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Home > Jeff Schultz > Archives > 2008 > June > 29
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Swimmer’s splash could erode stereotypes
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Cullen Jones is black. Cullen Jones is a swimmer.
Notwithstanding observations from the noted late anthropologist, Al Campanis, who believed African Americans made lousy swimmers because, “they don’t have the buoyancy,” there remains a sad and wide chasm between race and sport in the pool.
Jones is one of the fastest swimmers in the U.S. But his skin tone continues to alter perceptions. He could walk into a room wearing USA gear but most would presume him to be a sprinter, a point guard, a soccer player — yes, even a chess player — before they would guess a water sport.
“Ask the concierge downstairs,” Jones said at a recent USOC media summit in Chicago. “He guessed everything. He said, ‘You’re a chess player, aren’t you?’ I said, ‘Yeah, ultimate backgammon, actually.’ They never guess swimming. They guess everything under the sun.”
They won’t have to guess this week. Jones will stand out from most among the 800 swimmers in the starting blocks at the U.S. Olympic swim trials in Omaha. He is the only African American currently on the U.S. national swim team. Should Jones succeed at the trials, he’ll become a U.S. Olympic rarity. Former Georgia star Maritza Correia made the 2004 women’s team in Athens. Anthony Ervin, whose father is of African American and Native American descent, competed for the U.S. men in Sydney in 2000.
At the U.S. Olympic level, that’s it.
Jones doesn’t mind race being spotlighted whenever he’s on the starting block. He embraces the role. He’s a centerpiece of USA Swimming’s “Make A Splash” initiative, which aims to educate minorities on the sport and make it more accessible to inner-city youth.
USA Swimming has 252,000 members who swim competitively. Less than two percent are black. African American children are nearly three times more likely to die from drowning than non-blacks. Nearly 60 percent of African American children (ages 6 to 16) can’t swim (almost twice as many as whites).
Jones is a fitting spokesperson for the program. He nearly drowned when he was 5.
He was born in the Bronx and raised in New Jersey. He hadn’t had a swim lesson when he convinced his parents to let him go down an inner tube water slide in Pennsylvania. The ride was fun. The landing at the bottom war was near-tragedy. The tube flipped upside down. Jones held on and flipped with it under water. He passed out and CPR was required to revive him.
“I don’t remember panicking too much,” he said. “But I do remember being unconscious.”
He also remembers asking his parents, “What can I go on next?”
He had found a home in the water. So his parents got him lessons. He got good. He started winning races. His father, Ronald Jones, who played basketball at a small college in the Bronx, tried to push his son into hoops, but Cullen kept coming back to the pool.
“By the time I was 12 years old, my father kind of let it go,” he said.
If he had known where this was going, Ronald Jones never would have had an issue. Cullen became a standout at North Carolina State and the first African American male swimmer to share a world record (400 freestyle relay).
Ronald Jones never got to see any of that. He died of lung cancer in 2000, when Cullen was 16. Cullen has a tattoo that reads, “Jones 41” (his former uniform number). He writes “41” with his autograph. “I always wanted my dad to be a part of my career,” he said.
An Olympic berth would be an appropriate next step, and one more chance to erode stereotypes.
