Since middle school, many of my Black friends have always been afraid to swim.
I didn’t understand back then. Even though my family had no money, my parents still signed me up for lessons. I still remember going from Tadpole to Whale status with my swimmer patches.
Well into adulthood, when one of my best friends signed his kids up for swimming lessons, I was reminded of this pervasive fear in the Black community. My friend admitted that he was deathly afraid of the pool, but he signed up for swimming lessons since his kids were learning. This almost-40-year-old man eventually overcame his fear, but not without having near panic attacks when he was asked to put his head under water the first few times.
On “The Amazing Race,” Black twin brothers Idries and Jamil were eliminated on episode 2 because they couldn’t confront their fear of swimming. The two OB/GYNs could parachute 10,000 feet out of an airplane, no problem — just don’t make them swim.
It turns out nearly 60% of Black kids in the United States don’t know how to swim. Black kids drown at over three times the rate of white kids. It’s been commonplace for decades that Black parents don’t teach their kids how to swim.
But where did this puzzling stereotype and behavior come from?
In the late 1800s and into the 1930s, America went on a swimming pool building frenzy. Pools even popped up in poor immigrant neighborhoods — but few were allocated to the Black community.
Adding to that, Jim Crow laws in the South forced racial segregation of pools and beaches. And in the North, in places like Pittsburgh, where they didn’t have segregated pools, the police encouraged white swimmers to keep Black swimmers out by physically beating them. People would even throw cleaning supplies or acid into pools while Black children or families were swimming. In St. Louis in 1949, 200 white teenagers showed up with baseball bats to prevent Black kids from swimming in their pools.
For the few pools serving the Black community, the facilities typically were underfunded, poorly built and unmaintained.
There were attempts to protest racist swimming pool laws. At a famous “Swim In” in 1964, Black people jumped into an all-white swimming pool at the Monson Motor Lodge in St. Augustine, Florida. The owner of the lodge responded by pouring acid in the pool, frightening the young girls and boys who participated. Still, it got the attention of President Lyndon Johnson.
After segregation “legally” ended with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, white people didn’t relent and still wouldn’t swim with Black people because they viewed them as dirty.
In 1968, Strom Thurmond, who was running for president, commented, “there’s not enough troops in the Army to force the Southern people to break down segregation and admit the Negro race into our theaters, into our swimming pools, into our homes and into our churches.”
Then there was the additional effect of Black swimmers facing harassment even in their own communities.
In 2009, yes, you read that right, a suburban Philadelphia swimming pool entered into an arrangement for Black and Hispanic kids to swim there during the summer. White parents were outraged, with one commenting how fearful she was the Black kids might harm her children.
This “don’t swim” trauma has lasted for decades, which caused widespread fear of swimming within the Black community. Generations of Black Americans also never had access to swimming pools.
It’s why the late Mr. Rogers, the beloved children’s TV show host, famously invited a Black police officer to soak his feet with him in a plastic wading pool to show it was OK.
It’s also hurt that there weren’t Black role models who swam. It wasn’t until 1982 that America had its first Black Olympic swimming competitor, Chris Silva.
As if all this wasn’t enough, it’s also worth noting that Africans sent on slave ships headed to South, Central and North America were chained together and sometimes thrown into the ocean.
Water for hundreds of years has meant life or death for Black Americans.
According to the Slave Voyages Database, which documents slave trade shipping from 1514 to 1866, of the 12 million Africans transported on slave ships to the Americas, nearly two million died on the voyage. Some chose death by drowning over enslavement, while others were tossed overboard to save on provisions.
In the 17th century, West Africans were often considered the world’s best swimmers. Most West Africans grew up around oceans, rivers, and lakes where they learned to swim at very young ages.
In 1602, Dutch explorer Pieter de Marees wrote after his trip to the Gold Coast that West Africans could “swim very fast, generally easily outdoing people of our nation in swimming and diving.”
Obviously, plenty of Black people can swim just fine. Just ask Black American Olympians and professional swimmers Cullen Jones, Enith Brigitha, Simone Manuel, Lia Neal, Miles Simon and Maritza Correia.
But the history of swimming in the American Black community teaches us lessons in how we have and haven’t dealt with racism in America. How the impact on people even today is deeply rooted in racism and the generational trauma that goes along with it. For most of us, the swimming pool is supposed to be relaxing. Not so for too many Black folks..
This impact and generational trauma apply to things far more serious than swimming.
Understanding these issues, and knowing how our past still affects our future, can only help bring our world to a more understanding and empathetic place.
This post originally appeared on Medium and is edited and republished with author's permission. Read more of Jeffrey Kass' work on Medium.