Today at the grocery store, a man behind me in the check-out line struck up a conversation as we waited for our turns. Once I was outside, I waited for him and posed this question. While discussing this, a woman walked out and joined the conversation. Both of them were black.
When asked, both said, “Black people can’t swim.”
Me: “Can’t or don’t?”
The rest of their input covered just about everything @JLeslie said in her first statement on this thread. Neither swam nor ever had any interest in it. The guy said that the only places available in his youth were lakes or a stream/river, and that he just wasn’t interested. The woman said that she was deathly afraid of swimming. The reason? Her mother feared it and instilled this fear in her when she was young.
The guy even brought up that some women might not want to mess up their hair. This wasn’t even a topic of consideration by the woman as she never had any desire to get in a swimming area.
It was a random poll of just two people. Still, it surprised me that both immediately said, “Can’t”.
I grew up in a town in southern Virginia back in the 60s. There was a swimming pool area in the centrally located park that was free to the public. The kids who primarily used it were black. Why? Maybe because it was free, but it was also the closest to where they lived. They could definitely swim though.
There was another pool downtown in the YMCA. At a minimal cost, one could take swimming and life-guarding lessons there. I took all of them. I don’t recall ever seeing a black person in any of those classes. Nor do I recall ever seeing a black person at the free and local lake where I life-guarded for a summer.
@All Thanks for taking the time to contribute to this thread. A special thank-you to @Esedess for providing some statistics.