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Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.

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Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff Mom never told you?

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Speaker 1: From house stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to

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Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Caroline and I'm Kristen. Today we're talking

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Speaker 1: about a pretty serious issue, um and we sort of

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Speaker 1: got the idea for it from doing our our Lifeguards

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Speaker 1: Summer short because in in reading all about lifeguards and

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Speaker 1: water safety, we came across some pretty startling statistics about

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Speaker 1: minority children and their swim abilities according to a USA

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Speaker 1: swimming study in two which is it was quoted all

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Speaker 1: over the internet because the statistics are just completely shocking. Uh,

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Speaker 1: nearly seventy of African American and six of Hispanic or

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Speaker 1: Latino children have low to no swim ability compare to

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Speaker 1: of Caucasian kids. And that's so startling because it puts

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Speaker 1: African American kids, especially at a very high risk of drowning.

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Speaker 1: African American kids actually drowned at a rate nearly three

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Speaker 1: times higher than their white peers. And the CDC has

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Speaker 1: also looked into this and they found that nearly eight

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Speaker 1: percent of drowning victims are male especially and it's kids

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Speaker 1: between the ages of one and four years old, and

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Speaker 1: they also emphasized that minority gap. Right. Yeah, they looked

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Speaker 1: at the years two thousand five to two thousand nine

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Speaker 1: and found that the fatal unintentional drowning rate for African

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Speaker 1: Americans was slightly higher than that of Whites across all ages,

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Speaker 1: but the disparity is widest among kids five to fourteen.

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Speaker 1: And they point out that drowning rates among African Americans

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Speaker 1: increased throughout childhood and peek at the fifteen to nineteen

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Speaker 1: year old period. Yeah, because they might, especially for boys.

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Speaker 1: There were a lot of anecdotes shared about UM. Boys

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Speaker 1: might be horsing around around a pool, around a body

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Speaker 1: of water and might want to show off some kind

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Speaker 1: of swimming ability, but they've never been taught. They didn't

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Speaker 1: grow up in a pool or around pools, UM, and

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Speaker 1: that dramatically increased their risk of drowning. So people have

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Speaker 1: been digging into why that gap exists, and it has

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Speaker 1: a lot to do when we're talking about UM, this

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Speaker 1: high rate of minorities not knowing how to swim it.

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Speaker 1: When once you start digging into it, you find generational

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Speaker 1: cycles of fear, and that fear starts to make sense

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Speaker 1: when you understand the historical context of when public swimming

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Speaker 1: pools became more commonplace in the US. But first let's

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Speaker 1: talk about those, um, those parental perceptions of today's parents

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Speaker 1: when it comes to swimming. And this is coming from

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Speaker 1: that USA Swimming Report, and they were interviewing minority parents

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Speaker 1: trying to figure out why they weren't getting their kids

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Speaker 1: in swim programs, why they weren't taking their kids to pools. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: there are several risk factors um specific to minorities. Those

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Speaker 1: are barriers like pool availability, transportation finances, and discretionary time.

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Speaker 1: But the big one, like Kristen said, is fear and inexperience.

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Speaker 1: So both of those are tied in together, and so

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Speaker 1: that plays a major role. And for some parents, swimming

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Speaker 1: is just something that they were never exposed to, and

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Speaker 1: so they never learned to swim, and so their idea

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Speaker 1: of keeping their children safe is not to teach them

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Speaker 1: how to swim and how to be safe in and

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Speaker 1: around water, but to just keep them away from water altogether. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and even more specifically, the parents expressed um feelings that

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Speaker 1: swimming is an activity for white kids. You know, it

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Speaker 1: wasn't something for them. They were also um concerns about hair.

