Black males have denser bones. This helps in athletic activities, but makes them less buoyant when trying to swim.
Posted on 05/15/2014 11:23:50 PM PDT by Olog-hai
Swimming pools are a much greater danger to black children and teens than they are to other kids, a new government study shows.
Black children ages 5 to 19 drown in swimming pools at a rate more than five times that of white children, the research found. That suggests a lot of blacks are not learning to swim, said the lead author, Dr. Julie Gilchrist of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Swimming is a life-saving skill, not just another sport, she said. …
(Excerpt) Read more at hosted.ap.org ...
To me it suggests that blacks use swimming pools at a higher rate than whites. A factor that was NOT addressed in the articly making the so-called observation about black drowning rates utterly meaningless.
Water be rasis....
My friend was at a public pool in Kansas a few years ago. Bus load of black kids arrived for a school field trip. Almost immediately one of the kids jumps off the diving board and vanishes, has to be rescued by the life guards. Who then made the following announcement on the PA:
” Your attention please. If you can’t swim DO NOT USE THE DIVING BOARD”
“Thank you”
There is OBVIOUSLY some ‘inequity’ in the swimming pools that whites use, versus the swimming pools that blacks use. Maybe it’s the quality of water filtering and resultant underwater visibility (i.e., making it harder to tell which way is up). Maybe it’s the brand of water used - as we all know, whites only use Evian, whereas blacks are probably forced to use tap water (ehhh), due to social ‘inequity’. Using tap water makes people sick and could contribute to the problems they have getting out of the water safely.
There could be other factors as well. It will take some serious study. In the meantime, my suggestion is to require 24/7 lifeguards at all swimming pools, including private ones at residences, so as to eliminate the drowning ‘inequities’. For those people and businesses that would be burdened by the cost, we could have government come in, remove the pools, and fill-in the holes with well-compressed dirt - thereby eliminating another ‘injustice’.
As we attack these social problems, head-on, the world will become a better place.
(this is how California Democrats would approach the problem)
I had a friend in college who couldn’t float. White as they come, probably English/German heritage.
We took a swimming class together, He could Swim fine, but the test they gave us to float, he just sank. He was about 5ft 7, very fit, lifted weights some but not a body builder type, with strong legs, was like a rock when he stopped paddling. Floating in the water was relaxing for me, it wore him out....
Well, the pools are expensive. They run about $750 a summer for a family of four. Lots of folks can't afford that. Problem is, the community pools are hurting because too many parents work all day and aren't joining pools anymore. It seems like a good solution where everybody wins when a subsidized daycamp pays a fee for the use of the pool. Unfortunately, these camps change the pools from a nice quiet place where the kids can cool off to a crowded madhouse with a bunch of unmonitored kids going crazy.
Black males have denser bones. This helps in athletic activities, but makes them less buoyant when trying to swim.
We once owned a timeshare on a mostly black island. 80% of the divemasters were black. I never met a local who couldn’t swim. While there was a lot of racially-mixed folks, the majority were descendants of the same slaves that were sold on to the USA. We saw fewer obese people than in the USA.
The older local women didn’t swim because they were afraid of the effects of sea water on their skin. The younger ones had no problems.
We saw very young kids playing in the ocean every day, jumping off docks and swimming around and back to do it all over again.
These kids were swimming in salt water and I agree that is much easier.
BTW, when ever we vacationed, there were always women from Lon Guyland who not only refused to get their hair wet, but who also refused to walk on sand because they hated the feeling of sand on their feet. They were seen in the pool, in expensive *slimming suits*, cautiously wading around to cool off and never submerging their heads. They did end up with very deep tans and spent their poolside time spraying themselves with water. As for their hair, they complained about the salt breeze ruining their styles even on land. Many then went home and had their beauticians give them streaks and used products that imitated *beach hair*.
People are weird.
Whitewater to be blamed next...
I grew up near the ocean. Until I was 15, I never swam in anything but seawater. I thought I could swim pretty well. I remember when we moved to Central New York and I went swimming in a freshwater pool for the first time. Straight to the bottom. Buoyancy is a thousand better in seawater. I had to learn how to swim all over again.
Come time for "drownproofing" training, the instructor called for a couple of black recruits to jump in the pool first - and then promptly bellowed: "See? N*****s are 'sinkers'"....he then gave a few sentences about the ethnic differences regarding buoyancy.
It was proof, however unsensitively as it was pointed out....
It has been my experience that in critical situations (rattlesnakes, fireworks gone astray, etc.) white kids can jump very well. I think it is a question of inspiration and motivation.
When I was a kid I’d sink in deep water, too, when I didn’t move. Oddly, it wasn’t an issue.
As far as swimming lessons costing $$, it’s not that inner city blacks can’t afford it: It’s a question of priorities all ‘round. Not teaching your child to swim because of $$ is total BS.
I will NOT sit idly by and be told that I have to pay for swimming lessons for ‘affirmative action survival lessons’. THAT’s where this sounds like it’s going...
Notice also that the CDC report discusses ‘rates’ and never mentions how many blacks have drowned, plus minimizes the fact that American Indians/Alaskan Natives (AI/AN) had the highest rates, NOT blacks.
The AP piece is a horrible piece of journalism (go figure).
So, for the sake of stating it, the number of blacks <29 cited to have been killed by drowning in 1999-2010 was 4130 (total all races was 20912). Never mind that the <29 statistic is totally useless.
Total number of children of all races killed by guns in 2009 was 503...
Just sayin.
I’ve been told by those who know that they just DON’T swim, don’t like to swim, don’t ever learn, that it’s a cultural thing. It would be a perfect opportunity for a black swimmer to start a public awareness program of getting black kids to take swim lessons every spring. I think lots of people would chip in a few bucks for kids to learn to swim.
I am a terrible swimmer. I was born in 1940 and polio was the rage during the years that I normally would have learned to swim. So my parents would not let me go into a pool for fear of the disease. Later when I was in my teens I discovered that I sunk like a rock when I got into the water so I kept putting it off. I can side stroke a little but it is still not my thing.
That reminds me of a story my mother told me. It seems that her father had the same habit, i.e., throwing his kids into the water "to teach them to swim." Well, unbeknownst to him, one of his sons had learned to swim before and when his father threw this boy into a darkish lake, he swam under-water and came up in a location his father couldn't see. Scared the old man half to death.
I can vouch for the fact that if you don’t have enough fat, you might have trouble staying afloat. When I took some lifesaving classes when I was about 11 or 12, one of the tasks we had to perform was staying afloat on your back. At that age I was so skinny I had to run around in the shower to get wet as the saying goes. I simply could not float. I sank like a stone whenever I tried to float. Now, (sadly) fifty years later, I wouldn’t have any problems floating.
I was extra skinny as a kid. I learned to swim well, but I couldn’t float. Sank like a stone whenever I tried to float.
Racism at work again. It is discrimination.
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