Swim Caps are Racist

[Leagon]

And the author of the OP/article is as ignorant as you.

I've helped dozens of young black girls, competitive swimmers, apply their swim caps. Most of the really young ones like the help-- boys or girls-- for a few years until they get the knack of it. In fact, many elite female swimmers who have a large volume of hair never stop using a helper to adorn their swim cap. Usually they recruit other female swimmers, but when you're a USA Swim Coach you end up doing this as a matter of routine at any given swim meet. You even help swimmers from other teams who find themselves in a pinch behind the blocks.

It's latex. Afros or dreadlocks make no difference to your technique. In fact, these hairstyles are quite a bit easier than the girls who have waistline hair who end up twirling/folding their hair, and holding it on top of their head, which is why they need you to stretch and cover the head with the cap. It's not complicated. It just takes two sets of hands.

Hmmm...you've put me in a tough position. I am admittedly ignorant about swim cap design and how it relates to black hair, so now I'm stuck in a situation where I have to decide who is more knowledgeable on the matter between Madmick--a sherdog mod, part time legendary swim coach who sometimes helps black kids, and (afaik) white guy who is notorious for pretending that his miniscule life experience grants him omniscience--and

Singleton, a 30-year-old black swim coach in Georgia with a thick, full-moon-shaped afro. Known on her AfroSwimmers Instagram account as Coach With the Fro, she has been offering swim lessons that target the black community for 16 years.

Even if you're correct, I'm sure you can see why I would side with her. In the absence of any concrete evidence, I have to side with the authority who seems more credible and who has the backing of a team of fact checkers and editors from one of the nation's most respectable publications.

Are you saying that Singleton doesn't know what she's talking about on this issue? Or that perhaps the article misrepresented her views?

 

[2DUM2TAP]

1.) my daughter is in synchronized swimming so I have had to deal with this swim cap shit. My family has large heads, and my wife and daughter have really thick long hair. Trying to jam that on her head is no fun either. Other than for synchro which they mandate for some stupid reason we have never used caps when swimming.

2.) If your kid doesn't know how to swim you are failing them as a parent. This is an essential life skill.

3.) lack of access to pools is a crap excuse. There's oceans, rivers, lakes , ponds. That's where I learned.

 

[Sketch]

Having pools is a luxury and most black families have been at the bottom end of the poverty scale for over 200 years.

Seems cut and dry to me.

We have public pools in North America. Lots of them.

 

[Darth_Inv1ctu5]

Swim caps have conventionally been designed as one size fits all for straighter, less curly hairstyles. They help with resistance in the water, but are not meant to keep water fully out. Singleton tells her students that the most important factor in choosing a swim cap is size and type, not brand, but she says many students don’t know how to put on a swim cap properly in the first place. There’s little instruction on the internet on what to do if they have afros or dreadlocks. “I’ve had black girls that have had the entire backs of their hair broken off from breakage, or [from] not having the right moisturizers because of the chemicals and the rubbing of the caps,” she says.

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2018/08/swim-caps-black-women/567398/

Shame on you white folks.

Come on now...

 

[Rational Poster]

We have public pools in North America. Lots of them.

There are 300,000 Public pools and 10.4 million private pools.

Hope this helps.

I'm sure @HunterSdVa29 is going to tell me the 10.4 million private pools were built in the last decade though.

 

[all caps]

I think me and most of my friends learned to swim at either the YMCA or because our dad's threw us off the railroad bridge into a slow moving river with a life vest.

<Lmaoo> spot on. I got tossed in to Twin Lakes as a wee lad

 

[Leagon]

1.) my daughter is in synchronized swimming so I have had to deal with this swim cap shit. My family has large heads, and my wife and daughter have really thick long hair. Trying to jam that on her head is no fun either. Other than for synchro which they mandate for some stupid reason we have never used caps when swimming.

2.) If your kid doesn't know how to swim you are failing them as a parent. This is an essential life skill.

3.) lack of access to pools is a crap excuse. There's oceans, rivers, lakes , ponds. That's where I learned.

2. No it's not, go away.

3. Good point, but no one learns to swim in the ocean, lol. Or a river. I don't know where you're from, but lakes and ponds aren't as accessible as you think. Some people live in cities.

