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 ...
Half my platoon in boot camp was from Brooklyn or inner city NYC (mostly black people). When it came to swim qualification, it was apparent that these recruits could not swim very well. The cause I think is the lower body fat that others have mentioned and perhaps the lack of good municipal pools in which they could learn to swim. I learned to swim at my grandparents’ backyard pool. Grandpa thought it was funny to throw me and let me figure it out. LOL. What a cut-up he was!
I’m skeptical of the body fat explanation. We were a bunch of skinny white kids when I was growing up and learning to swim. I’d be surprised if black kids these days are statistically any leaner than we were. I do remember some of the black kids struggling but it seemed related to a fear of water and a tendency to panic. I think they were acculturated into that fear before they had any experience with trying to swim.
Some people float fairly easily on the surface of the water. Some sink, sometimes well below the surface before reaching equilibrium. I’m like that myself and cannot remember being unable to swim going back to my earliest memories. I always envied people who could just lay back in a pool and float around with no effort. I can only do that in salt water, later in life after accumulating some body fat. The kids who sunk were slender and muscular, a more dense physique. The kids who floated easily had a layer of body fat, not necessarily obese.
You're kidding yourself. Buoyancy is a simple scalar property. If anything, you lose buoyancy as you sink due to compression. There is no tendency to become more buoyant with depth.
I myself am near enough zero buoyancy that I can float, then expel air and sink. This is how I do my "lobster imitation".
I understand what you’re saying. I’d like to see some stats on relative body fat in children of different races. Btw, when I was a kid I couldn’t float either.
And at what point do you stop sinking if you’re holding your breath? Are you on the surface or are you a few feet below? I taught kids to swim for years. If my meaning was how you’re erroneously interpreting, no one would ever be able to get to the bottom of the deep end without swimming there, and would have a difficult time remaining without popping back up like a cork. That is obviously untrue.
I wonder how many white kids die because they can't jump as well as black kids?
IE, jump out of the way of vehicles, rattlesnakes, etc.
IE, jump out of the way of vehicles, rattlesnakes, etc.
Good question.
Rattlers probably don't account for much, but vehicles might be another matter. Research is needed (but only privately funded).
The point is, the scum want to keep score based on skin color. And our job is to follow their Alinsky and make fun of them for doing so!
Yeah, when I was growing up as a privileged white child all we had to swim in were ponds. You learned to swim so you could stay in the deep end where your feet didn’t touch the muck on the bottom. Being white we were also privileged to have inner tubes.
Looking through the posts on this thread, many Freepers like to suggest that blacks have a different body shape than whites. That is ridiculous. Many hispanics also do not know how to swim. You know what the diffrence is? It’s their parents! Their parents don’t care enough to make sure that their kids are able to swim. Even if you live in the inner city and think you will never be near the water, your kids still need to know how to swim. If you as a parent can’t insure that your kids are able to swim, it’s just another form of neglect.
That is because 7 is way too old. Start at under 1 yr. old and no lessons are even necessary.
Well, it may be just me, but I think the CDC has too much damn time on their hands and are creating ‘health’ problems so they can get more money.
Over the years, I’ve seen reports, studies and news releases by CDC covering a multitude of non-direct medical areas that have nothing to do with physiology or medicine before the fact (e.g., spousal abuse, guns in the home, texting while driving, swimming, and so on).
To my mind, if they can’t put their ‘problem’ under a microscope and SEE it, then they should STFU. We have enough government agencies already doing the same thing.
I, also, was interested in other information, such as where these drownings occurred. Low water crossings? The ocean? Bathtubs?
Gosh,
what with the CIA inventing AIDS to do away with blacks, Abortion being used as a black population control, and all us white folks getting black yuts to go swimming in pulic pools it’s a wonder any blacks die of old age.
Just the white devil trying to keep the black man down.
What hog wash.
purchase them each a cheep set of flippers.
It will teach them quickly to kick their feet thus enabling them to swim.
Honest.
Not only that, there are low cost day camps that bring the kids to a pool for a few hours a couple of times a week. There are at least two by us - one is subsidized by United Way, the other by the federal government. The problem is the camp counselors are high school and college kids who spend all their time sitting in the shade flirting with each other. And there aren't enough of them to go around even if they were paying attention. We switched pools ones they started bussing in these day camp kids. They're not bad kids, but nobody's watching them.
A few years ago, a pool in nearby Bucks County tried to get rid of the day camp they'd contracted with for the summer and they were accused of being racists. In my heart, I don't believe it was racist. It was just too many unmonitored kids in a small area.
Or give everyone a pool...
I have read that Africa Americans blame whites because pools were always too expensive, too far away, banned them, etc.
We need to have a federally funded affirmative action program called ,” Water Wings!”
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.