Swimming toward equity

I love water. 

I love swimming in it and floating on it and even just skipping rocks across it. To me water everywhere is the absolute best thing about living in Michigan. 

I grew up with swim lessons at a local swim club. There was a pool in my backyard and a swim team at my high school. My kids were taking swim lessons before they could walk. Being in and around water was the best thing ever; I never questioned it. That’s privilege for you.

But one day I was reading a student paper that presented me with a data point that left me flabbergasted – according to the CDC, black children drown at 3 times the rate of white children.  I couldn’t believe it, and when I looked further I learned that 64% of black children can’t swim. In Michigan, where we’re surrounded by water, 64% of a community’s kids not only couldn’t enjoy water the way I could; they were actively endangered by being surrounded by it. I had known for ages that racism had left scars across our history, but it just didn’t occur to me that something as innocuous as swimming in a lake was enmeshed in that history as well. 

I think a lot of people who care deeply about justice and equity have this experience — a bit of data or a story that suddenly illuminates an inequity that has persisted for generations. I saw drowning rates and lack of swimming lessons and then realized that if you look up the causal chain of inequity or disparity, there are almost always laws or policies that put that harm in place, often over generations. Black children drown more frequently than white children because they don’t learn to swim — because their parents didn’t learn to swim — because their grandparents and great-grandparents were segregated from public pools, beaches and community education programs. And even further back than that, their ancestors were kept away from water that could help them escape bondage. There’s a reason Michigan’s Gateway to Freedom statue overlooks the Detroit River.

This is what the League does and does amazingly well — it uses data to illuminate how policies rooted in exclusion become embedded in practice and then become calcified in custom. The League looks at policymaking through an equity lens — who has been left out of policies that promote prosperity? Who was historically harmed by policies that exclude? What policies should we pursue to ensure prosperity doesn’t leave out anyone and mitigates the historic harm of exclusion and racism? 

I’m proud to be part of the League’s Development team, building connections between supporters and the work we do. I love listening to analysts bring together research and stories that advance the policies that make Michigan a more just and equitable water wonderland. And I love swimming in the data that teaches me something new every day.