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Speaker 1: You know, you get hair wet, you're gonna have to

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Speaker 1: fix it again. Um, it'll be stripped by chlorine, and

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Speaker 1: then having to spend even more money not only to

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Speaker 1: get the kids in a pool, but then to fix

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Speaker 1: their hair afterwards if necessary. Right. They they found in

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Speaker 1: this USA swimming study that actually no parents who had

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Speaker 1: above average swimming ability discourage their kids from swimming. So

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Speaker 1: this is something that gets passed down. If you either

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Speaker 1: are a swimmer yourself, or if you feel that it's

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Speaker 1: important enough to put your kids in lessons or expose

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Speaker 1: them to water frequently, then you're going to be more

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Speaker 1: likely to have kids who are safe around water and

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Speaker 1: not be afraid of it. Yeah. Um, the some of

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Speaker 1: the low income families that they interviewed so that they

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Speaker 1: wouldn't even want to take advantage of free swimming lessons,

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Speaker 1: like it just didn't seem like a vital skill for

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Speaker 1: a child to have. For instance, one African American moms

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Speaker 1: that are priorities paying insurance, which makes total sense over

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Speaker 1: paying for swim lessons. A Latina moms that activities like

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Speaker 1: mariachi or soccer are more important. Um. And then you

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Speaker 1: get those you know, the cultural tie ins with that. Uh.

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Speaker 1: But if you look at American his stree, the what's

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Speaker 1: the race relations around public pools are disturbing? UM. Just

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Speaker 1: to give you some background of why we even have

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Speaker 1: pools dotted around neighborhoods. To begin with, UM, in the

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Speaker 1: nineteen twenties and thirties, New Deal money funneled seven and

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Speaker 1: fifty million dollars on community recreation facilities, and with that

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Speaker 1: you have a slew of pools, municipal pools being built.

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Speaker 1: Right and leading up to this, in the late nineteenth

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Speaker 1: and early twentieth centuries, we had a lot of municipal

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Speaker 1: pools being built, and they were being built in poor, immigrant,

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Speaker 1: working class white neighborhoods, but not so much in neighborhoods

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Speaker 1: with predominantly black residents. And so it doesn't seem like

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Speaker 1: it's a class issue necessarily, but more specifically just along

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Speaker 1: race line. And this is coming from an interview on

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Speaker 1: NPR with Dr Jeff Wilts from the University of Montana

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Speaker 1: who wrote Contested Waters, a Social History of swimming Pools

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Speaker 1: in America, and he he talks about the growth of

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Speaker 1: swimming pools and how in the nine twenties and thirties,

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Speaker 1: there was really that pool building spree, as he calls it,

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Speaker 1: when thousands of huge resort style pools were opened that

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Speaker 1: ended up attracting millions of swimmers. And while these municipal

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Speaker 1: pools were open to everybody, emphasizing again like you just

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Speaker 1: mentioned that it wasn't this issue of class, um very

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Speaker 1: quickly segregation started. Racial segregation began at these pools. Um

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Speaker 1: where in these large outdoor resort style pools that Wilts

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Speaker 1: talks about were typically reserved for white patrons. And if

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Speaker 1: any pools at all were a reserved for black patrons,

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Speaker 1: it was usually they were usually small indoor pools that

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Speaker 1: really weren't that appealing in the hot summertime. You want

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Speaker 1: to be outside in the sun and jumping in that water,

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Speaker 1: but you also want something that's close enough to walk to. Probably.

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Speaker 1: I mean, if you are either a white patron in

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Speaker 1: one of those using one of those municipal pools or

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Speaker 1: using a um a resort style pool, it might be

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Speaker 1: closer to you based on the number of pools that

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Speaker 1: were built. But if you are a black resident who

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Speaker 1: did not even have access to something that was that

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Speaker 1: close to you, and the pool itself was not that great,

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Speaker 1: you would probably be less likely to go. And also,

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Speaker 1: let's talk about the threat of violence if you were

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Speaker 1: to go. If the closest pool to you was predominantly white,

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Speaker 1: you go. If you were living in say Pittsburgh in

