Posted on 08/02/2010 8:20:12 PM PDT by My Favorite Headache
The bodies of four teenagers were pulled from a Louisiana river Monday while authorities continued to search for two more feared drowned, the Shreveport Times reported.
A group of teenagers -- aged between 14 and 18 -- had been in the Red River in Shreveport for about 10 minutes, according to family members who witnessed the drownings.
It was understood the youths, who did not know how to swim, were wading in the river when the bottom of the river fell away underneath them in a sudden drop.
Shreveport TV station KSLA-TV reported that Cindy Chadwick, Public Information Office for Caddo Parish Sheriff's Office, said six teenagers in total are believed to have drowned.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
I lost an uncle to the Kern river, I saved my brother from a river, and I have had a couple of close calls on rivers and in bayous.
Ronald Reagan was the most successful river lifeguard in his region, I think that he was credited with almost 100 saves, including one when he returned to the river many years after leaving that work.
The only people that I ever met in the Navy that did not know how to swim were blacks.
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What????? I don’t know how to swim and I’m not black. Geeze.
that doesn’t make his statement incorrect....I am white and I cannot swim, my three kids are qualified lifeguards. I do know however, that by and large, black people can’t swim. I don’t know why, I just know that most black people I know can’t swim.
One of my best friends as a child was black and could swim just fine. He was a great diver, also. I don’t think it has anything to do with physiology. I think many inner-city blacks just never get the opportunity to learn how to swim. Their parents never take them. Not many pools in the hood, I guess. By the way, my friend and I both grew up in the inner city. I learned how to swim at an apartment complex pool practically on my own. I am not sure where he learned...
For years the Navy lagged the other services in the percentages of black members. That had a lot to do with the fact that many black people just don't care for swimming or being in the water in general. Not stereotyping. I've had blacks guys tell me that and express NO interest in sailing the high seas in the Navy. But I think it is less that way now than twenty or thirty years ago.
He’s not being racist, just stating facts. I grew up in the South and if you got 6 white kids together, maybe one could not swim.
If you got 6 black kids together, you might have one who could swim. And by swim, I mean really swim, not just splash and walk around in the water.
There is a lake here in Northern CA that has pot holes all around the edge of it just inside the water line. Every year some kid, and sometimes several, will step into a hole while wading and drown .
You can geeze all you like, but it is a fact that most black kids, or adults for that matter, in the deep south and mid south can’t swim. I can’t vouch for other parts of the country.
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Like I said in an earlier post, I didn’t know that. Just leary of generalizations and didn’t know if this was a generalization or not.
I know that most of my daughter’s girlfriends who are black don’t go into the water; but usually they gave their hair as the reason. Maybe they don’t know how to swim.
Inner city kids have no place to learn how to swim; very few have parents who know how to swim. It’s a skill most of us teach our kids at an early age.
I taught a dozen Fresh Air Fund kids how to swim. We used to host them here in PA. in the summertime. First place we always took them was to swimming lessons at the local pool.
I’m glad I did that. I hope they all passed their swimming skills down to their own kids later on in life.
I was swimming by age 4. I honestly don’t know...chalked it up to growing up in south Florida I guess.
I know a guy who drowned who was a Marine in Iraq got caught in a whirlpool. With all of his gear he stood no chance in it.
He wasn’t making a racist comment there..blacks or notoriously bad swimmers and known to not be taught how to swim at all.
Six lifeguards work at the county pool where I swim every day. Five of them are black, and almost every kid on the 50-person youth swim team is black. At another county pool 3 miles away, youth swim camps arrive on the hour from 1:00 'til 4:00 PM...95% of the kids are black and so are 75% of the lifeguards.
Anyone who thinks black people can't swim is nuts and needs to come see some of these teenagers butterfly.
One of my gf's coworkers, who is a black female, explained that many black people don't like to go swimming because it tweaks their hair.
Never knew that about Reagan. I named my daughter after him...just adds to his brilliance.
Being a very large city with lots of services and lots of blacks, I can see that blacks would learn to swim there more so that the other, more rural, areas.
When I was 19 I couldn’t swim. During basic training I and six others, all black, failed the swim test.
No one said that blacks CAN'T swim but that many of them simply do not know how to swim and this is a fact. The reason? Most blacks are inner city kids and never have the chance to learn.
I did not mean that they can't in the sense that they are not capable of learning. I wrote can't in terms of them drowning because when they get in the water they don't know how to swim.
It is very common around these parts. We lose black kids and some adults every years because the inability to swim doesn't keep them away from the water. They slip on rocks and fall out of boats regularly in my neck of the woods.
I guess that’s like whites CAN’T break dance.
Prayers Up,,,
That place ain’t too far from me,,,
They call it the “sand bar”,,,
Full of kids all the time when it’s hot,,,
It goes from sand bar to about 30’ very quickly,,,
Bossier Parish SO has two boats there to keep folks close
to the bank so they won’t get run over by the boats,,,
A few weeks ago one of the BPSO guys killed a 12’
alligator at the boat launch on the Bossier side,,,
They may have opened lock # 5 to draw down the high water,,,
Lock closed no current,,,
Lock open bad current,,,
I was told at a young age to keep my ass OUT of that river.
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