Niggas Can't Swim

This week’s "Black Recipes" newsletter isn’t about food, it’s about water. Rev. Evelyn takes us to the poolside to smash a stereotype that’s haunted us for generations.

He gave me a skill I could use forever instead of just one recipe. My father understood that if he didn’t instill skills that would be long-lasting, his legacy would be dead. Scrambling to preserve the notes scattered throughout our culture, we are all understanding how important it is now more than ever to leave the recipes for the ones who will continue this fight.

“Black Recipes” are more than just kitchen preparations and stovetop revelations. It’s about preserving our survival kits, our remedies that healed us from the results of decades of surviving, and a documentation of our solutions toolkit that allowed us to break the spell of oppression. We are witnessing the unraveling of a people who are losing control, spiritually, because we are doing the work in silence that is healing us from the years of societal abuse.

This is our protest, this is how we fight back. It’s a silent battle; we must be organized, we must understand and value community online, but build it offline. We have to continue writing what’s on our hearts, sharing it so it’s preserved, and most importantly, taking action to leave our words scattered through our local communities for our people to find their way back home. “Black Recipes” is our protest, and I’m so grateful to introduce you all to our first cousin,

Rev. Evelyn Bourne (Ambilike)

, who submitted a recipe that will inspire us to take action in our local communities, starting at the pool and the beaches.

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Jacquie: What inspired you to submit? What does “Black Recipes” mean to you? How are you preserving your recipes?

Rev. Evelyn: Our conversation inspired me to write this piece. It means thinking about all the Good things being Black means to me and sharing those nuances with an audience of Black readers. I am preserving my recipes through my writing.

Is it Really Fear of the Water?

Rev. Evelyn Bourne (Ambilike)

Smashing stereotypes and debunking the myth that Black people can’t swim

I believe that the reason the fear of water seems to be so pervasive for Black folks in America has its root cause in white people being uncomfortable with seeing us at rest, enjoying life, and having fun.

It's fascinating that people for whom swimming is deeply rooted in our ancestral African culture are now largely left with a deficit of a basic life skill. It's troubling to say the least. Do we really fear the water, or is it that we've been denied access to it? We understand its power to swallow us under, so we keep away without knowing why.

Africans, who lived in the coastal regions from where they were taken and enslaved, were skilled swimmers, mariners, divers, and surfers long before contact with European colonizers, and they continue to be to this day. Surfing was first documented in what is now Ghana in 1640, not in Hawaii in the 1700s. In Africa, just like any other place where you'll find human beings and bodies of water, swimming is an essential life skill. The fact that so many Black people think they have a fear of the water not only puts their lives in mortal danger, but it also robs them of the enjoyment of an exhilarating aspect of nature and the outdoors.

During the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, about 1.8 to 2 million stolen Africans perished, and about 14.5% of those were removed from the continent in chains. These ancestors were taken from their homes and families, loaded onto ships, and carried across the ocean. Those who perished during the Middle Passage jammed into ships to cross the Atlantic, were tossed into the sea. Imagine the trauma those people suffered and that of those left behind. There were cases of enslaved people jumping overboard from slave ships in the Middle Passage. They chose to die in the ocean rather than become enslaved. 

That trauma, among all the others, has been passed down epigenetically throughout the African diaspora.

Dr. Joy DeGruy, whose work focuses on the "intersection of racism, trauma, violence, and American chattel slavery," wrote a book called Post-traumatic Slave Syndrome. Her book examines the impact that repeated traumas endured by generations of Black people in this country have had on us today. 

I believe that there is an analogous syndrome in the psyche of white people because you can't steal, enslave, and extract wealth through violence from generations of people without consequence. Somehow, despite the movement of time and the advancement of modern thought, some white people continue to believe that Black people were put on this earth to serve and enrich them. If those people are having fun, and relaxing, then they aren't generating wealth for white people--an idea that enrages them.  

Why do so many Black children drown in swimming pools?

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), every day in the U.S., there are about ten accidental drownings. The drowning rate for Black children (under age 19) is three times higher than for their white counterparts. The University of Memphis and the USA Swimming Foundation conducted a national study at YMCAs and discovered that:

• 64 percent of African American children cannot swim

• 40% of Caucasian children cannot swim

Learning to swim can reduce the risk of drowning by 88% among young children. These kids probably don't know how to swim because many of their parents never learned and couldn't teach them. 

The YMCA website offers these three reasons for this unacceptable disparity:

1. Institutional racism

2. Myths and stereotypes

3. Inherited fear of drowning

Systemic racism in swimming

An aspect of the struggle for civil rights in this country has been the fight over access to public swimming facilities. Post-deconstruction and throughout the era of racial segregation, public access beaches and swimming pools have been segregated. Although Black property owners paid for the construction and upkeep of these facilities with their tax dollars, they were not allowed to swim at local public beaches and pools. In the 1950s, Black residents filed lawsuits to gain access to the facilities that their tax dollars were funding. 

