Black sailors

[ QUOTE ]
Also, amongst black people, there's a bit of a standing joke about white people sailing/parachuting/mountaineering/white water rafting/absailing naked into volcanoes etc - dangerous sports in general, so there's a culture thing going on.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is what I reckon, too, from my experience and is a major reason I don't think there is anything racist going on to discourage participation. I don't have any insite into the cultural influences on who does what sports. There are too many anomolies. I don't see any Inuit people in the Canadian Olympic team doing any of the kayak/canoe events. Is that due to racism/discrimination? I doubt it from my experience of Canadians.

We just read too much into situations when we should be getting on with our sport/recreation and offering a helping and welcoming hand to any who want to join us which I believe is already overwhelmingly the case in sailing.

Howard
 
All I can say is when I went climbing that it was predominantly a middleclass sport and I did't see too many inner city kids, white,red,green, grey or black. The same seems to be true of sailing. As for swimming, what a lot of cobblers .. if a black man can win a 100m race or run a marathon I'm pretty damn sure that physiologically he's capable of winning a swimming race. Its the opportunities that are available that make the difference. Its not the Brits are physio or psychologically incapable of playing tennis .. its just thar we do'nt have the infrastructure and therefor the opportunities available. Same argument.
 
There’s some rather strange logic at work in this thread on the part of some contributors. I’ve read each post and I still can’t see how the connection is being made between swimming and sailing. If you fall out on your boat in UK waters then your chances of survival depend on being rescued, not your ability to swim to shore or back to the boat. Even being got back onto the boat doesn’t mean you’ll survive. The ability and desire to sail is quite distinct from the ability and desire to swim. So, the actual question is why people from ethic minorities don’t, in the UK, currently engage in leisure boat ownership.

Clearly there can’t be any intellectual nor physical reason. People from all ethnic groups are inseparable from each other with respect to each of these two categories. So, there must be some other cause, and as Captain Haddock has argued clearly, these factors are social and economic. No other argument is needed.

(An interesting fact is that all human beings are more closely related to each other than are the individual members of any other species. You, the person reading this, is more closely related to everyone else on the planet than a blackbird in North Kent is related to one in South Kent!)

Let’s not try to use spurious arguments to cover up the reality of economic, social and prejudicial exclusion.
 
aitchw - Inuit culture has been decimated by it's exposure to Western culture. Racism isn't just about the views of individuals it's about the action of large-scale institutions. This is what is meant by institutional racism - the action (or lack of action) of commercial and state organisations. Inuit in Olympic kayaking! Tell me you were joking.

WeeJimi - The history of British climbing is almost entirely working class. Working men from the industrial north of England escaping into the Pennines. Sheffield is still the unofficial centre of climbing in the UK.
 
The history of British climbing is almost entirely working class

erm beg to disagree.

There are two exceptions one of which you refer to:

1) The Creagh Dhu
2) The Rock & Ice

Otherwise almost without exception the heritage is middle class. (In fact both these clubs had as many middle class as working class members)
 
Magazines, culture and peer groups

[ QUOTE ]

Yachting's media image
I've never seen a brochure or yacht magazine that has a non white person enjoying ownership.


[/ QUOTE ]

Good point but also an interesting conundrum. In all of my time editing a magazine I never deliberately set out to either exclude people of ethnic minorities, nor it has to be said to positively discriminate by setting out to include them. Fact of the matter was the opportunity never presented itself without intervention to photograph staff or readers of anything other than white skin, save for the (welcome) rare occasions when we had people attend magazine events who were of different ethnic origin.

So do you solve that by, say, hiring an African-Caribbean or Asian model? And if so, what is that trying to prove? By and large we weren't using models on our front covers (much to the art editor's disgust probably).

The marine industry itself has been looking much more closely of late at ethnic influences as it is certainly aware that there are whole communities it doesn't reach.

