I know a very sweet elderly white woman who's parents didn't bother to teach her how to swim when she was a child - and to this day she's afraid of water. It wasn't very nice of her parents...adults can learn to swim but it's one of those things best learned when young. Like riding a bike... critical periods...
Most cities - mine included - offer free swimming lessons for low income children. It's a good idea. Problem is low income parents aren't bothering to bring their kids in to learn.
This issue has NOTHING to do with 'swim teams' at schools...or slavery or anything but parents not bothering.
It's tiresome listening to guilty white liberals treating blacks like they're retarded children who must be given an excuse and a pass for selfish choices... Really, there's nothing wrong with a culture having an expectation that parents meet minimum standards... not laws making people teach their kids to swim - just a small amount of social pressure.
"Boyle's colleague Kelly Martinez takes on the delicate task of explaining the scenario the city is trying to correct.
"The kids in the pool are all either Hispanic or black or whatever, and every lifeguard is white," she says, "and we don't like that. The kids don't relate; there's language issues."
Where in hell does Martinez get off saying that she doesn't like it because the lifeguards are white and the kids in the pool are minority? Racist jackass! Might she have phrased it a little better? Perhaps she could have said something like she has noticed that all the lifeguards are white and the kids in the pool are minority. Her goal is to try to get minority children into programs so that they too can be lifeguards. But no, she injected RACE and RACE RESENTMENT into the subject. I give her an "F" for her performance in taking on the delicate task of explaining the scenario the city is trying to correct.
And she should have been the one to point out that it is the responsibility of the parents to make sure their kids can swim and become lifeguards. It is NOT her responsibility to be a racist.