Black People Swim

When I was a child I remember my father water skiing with one his best friends and fellow member of the Air Force. I don’t specifically remember my father skiing per se, just the way he dismounted. He always had to be brought back towards the shore - and once close, his buddy would make a sharp turn and send my father onto the beach gliding towards the beach. I remember him being pretty good about getting pretty close to the shore - sometimes coasting onto the beach - but more often than not just making it to shallow water before he’d make any moves to remove his skis. I’d learn later that a lot of it had to do with the fact that he couldn’t swim. He’d share with me later in life that he loved the water and skiing so much that, to him, it was worth the risk.

Growing up most of my friends who had skin like mine, or any of the various shades of blackness, didn’t swim. I always wondered why.

I, personally, learned to swim pretty young and enjoyed it. Couldn’t get enough. I was even a lifeguard for a brief period. It wasn’t until just a few years back that I really learned why most of my black friends didn’t swim. It wasn’t about choice - whether or not they liked to swim - it was about access. Generational access.

Up until the end of the 20th century people of color had limited, if any, access to public pools, so most black folks never got the opportunity to learn to swim. Since they didn’t have the opportunity to learn to swim, how were they expected to teach or encourage their children to learn to swim? How do you teach without access?

Black folks didn’t have access to pools legally (whatever that means) until after the 1954 Brown vs Board of Education case in which separate but equal access was deemed unconstitutional. Even after that though, black folks didn’t have access. Think Jim Crow. People upset with integration would throw nails, bleach and even acid into pools to stop black folks from having access. It was, literally, not until I was a adolescent in the late 70’s, early 80’s that black folks really had access - at least in most places. In some places this limited access still exists. And I imagine that black folks living in those areas don’t swim.

Having said that though, black people do swim. Some, similar to the general population, actually love to swim. Most didn’t have the opportunity to share that generationally, however, because they, again, didn’t have a chance to learn and enjoy the experience as they were coming up.

And to think that early on, congruent with societal norms, I just thought that black people couldn’t swim. Shame on me. And shame on all of us if we don’t understand the correlation between access and learning.