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...
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.
When I took swimming in college two of the basketball players were in my class. The professor (a PhD) said that black males drown the most because they are usually more muscular than others. Fat floats while muscles sink. Those two athletes did okay learning how to swim but in the deep water they had quite a bit of difficulty.