 

[Rational Poster]

I would change that to "going to pools". Having a pool is not a prerequisite, not by a country mile. I come from a small, poor Eastern European country where you only have communal pools and I can count the number of kids I know who cannot swim on one hand's fingers.

Access to communal pools & YMCAs is quite a different matter and could be a contributing factor but owning a pool is definitely not. I don't imagine that more than 0.001% of all people who can swim learned that in their own personal pool.

This is America though, not a poor Eastern European country.

A personal pool has been a way of life for millions of middle class Americans since the 50s.

It's literally part of the American Dream.

 

[Sketch]

There are 300,000 Public pools and 10.4 million private pools.

Hope this helps.

I'm sure @HunterSdVa29 is going to tell me the 10.4 million private pools were built in the last decade though.

That doesn't change anything. That is still plenty of pools for people to learn. Also, personal pools are generally mi h smaller than public pools. You won't learn to properly cover distance etc like a public pool and having actual proper people give you swimming lessons.

Hope this helps.

 

[Rational Poster]

That doesn't change anything. That is still plenty of pools for people to learn. Also, personal pools are generally mi h smaller than public pools. You won't learn to properly cover distance etc like a public pool and having actual proper people give you swimming lessons.

Hope this helps.

There is just one public pool per 1200 people today and many blacks still living and breathing were excluded from them for most of their life.

 

[Scerpi]

I'm a volunteer for our swim team and swim official here where I live. It's true that there are not a lot of black kids on the swim teams, but I think that has more to do with the demographics of our neighborhood. There a quite a few black kids on the our team though (about 15 on a 120 kid team), so that seems about right for our area. And a some of them are very good.

Swimming is a fantastic sport for kids. The season is only about 8-10 weeks long. It's one of the cheapest sports for kids around. ($125-$160) And it helps kids learn a critical life skill they can use for the rest of their lives.

More so than any other sport... by far. I wish I had done it when I was young. I can swim well enough, but it be great to swim for distance.

One black girl broke the team's 30+ year old butterfly 50M record this season for 10-12 year olds. She's a natural and only been doing it for about 2 years. Seriously, a good butterfly stroke is a cool thing to see. Most kids tend to flail at it. The girl's mother is local, but her father is from Nigeria. Amazingly cool guy. I see them all time around the neighborhood.

 

[*Z*]

Sounds like black girls not wanting to get their hair wet are just as much to blame as swim caps.

 

[JJSBUR]

who the fuck actually wears swim caps?

Competitive swimmers to reduce resistance. Why do just attack things you don't understand?

 

[Gregolian]

It's a middle-upper middle class thing for sure, and my point still remains.

Black people just didn't have access to them for most of our history like the rest of us... and for quite sometime in recent history they were literally banned from them.

And even today, you see racists having issue swimming with blacks.

I can get this but I think this idea where you were at when I joined this of "well, my entire neighborhood everyone has a pool" is more of an exception that the rule in this country.

 

[2DUM2TAP]

2. No it's not, go away.

3. Good point, but no one learns to swim in the ocean, lol. Or a river. I don't know where you're from, but lakes and ponds aren't as accessible as you think. Some people live in cities.

2.) Absolutely is.

From 2005-2014, there were an average of 3,536 fatal unintentional drownings annually in the United States — about ten deaths per day.

climate change and flooding makes it even more important.

3.) There is only one state in the US that does not have a lake. other than that there is 125,000 lakes in the lower 48 states. I live in Ontario which also boats 125,000 lakes on its own. I learned to swim in a river that was near my house. There are lots of nice deep spots in it. Never heard of a swimming hole? I also went swimming at neighbors houses as well who weren't as poor as us, but mostly the river. My cousin learned to swim in the pacific. Swimming in the ocean is actually easier given that you float so much more.

 

[HunterSdVa29]

There are 300,000 Public pools and 10.4 million private pools.

Hope this helps.

I'm sure @HunterSdVa29 is going to tell me the 10.4 million private pools were built in the last decade though.

well they didn't have $400 big lots above ground pools in the 80s playa
hahahahaah carry on, as you were

 

[Scerpi]

There is just one public pool per 1200 people today and many blacks still living and breathing were excluded from them for most of their life.

