70% of African-American children and 58% of Hispanic children have little or no swimming ability, compared with 40% of Caucasian children

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, African-Americans between the ages of 5 and 14 years old drowned at 3.1 times the rate of whites in that age range, from 2000 to 2006. And in that period African-American kids were five times as likely as white kids to drown in swimming pools, in some cases inches from safety.