cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/14606887

‘Black people can’t swim’ Because until very recent memory, the US was an explicitly white supremacist authoritarian state, And access to public pools specifically Was one of the crowning achievements of The evil at the heart of this country. They destroyed every public pool that they couldn’t privatize. To keep segregation in place. And that’s why the US is still fucking segregated. The federal government stepped in until it wasn’t politically advantageous anymore and then they gave up And nothing had changed. They just declared victory and called white supremacy something else. If you look at US history, this is this is what the country is. This is the central pattern of what this colonial settler state is, And anything outside of that is fundamentally aspirational, divorced from the actual reality of the situation.

It’s really incredibly easy to say oh well it’s flawed, but it’s the best in the world, when it’s only people that you are OK with hurting that are getting hurt in the meantime.

  • @Pronell
    38•7 months ago

    I’d gone to an unsegregated public pool in Minneapolis a few times back in the late 80s.

    Almost certainly long gone now.

    Never even occurred to me that the pool I was visiting was rare, almost unheard of elsewhere in the country.

    I was aware of the segregationist history of the country at the time, just too young to really think it through and realize I was living in a tiny bubble of exception. It was a few years later when a 12 year old was stabbed blocks from my school and it didn’t even make the news. (The only reason I knew about it was because my dad saved the kids life while I sat petrified in the car.)

    • @Alexstarfire
      6•7 months ago

      We’ve had a community pool for as long as I can remember. Used to be at the park but they closed that one when the dedicated one opened down the street from it, maybe 15 years ago. New one is a county one. There are a few others that I’m aware of in the county.

      You get a discount if you’re a resident of the county.

      • @Pronell
        2•6 months ago

        Yeah, I said a desegregated public pool. Extremely crowded.

          • @Pronell
            3•6 months ago

            No, it was just a commentary that I’d been in a public pool decades later and not realizing that what I was experiencing was at all rare or controversial.