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Speaker 1: nineteen thirty one, and you went to the Highland Park pool,

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Speaker 1: which Will talks about in his interview, white swimmers would

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Speaker 1: beat black swimmers who tried to use the pool. The

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Speaker 1: city did not have an official stance on racial segregation

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Speaker 1: when it came to the public swimming pools, but it

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Speaker 1: just became this thing that if black swimmers tried to go,

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Speaker 1: you were gonna get You're gonna get your butt kicked

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Speaker 1: in water, exactly. Yeah. So there was this history of

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Speaker 1: either violence and intimidation keeping African American swimmers out or

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Speaker 1: officials aggregation using police officers and city officials to keep

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Speaker 1: people out. Um. But there was also um a desegregation

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Speaker 1: of gender going on at the same time that the

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Speaker 1: pool started to segregate by race. And so there was

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Speaker 1: this whole idea like, Okay, we're in this intimate space

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Speaker 1: where people are kind of scantily clad, and there was

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Speaker 1: the racism issue of we don't want our white women

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Speaker 1: around black males. Yeah. Well, it's actually argues in contested

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Speaker 1: Waters that that racist and gendered issue of not wanting

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Speaker 1: to keep the white women protected from blackmails, especially since

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Speaker 1: there were not many clothes being worn in a pool setting,

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Speaker 1: that that was the most salient point when it comes

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Speaker 1: to this issue of racism and public pools. And then

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Speaker 1: on top of that, there are also these racist notions

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Speaker 1: going around, um that we've brought up before talking about

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Speaker 1: um the movie The Help, where um, one of the

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Speaker 1: women doesn't want her blackmaid to use the toilet because

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Speaker 1: of these similar racist notions that blacks were dirtier and

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Speaker 1: carried more communicable diseases. You put everybody in a pool

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Speaker 1: together and oh my goodness, you might be you know,

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Speaker 1: catching some kind of dirty thing from these people and

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Speaker 1: also endangering these women. And Wilth points out that the

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Speaker 1: movement of whites away from using city pools when desegregation

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Speaker 1: starts to happen with the civil rights movement, um that

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Speaker 1: that white flight from the pools was more pronounced than

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Speaker 1: white flight that we often hear about from neighborhoods, and

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Speaker 1: especially if we're talking regionally, this is happening the most,

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Speaker 1: he says, to in the north and the West, not

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Speaker 1: so much in the south as you might assume, maybe

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Speaker 1: everybody's just so hot in the south. Well, And it's

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Speaker 1: with and it's with that that racist fear. You have

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Speaker 1: the rise of people building more pools in their own backyards,

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Speaker 1: building pools in municipal neighborhoods, to where if you're not

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Speaker 1: a member of a neighborhoods civic association, you're not going

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Speaker 1: to come to the pool, right. And so yeah, you

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Speaker 1: have this movement, this white flight from pools, and this

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Speaker 1: trend of building more private pools that just drew a

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Speaker 1: lot of white people away from those city pools. So

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Speaker 1: all of a sudden, there's less support, less money, and

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Speaker 1: that trend is actually still continuing. There's still a trend

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Speaker 1: of municipal city pools and not having the same support

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Speaker 1: financially or otherwise, and they're actually being closed at a

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Speaker 1: rapid rate. And so most people still today who want

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Speaker 1: to access pools have to go about through a private

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Speaker 1: association of some sort. And unfortunately, racism at private pools

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Speaker 1: does still exist. This happened in summer of two thousand

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Speaker 1: nine at a Northeast Philadelphia private pool. UM sixty African

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Speaker 1: American kids who are attending a day camp in Northeast

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Speaker 1: Philadelphia were turned away from a private swim club because

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Speaker 1: of their race. This stance by the white bull owner

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Speaker 1: was so egregious that U S Senator Arlen Specter, who

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Speaker 1: is the senator from Pennsylvania, actually came out and said,

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Speaker 1: the allegations against the swim club as they reported, are

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Speaker 1: extremely disturbing. I'm reaching out to all parties involved to

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Speaker 1: ascertain the facts. Racial discrimination has no place in America today.

