American blacks - Poor swimmers

Thios is the year of the Olympic sports.

The US has almost 3,500 accidental drownings every year, almost 10 a day.

But according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the fatal drowning rate of African-American children aged five-14 is three times that of white children.

Just under 70% of African-American children surveyed said they had no or low ability to swim. Low ability merely meant they were able to splash around in the shallow end. A further 12% said they could swim but had "taught themselves". The study found 58% of Hispanic children had no or low swimming ability. For white children, the figure was only 42%.

"The history of discrimination… has contributed to the drowning and swimming rates," says Prof Jeff Wiltse, author of Contested Waters: A Social History of Swimming Pools in America. In his work he identified two periods of a boom in swimming rates in the US - in the 1920s and 1930s when recreational swimming became popular and the 1950s and 1960s when the idea of swimming as a sport really took off. The first boom was marked by the construction of about 2,000 new municipal pools across the nation.

"Black Americans were largely and systematically denied access to those pools," he notes. "Swimming never became a part of African- American recreational culture."

In the northern US that segregation in pools ended in the 1940s and early 1950s, but many white swimmers responded by abandoning the municipal pools and heading off to private clubs in the suburbs where segregation continued to be enforced.

"Municipal pools became a low public priority," he notes.

After the race riots of the 1960s, many cities did start building pools in predominantly black areas, says Prof Wiltse, but there was still a problem. Many of the new pools were small - often only 20 by 40ft (six by 12m) and 3.5ft (1m) deep.

"They didn't really accommodate swimming. They attracted young kids who would stand in them and splash about. There really wasn't an effort to teach African-American children to swim in these pools". Although there are many poor or working class white children who cannot swim for similar reasons, swimming has gained an image as a "white sport". "It is a country club sport that only very rich kids get to participate in. The swimming pool is a very elitist thing to have in your backyard," says Prof Irwin.

American blacks are drowning in poverty, literally!

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