Swimming pools: How racism is at the root of current polcies

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Back in the 50s, public swimming pools were often segregated to where only white people could swim in them. It often cost little to no money to swim in them, as long as you were white. Then when they had to integrate, what did municipalities do? Did they integrate the pools to lead us into an era of racial equality?

Nope. They shut the pools down and filled them up with concrete. Suddenly, an ideology of minimal government and reducing public spending became very popular. But why did all these white people give up their pools? Didn’t they benefit from them, too? Well, white people tended to be well off already, so they could generally afford to use private swimming pools, while black people tended to be much poorer off and a lot of them could not afford it anymore. As a result, lots of black people even today don’t know how to swim.

I argue that sabotaging integration was a major motivation for lots of white people in the 60s and 70s to desire cutting public services; I argue that although their children did not really inherit the racial prejudices at the root of their parents’ views, they did inherit the desire for lower public spending and contempt for people in need of public services.

But don’t just take my word for it. Nixon adviser Lee Atwater also said this (I bleep out the n-word):

For what it's worth, this sort of behaviour wasn't limited to the US. My cousin and uncle and a few other relatives have described incidents related where they went to the nearby pool and the folks who passed being allowed in, but others not. This would have been 1960s era Quebec.

I would agree with the above.