Sixty-four percent of African-American children can’t swim; they drown at a rate nearly three times higher than their white peers, according to USA Swimming, the national governing body for the sportThe disparities are most pronounced in swimming pool drownings. African-Americans ages 5 to 19 drown in swimming pools at rates 5.5 times higher than whites, according to the CDC. African-American children ages 11 to 12 are at even greater risk; they drown in swimming pools at rates 10 times that of peer whites.http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/mar...004-story.html“Swimming as a skill, as a recreation, as a sport and as a social activity has been passed down generationally among white Americans,” said Jeff Wiltse, a professor of history at the University of Montana and author of the book “Contested Waters: A Social History of Swimming Pools in America.” “This wasn’t the case with African-Americans.”
https://newsone.com/3755035/black-pe...gma-gamma-rho/Jim Crow laws and other discriminatory practices kept generations of African-American children from learning how to swim in the safety of public pools. That legacy is one factor that fuels the stereotype that Blacks can’t swim.