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Comment on Anon needs to spend less time on 4chan

clay_pidgin@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

My town (in the South) chose to fill the public pool with cement rather than be forced to allow black residents to use it. For many decades, we didn’t have a public pool at all and it’s only been fairly recently that a new one was opened. I’m not surprised that black Americans have a reportedly lower rate of swimming proficiency!

I point out this shameful bit of our town history often, because the place has grown tremendously in the last 20 years and become more diverse, and folks here don’t appreciate how bad it was within living memory and why we need to keep pushing.

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AnarchistArtificer@slrpnk.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

“I point out this shameful bit of our town history often…”

People who are “anti-woke” often say stuff like “they’re teaching kids to be ashamed of themselves for what their ancestors did”, and I think they don’t understand how healing and healthy it is to call out shameful parts of history. For me, acknowledging shameful parts of history is how I distance myself from those things, by subtextually saying “this is no longer the case, AND ALSO we intend to keep pushing forward”.

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- clay_pidgin@sh.itjust.works ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  That’s exactly my angle. It was bad more recently than you think, and it still needs to get better because we all like our neighbors.
  
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sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
Wow, that’s awful.

Ours is getting more diverse too, and my town has a really affordable recreation center ($5/visit or $15-30 per month, depending on single vs couple vs family). We have pretty good diversity when we go, and we bring some diversity ourselves. It’s just that there isn’t much diversity to go around in my town.

Growing up, swimming just wasn’t on the list of priorities for many minorities. They tended to recreate with others in their minority group, so black kids would play basketball, baseball, or football, Hispanics would play soccer or baseball, etc. My black and Asian friends would play video games, but that’s just my weird nerdy friend group.

Maybe the culture comes from racism though, idk, but it certainly seems that way in your area. I think it has more to do with role models, there are tons of black athletes in football, basketball, and baseball, but not so many in swimming.

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- markovs_gun@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  $15 a month is a lot of money for poor people. Minimum wage at 40 hours a week is only $1160 a month. If rent is $700 a month (and that’s cheaper than any apartment I’ve seen lately that only leaves $460 for everything else. Sure the rec center is nice but is it worth spending 3-6% of your post-housing expenses on?
  
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  - sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    
    is it worth spending 3-6% of your post-housing expenses on?
    
    Unlimited access to a gym (full compliment of weights and machines) with a pool and included classes? Yeah, I think so.
    
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