Walking on to a pool deck for a championship meet is one of the most exhilarating feelings as a swimmer. Knowing that you have trained all season, woken up at untimely hours of the day for practice, and dedicated your body to the sport, and have this meet to really see it all pan out. This is when the stars get noticed and the work is finally rewarded. Every single athlete on the pool deck is really get excited to race. Or at least that is how it is supposed to be. It was not like this for my good friend Dalton when we walked onto the Brown University pool deck this past summer. We were ready and excited to demolish the first relay of the four day meet. That was until we walked on deck and he was called a racial slur by a swimmer on a rival team. I had never seen him that confused and angry before; we could not believe what we just experienced.
I remember being in a pool from a very young age. My parents started doing swim lessons with me at 6 months old. My father was supposed to be an Olympic swimmer for Lebanon; but due to the opportunity to move to the United States he deferred and moved here. This background emphasized that we needed the ability to know how to swim. I was one of the lucky ones, because at the age of 2, I nearly drowned. Due to my swimming background, I was able to keep myself above the water long enough to get someone to notice me and save me. I am a different case though, as I grew up in an upper middle-class family. I had these resources made available to me to learn how to swim. Unfortunately, not everyone has these resources made available to them; most children do not know how to swim at 2. I am not white, nor am I black, I am a middle-class Lebanese boy who learned at a young age how to swim. But, I am just a different case, as there is a plethora of kids across the country and the world who do not even know what a pool is at the age of 2. If I grew up in a family where we were less fortunate financially, then it is very likely that I would not be here today. This is why I am disproving the single story that “Black people cannot swim” and countering that single story with the fact that lower income children are not presented the proper opportunities to swim, and that race has nothing to do with it.
In 2016, USA Swimming released its official report on the demographics of their 2015-2016 year-round members. Under the ‘ethnicity’ category, 42.3 percent of members identified as white, while only 7.6 percent identified as Asian, 3.7 percent identified as Hispanic or Latino, and 1.3 percent identified as black. According to the study “38.8% of athletes did not respond to the ethnicity question on their registration form, response to this question is not mandatory.” (11) reflecting that there is still a blatant variance in rate of participation based on race. The reasoning behind the lack of blacks in the sport is because of the stereotype that “black people cannot swim.” According to the Washington Post “If parents cannot swim, it is less likely that their children will learn to swim. Parents anxiety of drowning lessens the likelihood that they sign up their kids for swimming lessons, even when they are available.” This stereotype diminishes the probability that a black child, regardless of location or social class, learns how to swim.
The issue in our culture is not that black people are not learning how to swim; rather, it is that children from low income families, regardless of race, are not learning how to swim. According to a study conducted by the International Journal of Aquatic Research and Education by Carol Irwin, a professor at the University of Memphis, it is said that 49.0% of children who drowned from 1999-2009 were on a free lunch program (Irwin,15); reflecting that low-income families were presented a greater challenge in learning how to swim. In that same study, it is said that 15% of children who drowned from 1999-2009 were on a reduced lunch program (Irwin,15). In total, 64% of adolescent drownings from 1999-2009 were on a free or reduced lunch program; which again reflects my point that lower income families are why children are not learning how to swim. Another part of this study found that 49% of the families interviewed agreed that they would swim if there were pools that they could afford; and another 19% said they cannot afford to go swimming (Irwin,16). The income of these families is why they are not getting the opportunity to swim; which needs to invoke change in the swimming community in some way. If the single story reflected that income was why people are not learning how to swim, then the perception of the inability to swim would be different and there would be change invoked. However, due to a plethora of historic examples of racism; including blacks being oppressed out of pools, the single story is not reflected that black people cannot swim.
Olympic swimmers are the highest accomplishment in swimming. For a very long time, black athletes were missing from the elite group of athletes in the sport. The first black athlete to win an Olympic medal of any type in swimming was Enith Brigitha, in the 1976 Montreal Olympics. She was from Curacao in the Caribbean and swam on the Dutch national team. In 1988, Anthony Nesty from Suriname turned into the first Black man to win an Olympic gold in swimming. Next was Anthony Ervin who won the 50 freestyle at the 2000 Sydney Olympics at the age of nineteen. Every decade the number of Black swimmers at the Olympics Games gets larger; which is exciting. Cullen Jones is another black swimmer, who represented the United States in sprint freestyle events at the 2008 and 2012 Olympics and won two gold medals at those Olympic Games. Jones is the first African-American to hold a world record (4×100-meter freestyle relay) in swimming If this story was true, then he would never have been able to represent the United States, the strongest country in the sport, at the highest level of swimming. The most recent Olympic achievement came from Simone Manuel, the first Black woman to win a gold in an individual swimming event; and she did so at the 2016 Rio Olympics. Another example, my personal favorite, is Reece Whitley. Reece was the number one recruit in the Class of 2018, a finalist at Olympic Trials at 16 years old, and the 2015 Sports Illustrated Sports Kid of the Year. Black swimmers at the Olympics gives trust that swimming is moving from a predominantly white sport to a more diverse one, which was mentioned earlier. As states of mind move, more Black children should be given the opportunity to learn how to swim and the drowning rate should fall. This single story is something that has been defied and questioned for a good time now. There is a plethora of potential athletes like Simone, Anthony, and Reece who have not been given a shot to prove their abilities because of this stereotype. This is extremely sad to think about. There could be a generation of potential life-changing athletes who will not be given the fair chance to prove themselves because of this single story.
