cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/14606887
‘Black people can’t swim’ Because until very recent memory, the US was an explicitly white supremacist authoritarian state, And access to public pools specifically Was one of the crowning achievements of The evil at the heart of this country. They destroyed every public pool that they couldn’t privatize. To keep segregation in place. And that’s why the US is still fucking segregated. The federal government stepped in until it wasn’t politically advantageous anymore and then they gave up And nothing had changed. They just declared victory and called white supremacy something else. If you look at US history, this is this is what the country is. This is the central pattern of what this colonial settler state is, And anything outside of that is fundamentally aspirational, divorced from the actual reality of the situation.
It’s really incredibly easy to say oh well it’s flawed, but it’s the best in the world, when it’s only people that you are OK with hurting that are getting hurt in the meantime.
Is this where the "black people can't swim" thing comes from?!
It's related because the closure of public pools meant children without access to private pools at a country club or neighborhood would not be able to learn. This was concurrent with redlining and suburb development that prohibited black people from buying homes in places that were likely to have private pools and why inner-city areas remain predominantly black.
That's fucked. I always thought it was completely arbitrary.
No that's more from fewer economic opportunities to have a home with a private pool, or the means to get to a public one.
Source: I can't swim
And racially-motivated city planning. NY had tunnels too low for busses to fit through.
Yes. The title is a reference to that. Someone pointed it out on the tumblr post and its like the horror realization. I know how to swim because I got lessons in a public pool in Pittsburgh and there was a camp in michigan coming from that area too that the church helped pay for, but after that: Swim team, boy scouts, private pool, private pool, private swimming club, private pool. ..... Yeah. That would be why black people can't swim.
I grew up around a lake.