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Speaker 1: But that racial discrimination, you know, happened so much around

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Speaker 1: these city pools, and I don't think that many people

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Speaker 1: know about it. I was not aware of it before

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Speaker 1: UM we happened across this information researching stuff on lifeguards.

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Speaker 1: We weren't even thinking about it exactly. Well, so there

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Speaker 1: are a lot of strategies out there to try to

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Speaker 1: increase minority UH participation in swimming, whether just recreational swimming,

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Speaker 1: actual swim teams, or just learning how to be safe

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Speaker 1: in and around water. And the USA Swimming Report they

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Speaker 1: did this, like I said, in combination with the University

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Speaker 1: of Memphis, who had done a previous study in so

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Speaker 1: USA Swimming kind of wanted to. They were kind of

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Speaker 1: shocked by the statistics that that the university found and

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Speaker 1: so they wanted to back them up. But they they

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Speaker 1: recommend trying to recognize finances versus fear. Like we talked

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Speaker 1: about there's an issue of finance, but there's an issue

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Speaker 1: of passed down fear and worries about water. And they

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Speaker 1: said that while many parents identified cost as a prohibitive factor,

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Speaker 1: for many, fear either for their child or for swimming

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Speaker 1: was closely tied in. And the thing is to the

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Speaker 1: parents of kids today are not that far removed in

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Speaker 1: all likelihood from the days when going to the pool

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Speaker 1: either meant having to go out of the way to

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Speaker 1: go to a subpar facility that was set apart for

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Speaker 1: black swimmers, or going to one that was open to

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Speaker 1: blacks and whites, but then risking fear and intimidation by

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Speaker 1: by white swimmers. Another recommendation is peer or parents a

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Speaker 1: parent mentoring and diversity clinics basically have parents work with

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Speaker 1: each other to encourage them to get their kids to

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Speaker 1: a pool, learn how to swim, be safe around water.

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Speaker 1: But other ideas were clinics either diversity clinics which were

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Speaker 1: specifically meant to draw more minority children in, or just

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Speaker 1: free clinics, or maybe paying on a sliding scale of

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Speaker 1: some sort to get people to go and say, Okay,

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Speaker 1: well maybe I do have the time, but I don't

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Speaker 1: have the money, so I'll try out this free clinic. Well,

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Speaker 1: And it seems like a lot of that too, is

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Speaker 1: tied to building up maybe role models swimming role models

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Speaker 1: within smaller communities, because we don't see that many high

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Speaker 1: profile African American swimmers were starting to see more. For instance,

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Speaker 1: twenty eight year old African American swimmer Colin Jones is

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Speaker 1: an Olympic gold medalist. He brought home the gold with

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Speaker 1: Team USA last Summer Olympics um and he was only

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Speaker 1: the third black swimmer from the U S to do

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Speaker 1: so on the medal and he is participating with us

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Speaker 1: A Swimmings Make a Splash initiative, which was launched in

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Speaker 1: two thousand and seven uh to go on a six

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Speaker 1: city national water safety tour to educate parents, kids and

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Speaker 1: communities about the importance of learning to swim. Because he

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Speaker 1: himself almost drowned at the age of five at a

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Speaker 1: water park, after which his mother promptly enrolled him in

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Speaker 1: swim lessons and this eventually led to a college scholarship.

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Speaker 1: And he was saying that, you know, he tries to

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Speaker 1: tell kids, Look, I didn't start out as an Olympic swimmer.

