Ethnic minorities and sailing.

[elton]

Why, would they want to go on sunbathing holidays?

Work, not holiday. Get the work done, then safari, jet ski, casino, or sunbathing.

 

[ryanroberts]

Lumping minorities into one group like BAME is only really useful if you want to direct negative attention at the majority. Leisure boating and many watersports are historically very western European / Anglo diaspora for various reasons, though I have seen increasing numbers of south asians getting involved in inland boating. My Keralan colleague is interested in going sailing, I'll bring him along when I'm less likely to drown his family. My Taiwanese colleagues mostly think its nuts.. We should avoid barriers to entry but please for the love of the lord do not bring the culture war into this pastime, it's a prime target especially with the existing misconceptions about class.

 

[Rappey]

In my 28 yrs of my current boat sailing on the south coast I have easily had over 100 different people on board (no its not a charter boat)
Australian, new Zealand, south Africa, America, Spain, Germany, Sweden, Nigeria . Maybe more?
3 seperate black girls and one black guy.
They all loved it. I take a photo of everyone at the helm who comes sailing. Got a nice collection

 

[JumbleDuck]

What's the correct word then?

Clue 1: "Black" and "minority ethnic" are adjectives.

Clue 2: We don't talk about "an old", "a blind", "a deaf", "a Scottish" or "a red-haired".

 

[elton]

Clue 1: "Black" and "minority ethnic" are adjectives.

Clue 2: We don't talk about "an old", "a blind", "a deaf", "a Scottish" or "a red-haired".

Doesn't answer my question.

 

[newtothis]

Doesn't answer my question.

Perhaps you should seek one out and ask them. Probably best not to use your current terminology when doing so.

 

[Bluetack42]

10+ years ago when I kept my boat on Itchenor reach there was a black guy who had a yacht moored a couple along, sometimes he brought a teenage boy & girl along, he kept his dingy on the Itchenor chains. I wanted to be friendly but swinging moorings are not conducive to getting to know strangers, we got as far as nodding & waving to each other then I moved away.

I recall he had a stylish leather Stetson hat, I built up a narrative that he was a doctor, separated & wanted a hobby to help stay in touch with teenaged children, who knows the reality?

 

[RivalRedwing]

er, don't forget:
Home - Scaramouche Sailing Trust

 

[Babylon]

Why, would they want to go on sunbathing holidays?

While your humour is at best poor and your ignorance not uncommon, your racism is unacceptable.

 

[Babylon]

Anecdotes:

1. I have a friend who is British-Pakistani who sails a long-keeler on the South Coast.

2 . My brother's hiking and wild-camping mates (Wales, Yorkshire, Lakes, Scotland, etc) include guys who are of Pakistani (maths teacher) and Kashmiri (NHS manager) origins, the latter has raced in the past and also sailed with me.

Ignoring cultural differences, given that it takes 2-3 generations to fully integrate into a wholly new culture, focussing first on educational, employment and in some cases professional gains/stabilisation, its little wonder that activities like sailing are still poorly represented.

Its also not just a cultural difference - consider how yacht sailing has now overwhelmingly become an old person's activity.

 

[Deleted member 36384]

Scaramouche is an exception which shows just how uninvolved sections of society are when it comes to sailing.

 

[LittleSister]

I am not for a moment suggesting that the situation with sailing in the UK is the same, but this reminds me of an Radio 4 news interview I heard with the head of motorsport in apartheid South Africa, when it was campaigning to have a South-African Grand Prix or Formula 1 during the cultural boycott.

The interviewer asked him about any link between apartheid and motor-racing. He said they didn't have any black drivers or spectators, so there wasn't a problem!

 

[Kelpie]

It is certainly true that there is a significant under representation of BAME people in sailing. And in quite a lot of other sports and passtimes. Partly it is to do with people mostly doing the same hobbies as their parents. It's difficult to get into any niche hobby unless you're introduced to it by someone, and sailing is no different there. And of course your parents are most likely to be the ones introducing you.
Skiing is another one I have experience with that is historically very white. That's definitely changing a lot faster. I've met whole groups in chalets who basically realised that they could afford it, and that a lot their peers in their workplaces were raving about it, so decided to give it a go. But it's a lot easier to decide to give skiing a go and book a week's holiday than it is to decide to go sailing.

However, I think there are some good signs. There is a lot more diversity on the "crew wanted" facebook groups than there ever used to be. And the publicity surrounding the Scaramouche project can only encourage kids who never would have previously considered sailing as either a hobby or a career to look at it.

This is it. It's much, much wider than just sailing. It's a whole culture.
Go to an agricultural show and see which ethnicities are represented. Likewise horse riding, classical music, and a host of other activities.
What do these things have in common? If you take out ethnicity, which socio-economic classes tend to participate in them?

Now you might correctly observe that there are plenty of wealthy people of all ethnicities in the UK. What is to stop relatively well-off dentists, business owners, and other professionals from getting in to sailing (and all the other activities) regardless of their ethnicity?
Perhaps there is some form of 'cultural inertia' at play. We desire to do certain things not because we have coldy calculated that they yield a good return(in terms of enjoyment) on our invested time and money, but for more subtle reasons. My Dad had a boat, and I grew up reading Arthur Ransome and messing around in Oppies. It just seemed natural that when I started earning money and had a driveway big enough to park a boat on, I bought a Wayfarer and never looked back. But few of my friends had the same upbringing, and very few people my age show any interest in buying a boat.
I think it is this inertia that can keep traditional activities alive, but in many cases it is a losing battle and numbers are dwindling year on year, whilst the demographics of participants becomes older (and often increasing male, and exclusively white).

 

[[159032]]

I've noticed a fair smattering of Welsh 'doing boats' - and the odd Yorkshireman now and then....

Geoffrey Boycott?

 

[semisimple]

e.g. Asian wealth has a tendency to be retained for the family rather than spent on frivolities like boats

? definitely some of this - you should have seen my parents faces when I bought a boat...I still don't tell them when I go off on long sailing trips!

Your average brown/yellow/black/whatever person doesn't really like to be singled out as BAME but oh well, everyone's free to lump people as they see fit.

 

[dom]

....Your average brown/yellow/black/whatever person doesn't really like to be singled out as BAME but oh well, everyone's free to lump people as they see fit.

Well done you

We're just the same as anybody else, so much so that nobody even notices anymore. Something this thread perfectly illustrates! Cool by me

 

[[159032]]

Unfortunately this video, an attempt to explain BLM to Whites through sailing metaphors falls down badly Black Lives Matter Organizer Explains Movement To Older White Americans Using Sailing Metaphors To Make Them Feel More Comfortable

Does anyone else find this distinction between blacks and whites uncomfortable?

 

[JumbleDuck]

Unfortunately this video, an attempt to explain BLM to Whites through sailing metaphors falls down badly Black Lives Matter Organizer Explains Movement To Older White Americans Using Sailing Metaphors To Make Them Feel More Comfortable

Does anyone else find this distinction between blacks and whites uncomfortable?

Do you know what sort of website "The Onion" is?

 

[pvb]

Many black and asian people seem to have an aversion to water - I'm talking about swimming, not washing. The majority of them seem not to be able to swim, so this may be one factor in their scarcity on boats.

 

[awol]

Many black and asian people seem to have an aversion to water - I'm talking about swimming, not washing. The majority of them seem not to be able to swim, so this may be one factor in their scarcity on boats.

... and that leads us to the work that the RNLI, supported by the now defunct DfID, have been doing abroad to reduce the number of drownings.