| ▲ | firesteelrain 5 days ago |
| Not true; grew up poor in a single wide trailer. Mom put us in swimming lessons at the local city pool. And we got more swimming lessons as we got older. I competitively surfed in the 2000s. Swimming lessons helped. |
|
| ▲ | conductr 5 days ago | parent | next [-] |
| In America the racial cultures place different values on learning this skill. Black people not swimming has been a prevalent stereotype my entire life and I still hear jokes about it (primarily stand up comedians these days) I grew up poor in a trailer too but my mom made sure I swam. Never even had official lessons. We’d use public pools or visit a friends apartment pool, or sometimes just crash one. I just learned by exposure and playing with other kids. First in floaty then without. I’m better off now and have a pool in my yard but I also taught my kid early on, no lessons. It’s an important life skill and a huge hobby/activity that I feel most white peoples engage in across all economic cohorts |
| |
| ▲ | defrost 5 days ago | parent [-] | | > In America the racial cultures place different values on learning this skill. The US once had many community swimming pools prior to the civil rights amendment. Black people were segregated and few pools were built for them from their taxes. Come the era of equal rights a great many pools were filled in rather than suffer the horror of mixed races in the same water. Private swimming pools and pools at clubs grew in number and it remained that few black people had access to community pools. That was the case for a few decades, now hopefully past - but for a long time pools were associated not with swimming but with harassment and exclusion. The forgotten history of segregated swimming pools and amusement parks https://theconversation.com/the-forgotten-history-of-segrega... | | |
| ▲ | conductr 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | I dislike how any conversation about this stuff immediately devolves into a decades ago history lesson about a thing as the singular root cause. Sure everyone is well aware of the history and you’re not wrong but it’s also history and not been the case in a very long time. Unless you were so poor you couldn’t take your kids on a day trip to a free pool, there’s been very little hindrances in quite a long time at this point. No reason black persons under 30 or so shouldn’t be swimming at much higher rates than their parent/grandparents. Meanwhile, the black people i know well and even just interacting with acquaintances and such treat non-swimming as a sort of badge of blackness. They scoff at the idea of learning later in life. They scoff at the idea of teaching their kids. As if it would make them “less black”. This is why I frame it as a current cultural phenomenon of values and identity. Sure a lot of the stuff you said made it that way, but that was generations ago at this point and it will not reverse unless some intention exists to buck the cultural norm. | | |
| ▲ | defrost 4 days ago | parent [-] | | It was your choice to introduce "In America the racial cultures place different values on learning this skill" and leave that hanging. Not everyone is "well aware of the history" despite your claim to the contrary so it's worth dragging events that occurred during my lifetime into the mix given they form the root of a particular part of why one American cultural group came to have values that became stereotypical.. Past actions leave shadows that by your own comment appear to still exist even if many have moved to the penumbra. > Meanwhile, the black people i know well Contrariwise the vast majority of black and not quite so black people I grew up with and know well swim like fish and a good number free dive toward the upper limit of human ability .. that's a whole other oyster shell of pearl though. > but that was generations ago at this point Perhaps for yourself, as mentioned above 1964 was within my lifetime. | | |
| ▲ | conductr 3 days ago | parent [-] | | It's a fact that poverty and race are linked here, also because of the history. You'd have to be an idiot in America not to know of all the wrongs against POC throughout history. It's all but obvious to a majority but just for good measure it's taught in grade school and a heavy component of a lot of movies/pop-culture. If you've made it far enough to be reading comments on HN, you're likely aware and don't need to be further educated. Stats still show black people have very low rates of swimming skills. Who you know or who I know may differ, but stats are stats. > Perhaps for yourself, as mentioned above 1964 was within my lifetime. A generation is defined as 20-30 years, so this was 2-4 generations ago. My words hold true, you've seen a lot in your lifetime - despite all the issues we still have regarding race, I'd say you've seen blacks have a lot more mobility over your lifetime, but not a significant improvement of their swimming skills. |
|
| |
| ▲ | firesteelrain 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | There are still community pools all across Florida - many open for over 40-50 years. County or city ran too. For example, in Florida: Taylor County (rural) has approximately 25 total public pools and bathing places In Alabama: Birmingham’s Parks & Recreation currently operates around 10-11 city‑run outdoor public pools, including Crestwood, Memorial, E.O. Jackson, Grayson, Underwood, Roosevelt, McAlpine, East Thomas. Though not all open every summer due to staffing or budget issues in recent years |