However I do personally believe that culture has a massive influence. For example, I was recently in India where, it is reckoned, the population (or at least the 30 per cent of the population living near coastal regions) has some kind of affinity with that country's fascinating maritime history and hence, some kind of affinity with the water and the things that use it. But currently India has no infrastructure to support leisure boating, so outside of a relatively few quite successful sailors on the international dinghy circuit it all remains to be proved as to whether leisure boating is something that will take off as the country's demographics change.

On the other hand in Singapore you find several quite superb marina facilities lying half-used because the indegenous population able to afford a boat generally feel no great draw towards boating - some are plain frightened of the water (something the tsunami will not have assisted). For that reason the jury is also out on whether China will develop a strong interest in yachting and the like - facilities are being built now but will they get used? Will be interesting to see.

I guess you could discuss the trueisms and falsehoods of ethnic and cultural influence until the world stops spinning but surely much of the issue is about peer groups as anything else, as many white people find to their cost. Boating tends to propagate through friends and families peer groups. If you don't belong, try breaking in...it's not always easy.

I would be bold enough to suggest that if you solve the accessibility issues inherent in boating today you stand a half chance of making it a more multi-cultural and multi-background activity for future generations.
 
Uisteach, yes, in a way. I was trying to illustrate the futility of trying relate ethnicity in it's self to sporting involvement so we probably don't differ too much in viewpoint. I hope my other posts indicate my belief that it is social/cultural more than economic and certainly not discriminatory.

I was about to make the same point to WeeJimi and it is not confined to Joe Brown/Don Whillans et al in the North of England. The pre War antagonism between the SMC and the Clyde shipyard workers who pioneered huge numbers of routes in the highlands is legendary and much documented.
 
I don't know about club membership profiles.

The history is complex - mountaineering and rock climbing weave in and out of each other. I was referring to modern technical climbing - the Don Whillans and Joe Brown school. But, just to weaken my own point, have to admit that the first recorded climb in the Lakes was an ascent of Broad Stand by Coleridge. Don't think he was working class. Maybe my own prejudices have come into play - working class and climbed all my life all over the world. I only ever seem to meet working class people - with middle class jobs.
/forums/images/graemlins/blush.gif
 
It's not proof, but I can assure you that there's a black fellow with a firm grip on the tiller of this sailing boat. (Picture taken in Cap Verde where white fellows are as rare as shampoo in Kojacs bathroom)

min07.JPG
 
Hi aitchw

I take your point - just trying to point out that racism isn't overt, it works mostly through the invisible strands of exclusion and denial.
 
Come on now Jimi, you're exaggerating. When I started climbing in the 60s most climbers in the Coe etc were Glaswegian or fae places like Falkirk, and gave every impression of being working class. I can recall labourers, fitters, turners, joiners, squaddies and submariners, but not many bank managers (not there's anything particularly wrong with being one) or accountants.

Sure, the Creagh Dhu had middle class members, but in my view, most climbers wurnae in clubs anyway.

People like Jock Nimlin were an inspiration to thousands of working class people in Glasgow and the west of Scotland.

There were even Fifers on the hills!

Goes back to Captain Haddock's point about accessibility - jumping a bus or hitching a lift made the mountains accessible at that time. Have to say though, it really pains me nowadays when I see people shelling out good money for GPSs and ridiculously expensive gear etc just to go onto the hills. My feeling is that since the 80s, climbing has been increasingly middle class, but maybe that's just the UK's changing demographic profile.

Personally I think the enjoyment of climbing is in inverse ratio to the commercialisation of the sport/pastime and the creation of a self-serving "outdoor industry".

What about sailing?
 
Well you beat me by about 10 years, first route was Shackle Route on the Buchaille in 1975 .. 3rd route was Swastika on the Trilleachan in plimsolls .. but thats another story!! Seriously though I reckon there was a lot of inverse snobbery then when it wisnae cool to be middleclass .. I notice you refer to Nimlin but not to WH Murray et al. Anyway without widshing to pick nits I did refer to inner city originally .. and a welder from Falkirk, whilst undoubtedly lowerlife, is scarcely inner city.
 
