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There is a much more interesting and vivid history to be discussed here, but the first page had me too verklempt about swim caps to get to that.That's not an excuse.
How do you teach a person that has no access to natural or unnatural bodies of water to swim?
Lack of access to unnatural bodies of water also isn't the issue.
http://blackdemographics.com/population/black-regions/
and...About 60 Percent of Blacks Lived in 10 States
The 10 states with the largest black alone-or-in-combination populations in 2010 were New York (3.3 million), Florida (3.2 million), Texas (3.2 million), Georgia (3.1 million), California (2.7 million), North Carolina (2.2 million), Illinois (2.0 million), Maryland (1.8 million), Virginia (1.7 million) and Ohio (1.5 million). Among these states, four experienced substantial growth between 2000 and 2010. The black alone-or-in-combination population in Florida grew by 29 percent, Georgia by 28 percent, Texas by 27 percent and North Carolina by 21 percent.
https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2016/cb16-210.html
“Rural areas cover 97 percent of the nation’s land area but contain 19.3 percent of the population (about 60 million people),” Census Bureau Director John H. Thompson said. “By combining five years of survey responses, the American Community Survey provides unequaled insight into the state of every community, whether large or small, urban or rural.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/10/trump-african-american-inner-city/503744/
The fact blacks are concentrated in the South is important because it is plenty warm down there. This is more important to the socioeconomic divide, which is definitely a factor in competitive swimming, and to a lesser degree public pool access, because it tends to be less expensive to build facilities that can house outdoor pools.That has slowly been changing. Today, the majority—52 percent— of African Americans in the nation’s top 100 metro areas live in the suburbs of those regions, according to Kneebone.
The fact they are concentrated in the cities means they are much more likely to live in areas where there is a publicly funded pool or outreach program pool nearby (ex. municipal pools, YMCA, Boys & Girls Club, etc). There are 309,000 public pools across the USA. My own rural hometown's public pool had a seasonal pass that saw the poor drop off their kids in the afternoon for 4 1/2 hours every weekday for 2 1/2 months during the summer. In the late 90's this pass was $25. This meant those people were effectively getting babysitting from the lifeguards for pennies on the dollars compared to any other available program: public or otherwise.
There is a definite cultural inertia, here, but a lack of access to bodies of water where they could learn, and specifically where instruction is offered cheaply, is not the primary issue. I think it is more a matter of intergenerational cultural capital and habits at this point. There are quite a few activists out there who are seeking to help correct the problem with publicly-funded programs to offer instruction and pool access for free to nonwhite urban populations so that we don't have so many preventable, tragic drownings.
I will never forget reading about the Red River Drowning. It breaks my heart every time I am reminded.
La. man saved teen, couldn’t stop 6 from drowning
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