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[quote=Anonymous]It's an access issue.  If we care about this, we need to pour money into rec swimming and give less expensive swim teams, like DC Wave, more lane space.  Right now, lap swimmers are prioritized at all of the DC pools.

Here is some more background on the history:

[i]“The biggest stereotype I get is that black people can’t swim,” said Darrell Fogan, a swim coach and former Howard University professor who studies the history of African Americans and swimming. Fogan says it’s a cyclical issue: black people were denied access and opportunity to learn and practice swimming, which means the skill wasn’t passed on to the next generation. During segregation, Fogan says, “they thought they couldn’t swim and it would be safe to just make smaller pools.”

The pools weren’t only smaller; they were also shallower.

“Pools for people of color were all leveled out to be shallow the whole way through and that’s because those pools weren’t used to swim in. And the white pools, they had the swim lanes and everything like that,” said Miriam Kenyon, director for health and physical education in DC Public Schools.

As white people left the district after desegregation, the tax base dried up and many pools closed. Some areas only had splash pads, which are cheaper to build and maintain.

“That impacted people of color through up until now because if your parents don’t swim and your grandparents don’t swim and they have this fear of water instilled in them, then they’re going to keep their kids away from a pool,” Kenyon said. “They can’t go in and save them.”

All of this means entire African American communities in D.C. grew up without an easy way to learn how to swim. The numbers show that lack of access has had a real effect. CDC statistics show African American children are five-and-a-half times more likely to drown than their white peers.[/i]

https://wamu.org/story/17/10/19/d-c-schools-swimming-racist-history-americas-pools/[/quote]

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