Places to swim still a beachhead for bigotry
When girl wonder Penny Oleksiak made Canadian history this month with a golden victory at Rio, she tied for first place with a 20-year-old who made Olympic history. American Simone Manuel is the first black woman to win an individual Olympic gold in swimming.
Manuel was not just swimming the 100metre freestyle to win, she was also swimming against a historic legacy of discrimination that kept black people out of swimming pools and public beaches in the U.S., a practice that remained even after schools were desegregated.
Given these historic disincentives, a majority of young African-Americans today simply can’t swim. To them all, Manuel’s win is a beacon of possibilities.
That long step to the top of the podium provided good news at a time when, far from turning the tide toward inclusion, places to swim have been exposed as beachheads for bigotry. The place to bare bodies has also laid bare deep-seated racial, cultural and gender-based biases across the Western world. Here are three recent examples that made headlines.
As reported here in July, a hijab-wearing Scarborough mother was told to leave the pool if she didn’t change her daughter’s long shorts and T-shirt, although they were swimwear. (It was deemed OK for her son to wear that.)
In the United States in June, the American Red Cross was forced to apologize after a social media post elicited outrage over a safety poster that labelled white kids “cool” for obeying the rules and kids of colour “uncool” for disobeying them.
In France, the city of Cannes and 15 towns chose to uphold the nation’s traditions of liberté and egalité by imposing more rules around women’s clothing. On Aug.12, it banned the burkini — full-body- covering swimsuits — on its beaches. The ban does not apply to full-body-covering scuba diving suits. Perhaps there was a safety angle to this?
There isn’t. The city’s decidedly non-Muslim mayor had decided burqinis were “the uniform of extremist Islamism, not of the Muslim religion.”
Pools and beaches have also become battlegrounds over modesty — for women.
Beach volleyball matches in Rio provided the perfect showcase to visualize that spectrum of modesty, as the uniforms ranged from itsy bikinis and tankinis to full sleeves and full pants (including a hijab option).
Why do so many female competitors wear so little and men compete in tanks and shorts? USA Today asked its nation’s beach volleyball team this question. The communication’s manager said the team’s female athletes choose to wear bikinis, “because there are less places for sand to hide.” That explanation appears disingenuous. There is an authentic — and valid — reason to wear so little: vanity. Who wouldn’t want to show off those incredibly sculpted bodies? I know who; those who value modesty as a virtue.
You may or may not be comfortable with that moral code, but if you agree women that have a choice to wear little then you agree they have a choice to cover up
Women’s sports get sexualized to varying degrees and, in the highly sexualized beach culture, one set of athletes gets leered at and the other gets jeered at. On that front, neither side wins. Yet, one side is perceived as the “free” and the other as the “oppressed.”
Beaches can also be on the front lines for racial supremacy, as witnessed during Australia’s Cronulla Riots of 2005. That country’s largest racial riots were sparked off by an altercation in Sydney’s beach suburb of Cronulla between Australia’s much-vaunted lifeguards (who were white) and a group of Lebanese men.
A silly argument quickly lead to the congregation of 5,000 white men on the city’s beach, singing, drinking, chest thumping, flag-waving — and targeting and beating up darker-skinned men.
Why? Because that argument ignited slow-burning racial tensions. Residents believed local beaches were for locals only. According to media reports, a text message sent before the riots sounding the call for racists to unite simply read: “Just a reminder that Cronulla’s 1st wog bashing day is still on this Sunday. Chinks bashing day is on the 27th and the Jews are booked in for early January.”
Going to the seaside can be a time of calm reflection and recreation, so why does stripping down to get into water end up stripping down the notion of inclusiveness?
Through the 20th century, going to a pool to swim meant you could afford to pay for it, going to a beach meant you could afford the time for leisure. Both symbolized privilege and luxury. From segregated U.S. and European colonies to apartheid South Africa, they were available to a select few.
Gradually opening pools and beaches to all people diluted that privilege. Modern laws don’t allow for direct exclusion, but being offended by what others wear, or how they behave, simply allows the threatened elite to disguise their bigotry.