‘I was the only black kid in the pool’: why swimming is so white
Filmmaker Ed Accura was 53 when he learned to swim, and only then through fear that his young daughter might get into trouble and he wouldn’t be able to save her.
“I live near the Thames and I said to myself, if anything happened to her and I couldn’t help, I would never forgive myself.”
Until then he suffered from what he calls Bl-aquaphobia, a word he coined to describe the inherent fear black people have of water – a fear that’s “very, very different” from their white counterparts, he says.
