crazylibertarian Loc: Florida by way of New York & Rhode Island

There Was More To It Than Racism


Like most Americans, I was cheering my heart out for Simone Manuel as she passed the highly favored Cate Campbell in the second length of the women’s 100 meter (2 length) freestyle to a tie for the gold medal. She won a second gold medal in the medley relay & a silver in the 50 meter freestyle.

Right on cue, there was an article at the Yahoo home page about the sad history of the dearth of American blacks in swimming. A few days later, Tonyaa Wethersbee had a column in the (Jacksonville) Florida Times-Union about it. She lamented that during Jim Crow only one of the seven pools in Jacksonville, permitted blacks. Both pieces heaped blame on the good, old racism that lies at the heart of American history. You knew that it just had to be.

Racism is that old reliable, convenient goat that we can load our collective guilts onto to explain anything involving blacks in this country. If it’s an achievement, they overcame the racism; if it’s negative, it’s because of the racism. And while it’s important not to ignore that, it’s just as important not to over-emphasize it.

I swam in competition in New York City for four years from 1960 to 1964, two years high school and two years college. There were pools all over the city and segregation was never an issue.

But just about every high school team, even in the black sections, was overwhelmingly white. I doubt whether there were more than 10 black swimmers on all the teams in our Queens league.

At New York University, we had just one black team member. In all of our intercollegiate meets, I never saw a black opponent. NYU hosted the city high school championships and many of the New York area college and other regional meets, and I never saw a black swimmer or diver.

Because of my background in swimming, I tended to watch national and international meets, especially the Olympics, on TV. Through all the years, well into the 1980s, I never saw a black competitor. Observers noted they had never seen a black swimmer mount a starting block at a national or international meet!

There is no doubt that racism and segregation were strong factors in the dearth of black swimmers and divers in states that enforced segregation but it doesn’t explain it in all of the other states and other countries without segregation. No commentators have addressed this. Why? I suggest it’s simpler to invoke that old familiar bete noire, racism, so that whites can experience even more guilt.

You might maintain that even without segregation, there were country and athletic clubs with restricted memberships, that excluded blacks. Fine but there were alternative outlets such as schools, at all levels, since the 1950s, in much of the country and private segregation has been just about non-existent since the 1980s, yet this dearth of black swimmers persists.

Some have claimed it’s because in Africa and other such tropical areas, water was often a dangerous place for human beings to be, harboring many predators. I doubt that and have not a shred of doubt that blacks have the same attraction to water that white people do. Why did more of them not turn to water sports?

But there is something more that no one has ever discussed and it will never be permitted to be discussed; namely the part that the War for Confederate Secession and Reconstruction played in setting the stage for much of this. The so-called Civil War, with its thoroughgoing destruction of the Confederate states and the burdens of Reconstruction, destroyed almost all of the South’s industrial capacity and much of its agricultural capacity.

During the hostilities, Union commanders laid waste to much of the South. Most notorious was the destruction of the Deep South by General William Tecumseh Sherman. It began with the fall of the Confederate fortress at Vicksburg.

He then commanded the forces that marched across Mississippi and laid waste to both Jackson and Meridian. He boasted about the destruction of Meridian in a cable to Pres. Abraham Lincoln saying that the city, effectively, no longer existed. Lincoln in turn congratulated him for his savagery. Jackson was called Chimneyville because only chimneys stood where a thriving city had once been.

It ended with the burning of Atlanta and his infamous March to the Sea at Savannah. It was an early example and maybe the first, of total war. Philip Sheridan accomplished much the same but on a lesser scale in the famously beautiful & fertile Shenandoah Valley, memorialized in song and lore. We hanged & imprisoned German and Japanese commanders after World War II for similar actions.

The financial burdens laid on the South rivaled those on Germany with the Treaty of Versailles that ended World War I. It would be a century before the South fully recovered.

So what does bellum and post-bellum history have to do with Simone Manuel and the dearth of black swimmers? Perhaps more that first meets the eye.

It has been argued, very convincingly, that without the War for Confederate Secession, slavery in America was doomed. It also has been argued that without the burdens of Reconstruction, many states would not have instituted segregation; that it was instituted as a payback for the War.

Both of these arguments are valid but it is undeniably true that the South became an economic backwater well into the 1960s. Recreational facilities like parks and pools are generally low priority and in recreation, basketball courts, baseball and football fields usually have come first.

So, would these matters have been different had the South been permitted to secede and not been subjected to the indignities of a conquered nation? There can not be a shred of doubt. How different is another matter but Jim Crow might never have been and everyone can be assured that the development of recreational pools to spur interest in water sports would have been much more advanced.

Should these things be part of the general discussion? Yes. Will these things ever enter general discussion? A resounding no because it is far easier, more fun and more gratifying to rub our faces in the Liberaldom’s American Guilt.

no propaganda please Loc: moon orbiting the third rock from the sun

I have seen several scientific articles which might explain part of the differences. Apparently the bone density in black people is different than in while people, as is the ability to control body temperature, and the fat distribution between the races. Someone with more ability to search the internet might be able to find the data. I will search and see what I can find but if someone else finds such information, please post it.

this might be a place to start
Densities of Bones of White and Negro Skeletons |...
jbjs.org/content/42/1/50

In both white and Negro males the mean densities of radii, ulnae, and tibiae did ... differences among the four sex-race groups the four mean densities of each bone ... Epidemiology of rib fractures in older men: Osteoporotic Fractures in Men ...

PaulPisces Loc: San Francisco

You seem to be saying that, had the U.S. just let slavery die a "natural" death then black people would show up more in swimming competition.
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crazylibertarian Loc: Florida by way of New York & Rhode Island

[quote=no propaganda please]I have seen several scientific articles which might explain part of the differences. Apparently the bone density in black people is different than in while people, as is the ability to control body temperature, and the fat distribution between the races. Someone with more ability to search the internet might be able to find the data. I will search and see what I can find but if someone else finds such information, please p[ost it.[/quote]

I have read about such reports and then there were others debunking them Some have suggested that blacks have greater bone density in the skull making them less prone to KOs in boxing. Who knows but does this explain the lack of interest in blacks for water sports?

crazylibertarian Loc: Florida by way of New York & Rhode Island

Please read what I wrote. If the South had not suffered the economic destruction it did with the excesses of people like Sherman & Sheridan & then Reconstruction, it MIGHT have progressed with the rest of the country, facilities MIGHT have been more available to blacks throughout the South & swimming MIGHT achieved the same level of interest among blacks that it did in the rest of the country. The South was set back economically due to that war, unless you maintain that it wasn't. This entire matter will NEVER be discussed due to political correctness.

no propaganda please Loc: moon orbiting the third rock from the sun

If you are not good at something how much time are you going to waste trying to do it?

no propaganda please Loc: moon orbiting the third rock from the sun

Logic says there must be recognizable differences. If that were not the case, then how can anthropologists identify the race of someone by looking at the skeletal remains?