Swim lessons help minority children break cycle - CNN.com

Swim lessons help minority children break cycle - CNN.com: ...Josh was not alone in the black community. According to USA Swimming, 70% of African-American children cannot swim, compared with nearly 60% for Hispanic children and 42% for white children. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, African-American children between the ages of 5 and 14 are three times more likely to drown than white children in the same age range.

As Butts tried to make sense of her son's tragedy, she realized she had passed her own inexperience to her son. Her father had witnessed a drowning when he was young and instilled in her a fear of water.