Comment by tzs | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tzs | Hacker News Reader

> Feeling out of place when I can’t identify with certain pop culture references or cultural norms (like being able to swim, liking baseball, listening to rock/country or playing golf), because I grew up differently.

For swimming, the norm in America is to think you know how to swim. 80% claim they can swim, but only 56% can demonstrate the five core skills that the Red Cross considers to be basic skills. The skills are (1) step or jump into water that is over your head, (2) return to the surface and float or treat water for one minute, (3) turn around in a full circle and find an exit, (4) swim 25 yards to the exit, and (5) climb out of the water [1].

The author, though, is from Jamaica. I would have guessed that swimming would be much more common there, since it is an island nation. However, to my surprise, a bit of Googling reveals that apparently Jamaicans are no more inclined toward swimming than are those who live nowhere near large bodies of water.

[1] http://www.redcross.org/news/press-release/Red-Cross-Launche...

> For swimming, the norm in America is to think you know how to swim.

That too. But actually knowing is a norm, too.

> 56% can demonstrate the five core skills that the Red Cross considers to be basic skills.

i.e., the majority of Americans can swim.

> I would have guessed that swimming would be much more common there, since it is an island nation.

You could assume that. But in the islands you'd find that public access to open water is highly restricted. Most beaches are owned by resorts. The one remaining public beach in Jamaica was sold off to Chris Blackwell, who owns other resorts in Jamaica. Anthony Bourdain covers this in Parts Unknown.

With so few opportunities to swim it should come as no surprise that most island people can't.

I think you're misunderstanding him. What he meant was the cultural norm (or more accurately imo: "the stereotype") in America around black people is that they can't swim, don't like baseball, don't listen to rock/country or play golf.

This got me curious and a cursory search seems to hint that blacks are proportionately represented (as per the percentage of the US population that identifies as such) in baseball, and disproportionally represented in sports like basketball.

For baseball: > 60% of the players in the league are White, while 28.53% are Hispanic. That leaves roughly 12% available for Black and Asian players[1]

For basketball: > NBA in 2015 was composed of 74.4 percent black players, 23.3 percent white players, 1.8 percent Latino players, and 0.2 percent Asian players.

In that exactly as many black people play baseball professionally as you'd expect, just looking at population numbers.

[1] http://www.besttickets.com/blog/mlb-players-census/

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ethnicity_in_the_NBA

Interesting. So it seems that enjoying baseball is a form of mild insanity that is distributed evenly across all races ;)

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