Blacks and Swimming

Friday I went swimming in the Burr building where I met Coach Fogan. For those who don’t know, Coach Fogan is a swim instructor at Howard University. As my friends and I were swimming he came over and asked where we were from and where our parents were from. After telling him, he began telling us of his research. His study was on blacks and swimming. By telling him our hometowns and our parents’ hometowns he got an idea of whether we could swim or not and why we couldn’t swim. Because swimming is a high class leisure sports, many blacks weren’t allowed to indulge in this activity due to racism or socioeconomic status’s. After asking us our origins he then asked if either one of our parents knew how to swim. As said many older generations did not learn how to swim but because many of our parents migrated from their original birth places, many people from my generation were taught to swim. The talk with him in the pool made me think of why many blacks don’t know how to swim. Could it be because our parents never learned, you lived in a state that wasn’t big on swimming, or for the women, fear of getting their hair wet. Whatever the case, I found his research intriguing and essential to the black community. He plans on furthering his research and using the origins of blacks to assist his study. I think it’s important that in African American communities swimming is taught to all children to break all stereotypes and judgments about how blacks can’t swim.