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Speaker 1: You know, I almost died. Uh. It's something you have

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Speaker 1: to work at. And that's something that's another trend that

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Speaker 1: kind of comes up over and over again in these

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Speaker 1: studies is that it's not basketball, as one parent says,

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Speaker 1: where your kid can just jump into it, start playing,

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Speaker 1: you know, get better whatever. Swimming is something you you

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Speaker 1: have to learn and and get better and better at

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Speaker 1: because I mean it could kill you if you are

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Speaker 1: unsafe and water. Yeah, I mean it almost happened to me,

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Speaker 1: almost drowned as well. Um And Jones also addresses that

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Speaker 1: issue of not having many minorities around him in the sport.

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Speaker 1: Um he said, I think speaking to ESPN, it's still

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Speaker 1: a white dominated sport. I think that kind of pushes

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Speaker 1: kids away from it a little bit. Yeah. So he's

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Speaker 1: basically using his fame in the best way possible to

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Speaker 1: encourage more kids to swim and be safe. And this

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Speaker 1: USA Swimming Make a Splash initiative that I mentioned that

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Speaker 1: was launched in two thousand seven. Is really meant to

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Speaker 1: enlighten political leaders about the disparities of a aquatic activities because,

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Speaker 1: like Chris and I were saying, we had no idea

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Speaker 1: that it was this uh stark, that this many children

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Speaker 1: did not have the same access or opportunity to learn

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Speaker 1: how to swim or the same desire to do so right.

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Speaker 1: And there are also more grassroots efforts going on to

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Speaker 1: try to bridge this minority gap at the pool, such

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Speaker 1: as Diversity in Aquatics, which was founded by two Penn

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Speaker 1: State athletes after they learned about the disparity and drowning rates,

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Speaker 1: and they're seeking to educate, dispell stereotypes and provide those

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Speaker 1: role models. And also, um we learned about the Josh

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Speaker 1: Project from CNN, which is a nonprofit that provides low

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Speaker 1: cost swimming lessons for children in Toledo, Ohio, and it

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Speaker 1: was founded by a woman named Wanda Butts after her

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Speaker 1: sixteen year old son drowned while rafting on a lake

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Speaker 1: with friends because he'd never learned to swim exactly, and

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Speaker 1: she talked about her own fear of water, how she

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Speaker 1: had never taught her son to swim. So it's basically

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Speaker 1: in that little it's like a microcosm of everything that

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Speaker 1: study talked about. Yeah, the generational cycle, the fear, and

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Speaker 1: then this increased risk of drowning. UM. So I hope

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Speaker 1: that this was enlightening for listeners. It was certainly enlightening

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Speaker 1: for me, and also enlightening in in a sad way

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Speaker 1: because it's, Uh, the history is so it's so fraught

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Speaker 1: with so much racism on so many different levels that

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Speaker 1: you don't think about when you're going to sun yourself.

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Speaker 1: Maybe at the pool. Yeah, I had no idea when

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Speaker 1: I was a kid, I belonged to a neighborhood pool,

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Speaker 1: but there were black and white children there. I know.

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Speaker 1: I didn't as a kid, I did not even know

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Speaker 1: what a municipal pool was. I didn't. I thought that

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Speaker 1: everybody's pools were in neighborhoods. I had no idea that

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Speaker 1: there were city pools well. And I think speaking of

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Speaker 1: city pools though, there there's also a stereotype of city

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Speaker 1: pools not being as well kept up as say, like

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Speaker 1: a private neighborhood pool. They're larger, they may be dirtier,

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Speaker 1: and um, I actually uh lived for a while here

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Speaker 1: in Atlanta, right next to UM a park pool and

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Speaker 1: I had a pass for it, and it was great

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Speaker 1: and it was huge and it was well kept. I

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Speaker 1: mean there were a ton of people there, but um,

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Speaker 1: it was totally fine and it was it was fun

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Speaker 1: to go hang out in my park and you know,

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Speaker 1: support my city at the same time and get a

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Speaker 1: little bit of a sun dan but safely, safely SPF.