• In the 1950s, Dorothy Dandridge, the first Black American actress to earn an Academy Award for Best Actress, was hired to headline at the Last Frontier Hotel in Las Vegas. The hotel manager announced that if Ms. Dandridge were to get into the pool, it would have to be drained for health reasons.

Dandridge later appeared beside the pool defiantly and stuck her toe in the pool. Hotel management drained and cleaned the pool afterward as promised.

• In 1959, Oak Park Pool, which was part of a massive recreation complex in Montgomery, Alabama, was closed after a lawsuit on behalf of local Black residents who wanted access to the segregated public pool. Rather than share access to the pool with their Black neighbors, public officials drained it, filled it in with soil, put a park in its place, and then shuttered the entire complex.  

• In 1964, a group of white and Black people protested the segregation of a hotel pool in St. Augustine, Florida, by swimming in it. While the group was swimming in the pool, the hotel manager poured acid into it. 

The legacy of racial segregation and its consequences has created barriers to swimming participation that continue today.

In her book, "The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together," Heather McGee writes about how cities throughout the country closed their pools and recreation facilities rather than desegregate them.

Myths and stereotypes about Black people and swimming

You've likely heard the expression, "representation matters." Because so many Black children have been denied access to public swimming facilities for generations, swimming became something that Black people didn't do.

Ed Accura produced a film, "A Film Called Blacks Can't Swim," to document his journey as he learned to swim as an adult, debunk the myths that Black people can't swim, and challenge the stereotype. 

It's a myth that Black people can't swim. 

Inherited fear of drowning

While the fear of drowning is not limited to Black people, we likely fear drowning more and have a general fear of being near or in the water because we inherited the fear. Given that the disparities around access to swimming facilities have existed for generations, the statistics about the high number of Black children who don't know how to swim have persisted through time.  

Kids are naturally drawn to the water, and when they play around in it without knowing how to swim or hold their breath, tragedies can happen quickly.  A near-drowning experience will typically traumatize a person, causing them to fear being in or near water. However, most Black people who say they have a fear of the water have never had a traumatizing experience. They likely say that they are afraid of the water because they don't know how to swim.

It's time to end this perilous situation now.

Swimming in the water is a natural human activity. In the same way that a child learns to tie her shoes or ride a bicycle, she should also learn to swim. 

A Black family that didn't perpetuate the stereotype 

I'll always be grateful to my parents for making sure that my siblings and I learned to swim and never learned to fear the water. I have memories of being a young child, practicing how to hold my breath underwater in the bathtub. My mother took my eldest sister to swim classes at the local YMCA when she was six months old, and as each of us came along, learning to swim became as natural as learning to tie your shoes. I was blithely unaware of the pervasive fear of the water amongst Black people until I was a teenager.

When I lived in Washington, D.C., my girls and I made excellent use of the beautiful, clean, well-maintained public schools in the city. Since my parents made swimming a natural part of our lives, I passed that on to my children and taught them how to swim.

However, I have since learned that while the public pools in D.C. were desegregated in 1953, within the next ten years, about 125 private swim clubs opened in the area for the exclusive use of white members.

My eldest has already enrolled my grandson in swimming lessons. Still, even before that, when she bathes him, she makes sure to cover his face with water so it doesn't shock him. He's now a natural in the water as he learns to swim and be comfortable in the water long before his first birthday.

My youngest daughter is a swim instructor. When she learned about the unfortunate and horrifying statistics about Black children's higher rate of drowning, she did something about it. She has taught all ages, from infants to adults, to swim. She knows how to help young children who have absorbed a fear of the water either from their parents or after a negative experience, overcome their fears, and learn to swim.

Finally, what I've come to learn is that it's not that Black people can't swim. Rather, it's more of an issue of accessibility than ability. Absent the racism that has marred our history, if Black children were given equal, unfettered access to swimming facilities, the disparities mentioned above would likely dissipate.

What can you do?

If you're a Black adult, I challenge you to ask every other Black American adult you know whether they know how to swim or not. I guarantee you'll spark some interesting conversations. This article was inspired by a brief discussion with a mom who said she was afraid of the water, but is concerned because her daughter is getting older. She can't teach her how to swim. 

If you're a Black parent who thinks you're afraid of the water, unless you've suffered trauma from a near-drowning incident, I challenge you to interrogate that idea. Are you really afraid of the water, or is it that you were never taught to swim?

You can change the narrative by taking swimming lessons and ensuring your children and their friends learn how to swim, so they can be safe around bodies of water.

Finally, you can support programs with a mission to help Black kids learn to swim, like Outdoor Afro, which is offering free swimming lessons, and Black People Swim. This organization is dedicated to smashing the stereotype that Black people don't swim.

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