Huh, I see almost no black people at my local pool. Then again, my town is like 90% white as well. But even in the town where I grew up that was a bit more diverse, black people just didn’t go to the local pool, probably because you had to pay to get in and black people (in general and from experience) don’t seem to like to swim. Even at my in-laws apartment complex which has a pool, there’s almost nobody there, ever, and when we go, it’s always just me. People seem to hang out more at the entrance to the complex than inside the complex.
My town (in the South) chose to fill the public pool with cement rather than be forced to allow black residents to use it. For many decades, we didn’t have a public pool at all and it’s only been fairly recently that a new one was opened. I’m not surprised that black Americans have a reportedly lower rate of swimming proficiency!
I point out this shameful bit of our town history often, because the place has grown tremendously in the last 20 years and become more diverse, and folks here don’t appreciate how bad it was within living memory and why we need to keep pushing.
“I point out this shameful bit of our town history often…”
People who are “anti-woke” often say stuff like “they’re teaching kids to be ashamed of themselves for what their ancestors did”, and I think they don’t understand how healing and healthy it is to call out shameful parts of history. For me, acknowledging shameful parts of history is how I distance myself from those things, by subtextually saying “this is no longer the case, AND ALSO we intend to keep pushing forward”.
Huh, I see almost no black people at my local pool. Then again, my town is like 90% white as well. But even in the town where I grew up that was a bit more diverse, black people just didn’t go to the local pool, probably because you had to pay to get in and black people (in general and from experience) don’t seem to like to swim. Even at my in-laws apartment complex which has a pool, there’s almost nobody there, ever, and when we go, it’s always just me. People seem to hang out more at the entrance to the complex than inside the complex.
My town (in the South) chose to fill the public pool with cement rather than be forced to allow black residents to use it. For many decades, we didn’t have a public pool at all and it’s only been fairly recently that a new one was opened. I’m not surprised that black Americans have a reportedly lower rate of swimming proficiency!
I point out this shameful bit of our town history often, because the place has grown tremendously in the last 20 years and become more diverse, and folks here don’t appreciate how bad it was within living memory and why we need to keep pushing.
People who are “anti-woke” often say stuff like “they’re teaching kids to be ashamed of themselves for what their ancestors did”, and I think they don’t understand how healing and healthy it is to call out shameful parts of history. For me, acknowledging shameful parts of history is how I distance myself from those things, by subtextually saying “this is no longer the case, AND ALSO we intend to keep pushing forward”.
That’s exactly my angle. It was bad more recently than you think, and it still needs to get better because we all like our neighbors.