When I was a camp counsellor there was a distinct urban/suburban split among the swimming kids and it often cut along racial lines with the white kids being suburban and more swimmy and the black and latino kids being more urban and less swimmy.

The whoozit abuse picture of Lily is AWESOME. She has so many interesting faces.

Hil - German WWI uniforms: [link]

Thank you! That was exactly what I was looking for, and now I can place this photo as somewhere between 1915 and the end of WWI. Still not sure who it is, though -- that would be my great-grandfather's generation, but I'm not sure who in my family was in the army.

swimming, actual swimming even in the deep end is more common with white people.

I can't speak to your general thesis, but a couple of my high school friends who also swam in the Gulf at night were black.

What's interesting is that all of my students are urban. And my latino students can swim at least a full lap without flailing and concerning me about their safety, while my blakc students often couldn't. Though both groups said they could swim.

Okay, question: how many people here fear swimming in deep water? in the pool? in a lake? in the ocean?

I have no fear of depth, and have swum (off a boat) in open seawater/baywater. If you dropped me from a plane into the open sea, I might have different feelings about it, because I discovered while sailing that I do have a mild horizon-paranoia: when it was sea in all directions off the boat, I got nervous.

This was in the Chesapeake, which is not exactly Wild Open Sea, so I am pretty sure it was the pure visual stimulus of seeing no permanent features in any direction. I have spent my whole life not too far from the coast, but that means close on land, and close by sea as well. (And the land is a particularly hilly part of the country.)

See, that's the thing about my general thesis is it's based on my students. And my friends. Most of my nonswimming friends are nonwhite. In fact, one of them is a godparent to an Athletic Director at a Major University here and that AD (also black) made claims about race and swimming, that blacks don't swim for a variety of reasons.

And another friend mentions that it also has to do with cultural issues, such as pools were segregated and kids who have parents who don't swim, often don't learn on their own.

And then there were hair issues.

It's been a fascinating topic of discussion.

By the time I got to high school in London, I was the best swimmer there, in a mostly white school. At my high school in Jamaica, predominantly black, I was average. I think the best swimmers in my year tended to not be black, but I doubt it was as marked as it would be here--being able to swim and being competitive about swimming are different enough.

FTR, I love swimming. Open ocean is the thing most likely to freak me out due to all of the things you are mentioning. But I've swum and dove off boots in deep deep water and I'm not bothered at all. But I grew up swimming.

Not being able to swim often weirdly catches me like not being able to read. Probably because I learned both things around the same time.

AD (also black) made claims about race and swimming, that blacks don't swim for a variety of reasons.

Maybe similar reasons to the under-representation in other country-club like sports? If you don't need it for day-to-day, and you're not going to make big bucks at it...but I have no idea about Hispanics or Asians and swimming.