Although I suspect I’m laboring in obscurity here, I have figured out the mystery of the non-swimming black culture. There are three reasons, and they feed each other.

1. Non-swimming adults
If you don’t swim, you don’t get what the big deal is with swimming. You don’t make it a priority. If you hear about the disproportionate drowning rate among your people, and you’re a non-swimmer, you figure you’ll fix that by staying away from the water. Which brings me to. . .

2. Fear
If you don’t swim, and therefore stay away from the water, then you’re going to want to keep your kids away from the water too, to keep them safe. No matter that you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a swim instructor, some of them giving away the lessons for free. No, you want to keep your kids away from the water to keep them safe.

3. Lack of role models
Here’s where Cullen is working his butt off. I thought, well, he’s alone, and we need so many more swimmers. But Tiger Woods didn’t need a legion of black golfers to interest black folks in golf; neither did Venus and Serena need a bus-load of dark tennis players. So Cullen would be sufficient. . . if he swam the number of events Michael Phelps swims. It’s a little harder when he’s duking it out with Nathan Adrian, Matt Grevers, et. al. for fastest sprinter. Maybe his son will be the superstar swimmer we need to put all black eyes on swimming.

What do you think? Is this list long enough? Any suggestions?

The debate continues at Diversity in Aquatics. To be fair, the original question was not why don’t blacks swim, but, rather, can blacks swim well enough to save themselves? I have contributed to the forum, without actually addressing that original question. I haven’t found that question sufficient or interesting, or whatever, but I think I will address that first before moving onto my question.

Can blacks swim well enough to save themselves? I want to answer that some can. But can we as a group, or tribe, as Errol Duplessis, who asked the original question says? And that answer would have to be no. It is tragic the rate at which our children drown every year. And it is negligent to ignore the masses in favor of the few who get it and can save themselves. We need to prioritize this major life skill and stop ignoring our general lack of swim skills.

So I get back to the question I’ve been asking on this blog since its inception: why don’t blacks swim? And I’ve been swimming around the answer for some time now, too, trying to get a handle on it. Mr. Duplessis says it’s because of lack of access to swim lessons. I have disagreed with that answer in the past, but I want to consider it now.

We have a history of lack of access. It could be that we were denied access to pools and lessons just long enough to remove any desire for learning to swim from our collective consciousness. The whole trained elephant concept, where the way to control a big elephant is to start when they’re small and limiting their mobility, and they quit trying by the time they’re grown. So I can see that.

I can also see how generations of fearful non-swimmers can pass that fear and non-swimming status on into perpetuity. That was really my latest conclusion. That blacks don’t swim because their generations didn’t swim, and they actually shy away from swim lessons out of fear.

But that attitude is killing us. So it’s really time for a change.

Role models may also play a factor. Cullen Jones is working really hard to be the black swim role model for the country. He’s the highest profile black swimmer we have, but he shouldn’t be carrying this mantel by himself. I suspect he’s not, but he’s the only black swimmer the media is covering.

So now I have to stop my black swim crusade to pick up the blacks in broadcasting/news crusade? Sheesh. It shouldn’t be this hard! One fight at a time.

It looks like Mr. Duplessiss’s conclusion is not so different from mine. It’s just at the beginning of the continuum I brought up. So, if I can sum it up succinctly, it would be: Blacks don’t swim (well enough to save themselves) because they were denied access to pools and lessons, creating generations of fearful non-swimmers, which continues into perpetuity, to the point where the fear is so great that parents avoid even free swim lessons.

When we get to the point where we’re enslaving and killing ourselves, nobody else has to put us down.

People! Staying away from the water is NOT the answer. Learning to swim is.

I mentioned a pool party in my last post. My sister-in-law invited one of her friends from work. Her friend was white, and she had three mixed daughters. Her attitude towards swimming was different from black people I’ve talked with, even from those who were at the party.

Maybe it’s a non-swimming, vs swimming attitude, and it looks like black and white because of the large number of non-swimming blacks. It’s kind of a take it or leave it attitude about swimming that I see, certainly a hands off attitude when the parent doesn’t swim.

When the parent does swim, the attitude is more like it’s inevitable that the child will learn to swim. There’s no hysteria involved, no hand clenching and tenseness, just a matter of fact attitude towards swimming. Not to mention parents that will make sure their kids get plenty of time in the water to practice.

In our family, my husband doesn’t swim. I heard him tell someone that everyone in his family could swim but him. He sounded proud about that. He is the reason they can all swim, by the way. When he put his foot down and decided to stop paying for swim lessons that served no purpose, I found them a swim team to train for, and that’s when the older two learned to swim. That was after years of farting around in dead in classes. I started the middle two children in swim lessons at the swim club, and it has served them well. They have a strong foundation to build upon.

I look forward to getting them back in lessons, along with their little brother. And I’m counting the years until the baby can join them. She is ready to swim by herself!

What have your experiences been as far as attitudes towards swimming?

I’ve been threatening to take the kids to my sister-in-law’s pool for weeks. Turns out, the pool wasn’t ready for us until the 4th, when they invited us for a pool party. It was right on time, as the weather was to be 90 degrees and humid.

The temperature didn’t disappoint, and all 6 kids were happy to jump in. I have different levels of swimmers, so it is challenging to watch them all. My lifeguard certified daughter had just gotten her hair done, so she didn’t swim, but got wet, took care of her younger non-swimming siblings, and pined for actual swimming. I got a kick out of this, as she tries to pretend that she doesn’t like to swim. I didn’t say, “I knew you liked swimming!” or anything else snotty. I just made a mental note of it.

My 15 year old son is another one who pretends to hate swimming, but I noticed how he did cannonballs, critiqued his little sisters’ swimming, and challenged them to races. It was a delight to watch him swim again–this time as a big boy. He swam competitively from the age of 8 until 11.

The little girls, who took swimming lessons from the age of 3 until 6 and 4, surprised me, especially the 8 year old. She has had fewer swim lessons, and never really learned any stroke, but she is very competitive and athletic. This is my only child who wants to do a triathlon (like her mother!). But she doesn’t swim well enough to do one this summer. My older son is the only child that could compete in the YMCA child’s triathlon this year, and he is completely uninterested. I digress. When my 8 year old heard that she wasn’t ready for the swim portion of a triathlon, she knew she wanted to practice in a pool. She was so excited to get her chance.

She was jumping off the diving board, racing her 10 year old sister, and beating her, despite the fact that the 8 year old had to hold on to the side of the pool in order to breathe. She doesn’t know rotary breathing or true freestyle yet, but she was pulling like a freestyle and swimming underwater for long periods of time before needing a breath. We may make a swimmer of her yet!

The littlest children, who are non-swimmers, were very enthusiastic as well. They splashed around with various flotation devices, both children wanting desperately to learn how to swim. The 2 year old could paddle around with her butterfly cube and floaties. Her 6 year old brother preferred sitting in floating chairs and using two noodles. I will be glad to count him among the swimmers! I better sign them up for lessons this summer. It’s not fun trying to keep the non-swimmers out of the pool!

If you have more photographic proof, post it on Diversity in Aquatics. They’re busting that blacks don’t swim myth.