According to the American Red Cross, “only 56 percent of Americans can perform five skills considered to be essential for swimming survival. These include treading water for one minute, exiting the pool without the use of a ladder, re-orienting and swimming to a wall, resurfacing in deep water, and swimming 25 yards.” For low-income kids, the chances of turning into a strong swimmer are even lower, which defends my case that income effects the chances of learning to swim. According to a study conducted by USA Swimming, 79 percent of children in families with household income less than $50,000 have no/low swimming ability, which puts them at a higher risk of drowning. According to the United States Census Bureau, Median household income reached a record $61,372 in 2017, which is an increase by 1.8 percent from $60,309 in 2016. The average USA Swimming family household income is $125,000; just over double the income of an average American family. This reflects that the people in the sport have money and are privileged enough to learn how to swim. This reflects my point of view that race has nothing to do with the single story, but the income of a family effects one’s chances how to swim; and this story proves it spot on. In the same USA Swimming study previously mentioned, it is reported that children who qualify for free or reduced school lunch programs are 63 percent less probable to develop good swimming ability. This again reinforces my argument that income is the primary deterring influence in learning how to swim; not the race of the prospective swimmer.
I think that the main reason the single story is still persisting is that there is still a “stigma” to blacks being in the sport. Less than 2 percent of USA Swimming's nearly 252,000 members who swim competitively year-round are black. To alter the numbers, USA Swimming is teaming with a plethora of partners including local governments, corporations, youth and ethnic organizations; to expand learn-to-swim programs nationwide, many of them targeted at inner-city minorities. As a part of including more diversity, USA Swimming ordered a rigerous study recently completed by five experts at the University of Memphis’ Department of Health and Sports Sciences. They surveyed 1,772 children aged 6 to 16 in six cities; two-thirds of them black or Hispanic to gauge what factors contributed most to the minority swimming gap. The study found that 31 percent of the white respondents could not swim safely, compared to 58 percent of the blacks.
The non-swimming rate for Hispanic children was almost as high at 56 percent, even though there are more than twice as many Hispanics as blacks are now USA Swimming members. The lead researcher, Professor Richard Irwin, said one key finding was the influence of parents' attitudes and abilities. If a parent couldn't swim, as was far more likely in minority families than white families, or if the parent felt swimming was dangerous, then the child was far less likely to learn how to swim. Irwin said this means learn-to-swim programs in minority communities should reach out to parents. Among black children, the study found that girls overall had weaker swimming skills than boys and were less comfortable at pools. Irwin said this might justify experimenting with single-sex swim programs, comparable to single-sex academic programs now spreading through some schools. The minority swimming gap has deep roots in America’s racial history. For decades during the 20th century, many pools were segregated, and relatively few were built to serve black communities. "There are people who still give credence to these stereotypes, even in the black and Hispanic community," said Cruzat, who wants to break the cycle that passes negative attitudes about swimming from one black generation to another. "These long-held beliefs are still so potent," he said. "If you don't teach your children to swim, you're putting your grandchildren at risk.” Cruzat was pleased by one finding in the new study, that most black and Hispanic children do not disdain swimming as a "white sport." This comes as a big surprise to me because growing up, everyone in school call me “prep” because I was a swimmer and just assumed I was this preppy white kid. The study also found that swimming ability, regardless of race, increased in relation to their parents' income, social class and education.
The best way that we can turn around this stigma is continuing the efforts that USA Swimming has been doing continuously and rigorously. the USA Swimming Foundation annually activates the Make a Splash initiative which aims to provide every child in America the opportunity to learn to swim, regardless of race, gender or financial circumstances. With more than 850 ‘Make a Splash’ local providers across the country, the USA Swimming Foundation has provided swim lessons for more than 4.9 million children nationwide since 2007 with free and reduced-cost swim lessons. The USA Swimming Foundation has set a goal to provide at least 1 million children with swim lessons in 2017 through its Make a Splash Local Partner network. USA Swimming Foundation ambassadors and Olympic medalists Missy Franklin, Cullen Jones, Simone Manuel, Nathan Adrian, Elizabeth Beisel, Rowdy Gaines, Jason Lezak, and Mel Stewart help lead the effort by giving clinics and educating families on the importance of learning to swim. These athletes are taking time out of their lives and giving back to the community because they understand that water safety is extremely important. Beisel happens to be my teammate and we are very good friends, and she told me that the ultimate goal of the Make a Splash Local Partner was to get as close to zero drownings a year; and that is a hefty goal… but one that we must advance towards not only as USA swimmers; but as a country as a whole.
This single story is something that has been defied and questioned for a good time now. There is a plethora of potential athletes like Simone, Anthony, and Reece who have not been given a shot to prove their abilities because of the racial stigma around joining the sport. . I think the single story is being held the same and not being changed because of the racism and racial stigma going on in our country, and once that stigma of racism is broken down; then we will be able to get rid of the single story. This, including water safety, is why the single story needs to change. If we could safe just one more life or have just one more athlete from a low-income family benefit from any change to this, and break the stereotype down, then it would be a win in my book.