Racism

This Project involves looking at African American culture as it relates to swimming, water safety awareness, and water skills. The paper explores the myths and cultural norms associated with drowning phobias in African Americans to discover the root causes. Through historic accounts of African American culture one begins to uncover reasons why this culture became, in a sense aqua phobic. The paper will show what water sport professionals are up against, when working with a culture that is several generations removed from the water and their water skills. The ultimate goal is to draw attention to the importance of water safety and the ability to swim as a life skill.

This thesis examines recent explanations of racial violence in the Los Angeles Riots of 1992, the Oldham Riots of 2001, the French Riots of 2005, and the racial violence of 1992 in Germany. In each case I outline traditional theories claiming that racial violence is caused by competition between ethnic groups for housing, jobs, and cultural identity. These theories may benefit from consideration of the historical elements that have institutionalized racial discrimination in the systematic processes of integration. In conclusion, I argue that the governmental mechanisms of integration; including citizenship models, context of state formation, immigration policy, and nationalist ideology, suggest that the framework of racial prejudice and ethnocentrism may predispose a society to racial conflict.