the swim test, most of the kids liked to drowned. In fact, my daughter was the only one in her age group that could swim. And just a handful of the older kids were proficient in the water at all.

I remember my cousin David, who pretended he could swim until my father pulled a Jaws on him. Daddy wasn’t much of a swimmer, but he would play this game of hunting you down while swimming underwater. He’d reach you and pull your legs out from under you. It was terrifying, but if you could swim a little, you could get away from him. David almost drowned with that silly game, and he spent the rest of that trip to the pool in the hot tub.

I know I’m making gross generalizations, but the drowning rate is real. It’s so serious that USA Swimming has hired a diversity specialist, John Cruzat. On the top of his list is to address the drowning rate of blacks and Hispanics. How to address this rate? Very simple: SWIMMING LESSONS.

I don’t care how long it takes you to learn how to swim! (read my story). Just learn how to swim! Your life depends upon it.

Cullen Jones and Maritza Correia are devoting their time to addressing this issue. I wish them much success.