That Ole Racist Water

Now that we know that black boys and young men are more susceptible to death by drowning than other racial and gender groups, I wonder how long it will be before the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Justice Department opens an investigation of water and its racial bias.

(This reminds me of that “dihydrogen monoxide” spoof chain letter that has been going around the internet for as long as it has existed.)

The Federal government researchers point the blame at anything not having to do with racial differences:

Nationally, between 1995 and 1998, 51 percent of drownings among blacks ages 5 to 24 happened in a public pool. Most often, it was a hotel or motel pool. That stands in contrast to white children and young adults, 55 percent of whom drowned in a residential pool…Hotel and motel pools, they point out, often lack lifeguards. So it’s vital for children to always have an adult with them.

I have never known too many residential swimming pools to have professional lifeguards, either.

Researchers have speculated that the higher drowning risk among African Americans has to do with income; lower-income families are less likely to be able to afford swimming lessons. However, Saluja’s team found that the racial discrepancy persisted even when they factored in income. More research, they say, is needed to understand the underlying reasons.

This contradicts the hotel/motel theory above; lower-income families are less likely to be able to afford to stay in hotels and motels, and even then, this paragraph itself says that income is not a factor.

The “more research” to “understand the underlying reasons” has already been done; trouble is, the “more research” has yielded politically incorrect and taboo conclusions.

Black boys and men, as opposed to black girls and women, and everyone else for that matter, tend to have thicker and stronger bones, and tend to be more muscular. Doing the math, their average body density is higher than for other race/gender groups.

As any dummy who has read one page of a physics book can tell you, objects of matter that are more dense are less buoyant in liquid water, i.e. they sink further below the surface.

In the case of such human objects, not only do they sink further below the surface, it is far more difficult to maneuver and to maneuver quickly underwater. This is why competitive speed swimming on an international stage (i.e. Olympics) is virtually all-white, and the nonwhites tend to be Oriental/Asian.

This is why black boys and men have a higher drowning rate, ceteris paribus.