Re: Magazines, culture and peer groups

Kim

I don't think it matters that people don't want to sail. Missionary zeal on the part of anyone is not something to be encouraged. If sailing for leisure has no currency in other countries and within other cultures then there is nothing for any of us to be concerned about. To set out to make sailing "multi-cultural" is a bit like setting out to change traditional belief systems to Christianity - though, of course, not quite so serious. The point is about not excluding people who may want to try sailing. And, of course, the way things are portrayed in the media is a part of this - possibly a major part. Exclusion acts invisibly through the way things are presented and talked about - we could have the same discussion about disability, then notions of access would perhaps be clearer.

In general your magazines are very non-campaigning. You make a good living floating in the mainstream, but maybe this is an issue you could take on board. It's not about thinking about China; it's about opening up access to a multi-cultural Britain - to your magazine as well as sailing. Why not ask around and see what people from ethnic minorities may want to see in YM or your other publications.

Maybe start by avoiding gendered language and then work to become even more inclusive?

Just a thought.
 
Jimi, you're starting to lose the place here. Your proposition re climbing was "almost without exception the heritage is middle class". So there would hardly be any point in quoting Bill Murray as an exemplar of working class participation. Hence Jock Nimlin.

Even Bell might have taken issue with you, despite him being a PhD an'at.
 
Black Swimmers

Here's a link to an interesting piece on why athletes of West African origin do not make competetive swimmers. Scoll down about 1/3rd of the page for the piece I'm refering to.

Last summer I went to a local yacht club open day and went for a brief sail along with a couple of coloured gents. They were, like myself, considering taking up the sport but I don't know if they ever did.

I tend to agree with the lack of interest theories and do not consider it to be financial. I would certainly like to be as wealthy as some of the 'ethnic minorities' that I see driving around London in very new and equally very expensive cars.
 
Re: Magazines, culture and peer groups

So, in summary we think
1. They (Blacks or Afro-Caribs) have no inclination to watersports because of culture.
2. They don't like getting their hair wet? Eh?
3. Perceived as a whitey thing
4. Can't swim as well as caucasians at top level for physiological reasons, as in vice versa for running
5. The yacht club structure makes sailing inaccessible (but only 15% of boatowners belong to a club)
6. they don't like extreme sports
7. None feature in yachting mags because there arent any sailing
8. there are no Inuits in Olympic kyaking. Eh?
9. Mountain climbing is/is not a working class sport
10. blacks do/do not float as well as whiteys
11. Scotland is/is not better at being a Master Race than the Irish (although they don't paint the river in Chicago (whatever the Scottish national colour is) on St. (whoever the patron saint of Scotland is)'s day.

I think I may be more confused than ever. Still doesn't explain why no-one has a single sighting of a black sailor in UK waters. (sorry Stingo, the dhow looked unmanned).
Unusually, they combined intellectual might of the forum is unable to come to a verdict.
If anyone works with a black person with the readies to buy a boat (as there appear to be no black forumites (sorry Haddock but you are not from the correct ethnic origin to quailfy!) why not ask him/her why they don't? This may be our only way to an answer. (Afro-Caribs are indeed scarcer in N Ireland than shampoo in Kojak's bathroom, or I would ask one)
Regards
Jules
 
Re: Magazines, culture and peer groups

[ QUOTE ]
...Afro-Caribs are indeed scarcer in N Ireland than shampoo in Kojak's bathroom, or I would ask one

[/ QUOTE ]
Oi! Stop stealing my cliches.
 
Re: Magazines, culture and peer groups

My wife and I saw a black sailor on a Mobo in Cowes last year (he looked like Trevor MacDonald but don't think it was him). It struck us as unusual at the time, and we wondered why this was?

This thread hasn't really answered my question.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Share this page

Top