“Dad, can you please teach me how to swim?”
Goodson’s answer to his daughter broke his heart. It was no. “I told her I don’t know how to swim myself.”
This summer, the pleas have started again.
Goodson, who’s 37 and works in the restaurant industry, says he would do anything for his daughter. But growing up in Alabama, he was just simply never taught to swim. His story is part of a common narrative, not a singular occurrence.
In the US, swimming ability is starkly divided along racial lines. White Americans are twice as likely to know how to swim as black Americans.
The consequences of this can be deadly: according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, black children aged five to 14 are three times more likely to die from unintentional drowning than their white counterparts. In the US, approximately 10 people die from unintentional drowning every day.