Teaching our children how to swim is just as much as a survival skill as it is a summertime activity.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, black children between the ages of 5 and 14 are three times more likely to drown than white children of the same age range. Meanwhile, research by the USA Swimming Foundation indicates that up to 70 percent of black and Hispanic children cannot swim.
Citing that research, safety commission chairman Inez Tenenbaum said “there’s no question” that not knowing how to swim contributes to the deaths of minority children who drown in pools and in natural bodies of water such as lakes, streams or the ocean.
“It’s a cultural issue, because many of the African-American and Hispanic children have parents and grandparents who never learned to swim,” Tenenbaum added.
Read more at The Grio