Good lord... yes, let's keep the white guilt flowing.

The City of Houston has several free swim days each month for residents. The city also offered several free swim lessons for kids during the summer.

If families and kids want to go swimming, there's plenty of opportunities to do so.

 

[Madmick]

Hmmm...you've put me in a tough position. I am admittedly ignorant about swim cap design and how it relates to black hair, so now I'm stuck in a situation where I have to decide who is more knowledgeable on the matter between Madmick--a sherdog mod, part time legendary swim coach who sometimes helps black kids, and (afaik) white guy who is notorious for pretending that his miniscule life experience grants him omniscience--and

Even if you're correct, I'm sure you can see why I would side with her. In the absence of any concrete evidence, I have to side with the authority who seems more credible and who has the backing of a team of fact checkers and editors from one of the nation's most respectable publications.

Are you saying that Singleton doesn't know what she's talking about on this issue? Or that perhaps the article misrepresented her views?

Ooh, look, you wedged in a reference to my (afayk) whiteness in the middle of your ad hominem about my "miniscule life experience" which, as you are forced to concede, dwarfs your own in this matter.

This lady is a self-proclaimed swim coach. She is not a USA Swimming certified coach: much less the head coach of a USA club. I was when I still coached. Notice that she's 30-years-old, but she's been a swim coach for 16 years? So this lady has been a "coach" since she was 14. That isn't even old enough to be an accredited head coach.

I was also an 3x Academic All-American, and a 3x NSCIF Section Champion. Yes, your hair will get wet (not entirely), but that isn't the purpose of a swim cap. It's just a bonus. The primary purpose of a swim cap for competitive swimmers is to reduce drag.

For black women, hair is a long-standing point of pride, self-expression, status, and heritage. Some women will spend hundreds of dollars—and sit for hours—to get box braids or install a weave. That’s not including the hair products required for daily maintenance. All this makes swimming risky. Chlorine can damage the softness of an afro, the tightness of a box braid or sisterlock, or the clean scalp hidden under a sew-in weave. For some hairstyles, the prospect of starting over with washing, conditioning, sitting under a hair dryer, combing or picking out hair, and restyling in general is frustrating.

While doing research for an earlier version of the USA Swimming Foundation report, Carol Irwin, an associate professor at the University of Memphis School of Health Studies and one of the lead researchers on the study, remembers asking black women around campus if they swam. Most said they did not, because of their hair and chemicals that dried out their skin. So Irwin and her colleagues put the hair question on the 2010 survey, “thinking it might be significant.” Black respondents reported significantly greater concern about getting their hair wet, and about the negative impact of chemicals on children’s appearances, than white respondents did.

This is why swimmers wash their hair after practice. It's not rocket science. There are also plenty of products for female swimmers who wish to mitigate any chlorine damage to their hair.

Young white kids with extremely fair hair who are competitive swimmers often develop a green tint in their hair. My own younger brother had such a bad case of this that it shows up in pictures (it's much easier to see in person than in pictures, especially with older and less sophisticated cameras). Our hair isn't magically resistant to chlorine damage, either. In fact, those with finer hair tend to be more susceptible to damage due to reduced volume-to-surface-area.

You know what swimmers use to apply swim caps more easily, and to help soak up any excess moisture that sneaks into the cap? Baby powder.

Yeah, I've put you in a tough position, alright; one where you are forced to swallow your ignorance.

 

[MayhemMonkey]

Competitive swimmers to reduce resistance. Why do just attack things you don't understand?

are any of us competitive swimmers?

I know competitive swimmers wear them, as to divers. But of the general public who the fuck wears them?

 

[Rational Poster]

I can get this but I think this idea where you were at when I joined this of "well, my entire neighborhood everyone has a pool" is more of an exception that the rule in this country.

I didn't mean it like that.. just that black people certainly didn't have the wealth to live in such a neighborhood I was lucky to grow up in.

My family was by no means wealthy either, if anything I'm doing better than my grandmother/grandfather.

Another anecdote I learned recently, my local high school didn't even have the first blacks students attend till the 70s.