Funny that’s what Cullen Jones thought when he started his charitable organization which focuses on bringing swimming lessons to disadvantaged youth. What he found to be the #1 reason that blacks do not know how to swim was fear. As he said, it is generational fear. When parents are fearful of the water and do not know how to swim, their children are afraid and do not learn to swim.
I'd guess that the inter-gererational "fear" of the water probably only goes back to the Black migration from the rural south to the urban industrial areas of the US during the '40's. It's hard to imagine kids of any color not availing themselves of the lakes & streams.
Among the first things to get cut in any city budget crisis is the operation of city pools.
I was talking with a fellow Scoutmaster who’s troop is moslty inner city black kids. Scouts requires learning to swim and he works with his kids on that quite a bit. He told me it is just cultural. He hasn’t come across a kid yet he couldn’t get to swim.