Some have attempted to justify the absence of Black people in swimming by asserting that they have denser bones, and therefore are not as buoyant. For this there is no evidence, and yes, it is as ludicrous as it sounds, but it is such a persistent idea that it has been said to me by Black friends. A year before Jimmy Snyder offered his biological essentialist explanation of sprinters’ success in 1988, another sports presenter, the former baseball player Al Campanis, asserted on the popular US program Nightline that Black people’s lack of representation in swimming was “because they don’t have
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