|
|
|
| ▲ | bigstrat2003 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Similarly, I grew up poor (but on a farm, not in a trailer). My parents enrolled all of us in swimming lessons at the town community center every summer. It's true that poor people prioritize material survival, but they are people too and they want their kids to be able to do fun things in the summer. |
|
| ▲ | yieldcrv 5 days ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Okay that disproves the prevailing observations about the whole socioeconomic bracket, thank you |
| |
| ▲ | safety1st 5 days ago | parent [-] | | I grew up working class and also took swimming lessons at our local city pool. Just wondering, have you actually experienced "the socioeconomic bracket," or did you just take some classes in college about it and/or surf Reddit and get angry about class warfare? | | |
| ▲ | bmacho 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | It correlates with money, and logic can eliminate a lot of possibilities, like: it isn't money in the bank that makes people to be able to swim; also it is probably not race, ethnicity, religion, or location either. The most likely explanation is that poor people prioritize it lower (or rather: rich people prioritize it much much higher, it is a no-brainer for them). | |
| ▲ | yieldcrv 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | only thing I forgot to do was write “generally” “often” “disproportionately” when talking about an already well understood aspect of the socioeconomic class it doesn't really need to be explained again that some groups have more distractions and barriers than others, mostly by class its great that your parents prioritized your aquatic acumen and has nothing to do with the tax bracket as a whole | | |
| ▲ | safety1st a day ago | parent [-] | | No, it's great that they took me to do a cheap recreational activity. This is why I responded to you, you obviously didn't understand the dynamic at work. Us poor people weren't ALWAYS busy starving and surviving. Like other humans, we too had free time. And the local government subsidized both admission and lessons at the public pool. So because of good policy this was a cheap form of both recreation and physical education, as a result lots of us filthy poors in my neighborhood availed ourselves of it. What I object to here is the othering of the working class. They're not creatures that need to be placed behind glass and alternately studied or pandered to. America had the formula figured out a long time ago: invest in public schools, public pools and public libraries that everyone can use, and that serve as community centers for rich and poor alike. When there need to be user fees, sure subsidize those for people in the lowest income brackets, that's a great idea. But the bedrock of a healthy society is good public institutions where everyone's treated pretty equally. We screwed this up when we started privatizing or just straight up shutting down all those things. Then the rich built their own, the rest increasingly went without and some people seem to have forgotten that the other way of doing things even existed. |
| |
| ▲ | bjoli 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | There are statistics about swimming capabilities and socio economic status. They looks the same in just about every country; kids in poorer families are worse at swimming, even in countries with comprehensive swimming education in school. Better swimming ed in school makes the gap narrower. I don't know any recent statistics, but I have seen statistics from the 90s and back then the US was amazingly apalling in that regard. Edit: this is not comprehensive, but Jesus h Christ in a chicken basket: https://www.poolsafely.gov/2017/07/05/new-reports-fatal-drow... | | |
| ▲ | ncruces 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | But that's also, IMO, why talking about it helps. I didn't start this thread to chastise anyone about it, but to express the idea that, in a country poorer than the US (on average), within 30 years, getting kids to swim early probably contributed significantly to close the gap in drowning mortality (and surpass the US). Also none of my kids knew how to swim by the time they were 4 (as in the article) but all of them had had “swimming” lessons, which basically amounted to us spending around an hour in a pool with them. All I can say from subsequent “close calls” is that, in my experience, even just a little familiarity helps a lot. | |
| ▲ | conductr 5 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | It takes reps/practice so anyone with more access should be better. Wealthier people are taking more trips to beach, may have a lake house, or have a pool at home even if it’s just a condo/apartment. | | |
| ▲ | bjoli 5 days ago | parent | next [-] | | This is where I believe in the compensatory nature of the state. Swimming is an important life skill. Someone drowning is expensive for society, and seeing how parents swimming ability is inherited (socially, obviously) you STILL see effects of segregation laws in the US. Pretty crazy. | | | |
| ▲ | firesteelrain 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Beach and water is free fun in Florida. Everyone does it regardless of socioeconomic bracket. I would assume it’s the same everywhere else that has close access to water. |
|
| |
| ▲ | decremental 5 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | [dead] |
|
|
