hile drowning is the biggest risk that minority children face due to lack of swimming skills, it is not the only consequence. Missing that one ability closes a multitude of doors for minorities that whites take for granted.
“There are so many careers that will forever be closed if you don’t learn that skill,” says Alison Terry, a biracial competitive swimmer and ocean lifeguard for the San Diego Lifeguard Service. “From being a swim or diving coach to managing an aquatics facility, being in the Navy, being a lifeguard or a marine biologist, or even learning to scuba dive, there are all these healthy opportunities that are being missed.”
For instance, at Chicago State University, would-be P.E. teachers must know how to swim, and many black students can’t, says Gail H. Ito, an assistant professor in the university’s College of Health, Physical Education and Recreation. That means they are unable to get their certification and are deterred from a profession in which they would otherwise succeed.
In addition, competitive swimming can provide minority kids with an avenue to higher education.
“We’ve been able to help kids get some type of financial assistance and scholarships to some of the colleges, especially when they have been in the swim program, about $1.5 million in scholarships,” says Tommy Jackson, head coach of the City of Atlanta Dolphins Swim Team, a inner-city swim program of the Atlanta Department of Parks and Cultural Affairs. “Some of those kids who receive those athletic scholarships probably would never have received those benefits were it not for the swimming programs.”
Indeed, a lack of swimming bars minorities from entering dozens of paths. For instance, in the 1980s and early ’90s, Army recruiters had a hard time getting minorities into the Special Forces. Blacks were trying out in large numbers, but during testing, 15 percent of them failed required swimming drills where cadets had to swim twice across an Olympic pool wearing their military gear. Less than 3 percent of whites failed.
The fact is, the aquatics industry and the sport of swimming have become an exclusive arena. “Black kids think it’s a white man’s sport,” says Paul Wallace, executive director of the Jordan Aquatics Foundation, a nonprofit group in Austin, Texas, aimed at teaching inner-city kids to swim.
Wallace saw the prevalence of this belief firsthand. “I was a late bloomer, and the only reason I started swimming was because I missed the last day of mandatory football tryouts my sophomore year of high school,” he says. “I was living with my dad, and he kept saying this was a white man’s sport, asking me how I could make a living doing this. He wanted nothing but the best for me, but he didn’t know much beyond that.
“No one else in my family knows how to swim and part of the reason is that there’s a significant shortage of people of color in the role of instructors,” Wallace continues. “There are no minority role models, and suddenly, there are generations and generations of people in the community not participating.”
Unfortunately, swimming is the only so-called country club sport that suffers this dilemma. Tennis and golf have become more diverse, thanks to athletes such as Tiger Woods and the Williams sisters. Swimming has been slower to keep up in the race.
“When a black kid goes to tennis practice for the first time or to a golf lesson, that white instructor is going to think that kid has potential, and that is solely because of Tiger and Serena,” says Lee Pitts, founder of The Lee Pitts Swim School in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., a program geared to teaching black children to swim. “There are no such role models in swimming, and so that issue carries into the communities and the learn-to-swim programs.”
For many in the industry, that’s unforgivable, especially because the ultimate price is so high. “Nobody ever died from a lack of an ability to play soccer,” says B. Chris Brewster, president of the U.S. Lifesaving Association. “But so many have died from a lack of an ability to swim.”
