How long does it take to become a swimmer? Our trip to a friend’s backyard lake: My 10 year old daughter has a friend who lives on a lake. The friend has come to pick her up and taken her to her house to play a few times. My daughter usually gets home late, full of smiles, with wet hair. In early August, the whole family was invited to come play in the lake. We took our suits, and drove the 30 minutes to their house. It was picturesque. You had to go out in the yard to take in the whole view. The lake extended in all directions along the back and side of the house. My daughter’s friend has a couple boats, their own dock, and a small sandy beach for building castles.

The girls had so much fun jumping off the dock and getting pushed off the deck. The baby swam around a little in her cube and water wings, while I silently wondered how long it takes for swimming to happen. The 6 year old still doesn’t swim, and shows little interest when we go to the lake. That’s ironic, considering how he liked the lake when he was a baby. Anyway, I’m getting impatient for all my children to swim. Mind you, I haven’t yet signed them up for lessons this summer–and summer’s almost gone–so I don’t know what I expect, but I am tired of the youngest two not knowing how to swim. I am weary of holding the baby for dear life every time we go swimming. I am even more weary of hearing of non-swimming black people, and of mothers helplessly watching their children drown. So I’ll hold the baby. And sign the kids up for lessons so I don’t have to count my family members among the non-swimmers.

It doesn’t hurt that I have a lifeguard in the family now. I can’t wait to get my son certified.

Although I suspect I’m laboring in obscurity here, I have figured out the mystery of the non-swimming black culture. There are three reasons, and they feed each other.

1. Non-swimming adults
If you don’t swim, you don’t get what the big deal is with swimming. You don’t make it a priority. If you hear about the disproportionate drowning rate among your people, and you’re a non-swimmer, you figure you’ll fix that by staying away from the water. Which brings me to. . .

2. Fear
If you don’t swim, and therefore stay away from the water, then you’re going to want to keep your kids away from the water too, to keep them safe. No matter that you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a swim instructor, some of them giving away the lessons for free. No, you want to keep your kids away from the water to keep them safe.

3. Lack of role models
Here’s where Cullen is working his butt off. I thought, well, he’s alone, and we need so many more swimmers. But Tiger Woods didn’t need a legion of black golfers to interest black folks in golf; neither did Venus and Serena need a bus-load of dark tennis players. So Cullen would be sufficient. . . if he swam the number of events Michael Phelps swims. It’s a little harder when he’s duking it out with Nathan Adrian, Matt Grevers, et. al. for fastest sprinter. Maybe his son will be the superstar swimmer we need to put all black eyes on swimming.

What do you think? Is this list long enough? Any suggestions?

The debate continues at Diversity in Aquatics. To be fair, the original question was not why don’t blacks swim, but, rather, can blacks swim well enough to save themselves? I have contributed to the forum, without actually addressing that original question. I haven’t found that question sufficient or interesting, or whatever, but I think I will address that first before moving onto my question.

Can blacks swim well enough to save themselves? I want to answer that some can. But can we as a group, or tribe, as Errol Duplessis, who asked the original question says? And that answer would have to be no. It is tragic the rate at which our children drown every year. And it is negligent to ignore the masses in favor of the few who get it and can save themselves. We need to prioritize this major life skill and stop ignoring our general lack of swim skills.

So I get back to the question I’ve been asking on this blog since its inception: why don’t blacks swim? And I’ve been swimming around the answer for some time now, too, trying to get a handle on it. Mr. Duplessis says it’s because of lack of access to swim lessons. I have disagreed with that answer in the past, but I want to consider it now.

We have a history of lack of access. It could be that we were denied access to pools and lessons just long enough to remove any desire for learning to swim from our collective consciousness. The whole trained elephant concept, where the way to control a big elephant is to start when they’re small and limiting their mobility, and they quit trying by the time they’re grown. So I can see that.

I can also see how generations of fearful non-swimmers can pass that fear and non-swimming status on into perpetuity. That was really my latest conclusion. That blacks don’t swim because their generations didn’t swim, and they actually shy away from swim lessons out of fear.

But that attitude is killing us. So it’s really time for a change.

Role models may also play a factor. Cullen Jones is working really hard to be the black swim role model for the country. He’s the highest profile black swimmer we have, but he shouldn’t be carrying this mantel by himself. I suspect he’s not, but he’s the only black swimmer the media is covering.

So now I have to stop my black swim crusade to pick up the blacks in broadcasting/news crusade? Sheesh. It shouldn’t be this hard! One fight at a time.

It looks like Mr. Duplessiss’s conclusion is not so different from mine. It’s just at the beginning of the continuum I brought up. So, if I can sum it up succinctly, it would be: Blacks don’t swim (well enough to save themselves) because they were denied access to pools and lessons, creating generations of fearful non-swimmers, which continues into perpetuity, to the point where the fear is so great that parents avoid even free swim lessons.

When we get to the point where we’re enslaving and killing ourselves, nobody else has to put us down.

People! Staying away from the water is NOT the answer. Learning to swim is.

I mentioned a pool party in my last post. My sister-in-law invited one of her friends from work. Her friend was white, and she had three mixed daughters. Her attitude towards swimming was different from black people I’ve talked with, even from those who were at the party.

Maybe it’s a non-swimming, vs swimming attitude, and it looks like black and white because of the large number of non-swimming blacks. It’s kind of a take it or leave it attitude about swimming that I see, certainly a hands off attitude when the parent doesn’t swim.

When the parent does swim, the attitude is more like it’s inevitable that the child will learn to swim. There’s no hysteria involved, no hand clenching and tenseness, just a matter of fact attitude towards swimming. Not to mention parents that will make sure their kids get plenty of time in the water to practice.

In our family, my husband doesn’t swim. I heard him tell someone that everyone in his family could swim but him. He sounded proud about that. He is the reason they can all swim, by the way. When he put his foot down and decided to stop paying for swim lessons that served no purpose, I found them a swim team to train for, and that’s when the older two learned to swim. That was after years of farting around in dead in classes. I started the middle two children in swim lessons at the swim club, and it has served them well. They have a strong foundation to build upon.

I look forward to getting them back in lessons, along with their little brother. And I’m counting the years until the baby can join them. She is ready to swim by herself!

What have your experiences been as far as attitudes towards swimming?

Here’s more video about last year’s Make a Splash initiative. Have you gotten involved with this great program yet? Here’s some info on the local partner program. Do what you can to bring that drowning rate down this summer. And be sure to get in the pool yourself a couple times. Happy Summer!