As the summer heats up, the need to cool off is universal. Families flock to beaches, pools, and waterfronts across the city, highlighting just how essential water safety is—particularly in the Black community.
According to the CDC, more than 4,500 people drowned annually between 2020 and 2022. In that same period, drowning rates rose by 28% among Black Americans. Black children are more than twice as likely to drown as white children—and the disparity only deepens with age. The most staggering stat: Black youth aged 10 to 14 drown at over 7.6 times the rate of their white peers. Nearly 40 million adults in the U.S. lack basic swimming skills, and for Black adults, the gap is stark, with more than one in three can’t swim, and two-thirds never had swim lessons.
But this isn’t just about ability, it’s about access, history, and trust.
Barriers to swimming run deep. Public pools were once segregated and many were shut down after integration. Decades later, that legacy lives on in the form of fewer accessible pools in majority-Black neighborhoods. Today, cost, limited local options, a shortage of instructors, and longstanding cultural fears continue to block access. Paulana Lamonier saw those barriers firsthand.
“I had a young lady who had a real fear of swimming and she would tell me she couldn’t float because she’s Black and her bones were too dense,” says Paulana, who said the experience prompted her to do research that made her realize how deeply tied the inability to swim was to systemic racism.
Kendall Duffie, a plant-based chef and certified divemaster, agrees with the connection. “I find most people of color are just limited with access to learn how to swim and have preconceived phobia’s about being in open water environments,” he says.
After noticing these disparities, Paulana and Duffie decided to do something. In 2019, Paulana posted a call to action on social media: she’d teach 30 people to swim that summer. That viral post grew into Black People Will Swim, a Brooklyn-based organization that’s now taught over 2,500 Black and brown New Yorkers how to swim.
For his part, Duffie offers free swim lessons to anyone interested and insists it’s never too late to learn. “I prefer to start [swim lessons] with kids around age 6–7,” he said, “however any age is teachable. There’s no max age as long as a person is fit and able to properly comprehend.”
Duffie’s main advice? Focus on the basics: “Of all the basic skills, being able to stay afloat is most important. This is the key skill that can keep you safe until help arrives.”
BPWS and Duffie aren’t alone. Nonprofits like Tankproof and Outdoor Afro offer lessons, scholarships, and culturally grounded programming to help close the racial swim gap and change the narrative, one stroke at a time.
