NEW YORK — In Beijing and London, U.S. Olympian Cullen Jones was fierce in the water, bringing home gold and silver and setting a world record along the way.
In the pool at P.S. 125, a Harlem elementary school, he was a sweetheart as he laughed, splashed and assured nervous 4-, 5- and 6-year-olds that they shouldn’t be afraid to get wet.
Summer’s almost here and that means pools, lakes and ocean beaches for millions of kids, but it’s a precarious season for a great many who don’t know how to swim.
About 70 percent of African-American children can’t swim, according to research, government data and the USA Swimming Foundation, the philanthropic arm of USA Swimming, the national body for competitive swimming. The number of non-swimmers is about 60 percent among Latino children and about 40 percent among whites.
“It’s a big challenge,” said Jones, who nearly drowned when he was 5 and flipped face down while on a slide at a Pennsylvania water park.
Ten people drown each day in the U.S. and drowning is the second-leading leading cause of accidental death for children under 14, according to the foundation.
The reasons more black and Latino kids don’t learn how to swim or don’t perfect their skills to lifesaving levels are varied, said Jones, an ambassador for Make a Splash, the foundation’s safety initiative, and Debbie Hesse, the foundation’s executive director.
For urban kids, it’s sometimes a question of access to pools and free or affordable lessons.
“For us the critical piece is letting parents who don’t swim know how important it is to teach kids,” Hesse said. “We found through our research that fear is a big factor. Especially from a cultural perspective, if you’ve been brought up to fear the water you teach that to your kids.”
Jones said he has seen it up close and noted a University of Memphis study in 2010 that pointed to another contributing factor, a hindrance of water on physical appearance, including the effect of water and pool chemicals on hair.
“Being African-American myself and knowing people in my own family, we’ve been taught that this is something we don’t do. We stay away from water. We don’t swim,” he said. “We’re trying to change a full cultural perspective on this.”
Over the last five years, Jones has instructed thousands of kids through Make a Splash. His loudest message is a simple one: Swimming is fun.