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Speaker 1: So that's all we have today for the podcast. If

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Speaker 1: you have thoughts on this though uh swimmers out there,

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Speaker 1: have you experienced this kind of racism? Older listeners, do

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Speaker 1: you remember these days of segregation at the pool? Um

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Speaker 1: let us know your thoughts. Mom stuff at Discovery dot com.

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Speaker 1: And in the meantime, we've got two letters here about

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Speaker 1: mother's working or not working. Yeah, this one is from Stephanie.

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Speaker 1: She said, I hold a doctorate in sociology from Georgia State,

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Speaker 1: so I loved hearing all the sociology in this episode.

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Speaker 1: I am a working mom to an almost four year

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Speaker 1: old and have wanted to talk about concerted cultivation. I

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Speaker 1: involved my daughter and activities to learn, skill, socialize, have

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Speaker 1: fun and so on. But here's the other reason she's involved.

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Speaker 1: It provides additional childcare when I am sitting there waiting

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Speaker 1: for my daughter to tumble or swim or whatever it is.

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Speaker 1: I am almost always working. I might be reading for class,

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Speaker 1: grading papers, revising a paper, or I might have my

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Speaker 1: laptop open using the WiFi connection to teach an online class.

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Speaker 1: I think all this activities madness has as much to

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Speaker 1: do with working moms needing additional pockets of time for

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Speaker 1: work related activities as developing children. Don't get me wrong,

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Speaker 1: even if I didn't need the time for work, she

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Speaker 1: would still be in activities, but they might be cut

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Speaker 1: back a bit. Thanks Stephanie, and I've got one here

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Speaker 1: from Candice, who is currently a stay at home mom

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Speaker 1: with four children from infant to eight years old. She writes,

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Speaker 1: when I look back on my first year of motherhood,

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Speaker 1: I was dying to go back to the workplace, to

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Speaker 1: do anything, anything to get me out of the house.

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Speaker 1: But I also knew that my baby needed me close

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Speaker 1: to her, and because I was breastfeeding, I felt it

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Speaker 1: necessary to do so. To me, half the battle of

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Speaker 1: breastfeeding is the ability to stay and be close to

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Speaker 1: your child. It's certainly not all sunshine and roses. I'm

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Speaker 1: not a stay at home mom because it didn't make

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Speaker 1: sense for me to continue working. As I have added

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Speaker 1: more children to my brood, I've also found myself more

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Speaker 1: content with my lot in life, though I'm sure I

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Speaker 1: don't have a lot of leisure time as defined by

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Speaker 1: time where I can do whatever pursuits I want without

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Speaker 1: something else demanding my time and attention. I like how

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Speaker 1: for the most part, our lives are not hectic. I

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Speaker 1: am not a stay at home mom because it didn't

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Speaker 1: make sense for me to continue working. I have to

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Speaker 1: wonder if my husband earned less money than he does,

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Speaker 1: if I would be nearly as quote unquote happy. I

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Speaker 1: don't think so. I am still able to pursue things

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Speaker 1: to interest me intellectually and on the side, I also

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Speaker 1: manage our side business from home. It's not the most

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Speaker 1: exciting job, but I still get paid for my work,

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Speaker 1: and I'm happy to be contributing to the family coffers

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Speaker 1: as well. I think I will probably go back to

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Speaker 1: a paying job eventually, but when we discussed it, thus far,

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Speaker 1: the negatives outweigh the positives. So thanks to Kndas and

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Speaker 1: everybody else who has written in mom stuff. At Discovery

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Speaker 1: dot com is where you can send your letters. You

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Speaker 1: can also find us on Facebook and follow us on

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Speaker 1: Twitter at mom Stuff Podcast, and you can check out

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Speaker 1: what we're doing during the week at our website, it's

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Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com for more on this and

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Speaker 1: thousands of other topics. Does it how stuff works dot

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Speaker 1: com brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.

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Speaker 1: It's ready, are you