Black people can’t swim, you say?

Sacramento Bee ^ | August 12, 2016 | Erika D/ Smith

[artichokegrower]

There’s an old joke – or, at least, that’s what some people have the nerve to call it – that goes something like this: Why don’t black people swim? Their bones are too dense to float.

That’s it. That’s the punchline.

[Beernoser]

“but a friend who was a scuba instructor told me that from his experience, blacks do not float well.”

In my younger days I was the instructor for our community’s water safety courses. IO trained the cit’s lifeguards.

Part of the course was called survival floating. As kids we called it the “Dead Man’s Float.”

Basically you just hold your breath and go dead in the water with your arms and legs hanging down, face under water. You breath with as little effort as possible and try to stay as calm as possible. You can hold this position for hours if needed.

Everyone finds their natural buoyancy. Most people end up with a part of their upper back above water with neck and back of head. Some people it’s just the top of your head.

Black people often floated with the top of their head a foot under water. That was their natural buoyancy. It made survival floating much more difficult for them because it was an effort to get to the surface for each breath while other people could just breath with a slight swish of their arms and lifting of their chin.

This difference certainly doesn’t keep anyone from swimming, but it does make it harder.

[Col Freeper]

There’s the fear of the water, yes, but there’s also the legacy of Jim Crow laws that kept pools segregated in the South. Court-mandated integration only led to the closing of public pools, and the opening of fancy country clubs and private pools that were out of reach of poor black people.

[onedoug]

I swim well enough at 66, to think I could actually pass the swimming aspects of BUDS training. The rest of it though, not so much.

[A_Former_Democrat]

No.

I want to see The BEST

Paid or unpaid

[Yardstick]

Gotta be the back beat or it doesn’t work.

[Donglalinger]

[Behind the Blue Wall]

I usually don’t like the idea of the big focus on someone’s race, but in this case, I support it. As the article noted, blacks are drowning way more than one would expect, and it’s at least in part because swimming is seen as something that blacks don’t do. If this gold medal changes that a little bit, lives could be saved.

[Right Wing Assault]

Basically you just hold your breath and go dead in the water with your arms and legs hanging down, face under water. You breath with as little effort as possible and try to stay as calm as possible.

Sounds like a good way to drown. ;-)

[Jim Noble]

Black people can’t swim, you say?

Actually, no, I don't say.

[achilles2000]

It may be because training is long and monotonous, and the competition doesn’t have the glamour and prestige of one of the big 3 sports. Even very few whites want to spend the kind of time in the pool that is required for world-class competitions (more than 8 hours a day). I know I didn’t.

[Archie Bunker on steroids]

excuse me

[DeFault User]

so I credit the fact that I did qualify to teenage years shooting a .22 to put meat on the table.

That's one reason Audie Murphy was such a great soldier and a crack shot. He had to be to feed his family when he was a kid.

[A_perfect_lady]

There you are, you teddy bear!!

[Vendome]

I thought they didn’t like cruise ships for some reason...

[Fido969]

Oh gosh yes.

Friends don’t let friends clap on one and three.

[Jim from C-Town]

This is actually a positive article and the fact is that the writer admits that black people are not swimmers. It is actually a cultural fact that blacks generally do not swim and the article states how the Black American Women's gold medalist hopes to inspire more blacks in America to take up the sport of swimming.

[Dr. Bogus Pachysandra]

“0ne and three Whitey!”

[Dr. Bogus Pachysandra]

You can’t breat water! At least that’s my excuse.

[Dr. Bogus Pachysandra]

breath

[Yardstick]

Amen, brother.

I guarantee you Mitt Romney would clap on the one and three.