During slavery and Jim Crow, black people were barred from learning how to swim as a means to handicap them and have them remain reliant on their owners and limit their freedom. After slavery and segregation ended, black people were terrorized by white pool-owners for taking up spaces in supposedly public pools. There are images of white people pouring acid into swimming pools with black families in them, not to mention whatever horrors black citizens endured during those times that weren’t documented by photograph or otherwise.
These atrocities link directly to lower levels of competent swimmers in the black community. The trauma lingers for generations as parents have negative feelings associated with pools, so they’re less likely to bring their children into those spaces. These negative associations snowball into what we see today in fewer black people knowing how to swim and racist stereotypes about black people and water.
Free swim lessons during school for all enrolled children would be a huge step to bridge the gap between swimmers and nonswimmers in low-income areas where a lot of black families live and send their kids to school. If schools hire trusted swim teachers and offer programs over the summer or after school, working parents can send their students to the same people the students learn from and know that their children are in a safe, enriching environment.
This won’t just help black families, as all races live in low-income neighborhoods, but since black people tend to make up a majority of these populations, it would still be a win for the black community. This form of reparations would pour back into not only the black community, but everyone who lives in low-income neighborhoods and sends their children to public school.
