...the fatal drowning rate of African-American children aged five-14 is three times that of white children...Unlike the UK, where learning to swim is enshrined in the national curriculum except in Scotland, the ultimate responsibility in the US often lies with parents...
Many black parents are not teaching their children to swim...Some might assume the fundamental reasons would be lack of money for swimming lessons or living in areas where there were no pools, but the reality is more complex..."Fear of drowning or fear of injury was really the major variable," says Prof Carol Irwin, a sociologist from the University of Memphis, who led the study for USA Swimming...Typically, those children who could not swim also had parents who could not swim..."Parents who don't know how to swim are very likely to pass on not knowing how to swim to their children," says Ms Anderson...The major reason behind the problem could lie in the era of segregation says Prof Jeff Wiltse, author of Contested Waters: A Social History of Swimming Pools in America..."The history of discrimination… has contributed to the drowning and swimming rates," says Prof Wiltse...In his work he identified two periods of a boom in swimming rates in the US - in the 1920s and 1930s when recreational swimming became popular and the 1950s and 1960s when the idea of swimming as a sport really took off...
