Racialised Perceptions and Coaching Approaches Among White Learn-To-Swim Instructors in the South African Context

Abstract

Considerable amounts of research, including research in psychology, has been produced to better understand the social constructions, dynamics, and relations of ‘race’, generally, and whiteness, in particular, within the field of sport. This study continues in this vein by critically examining the ways in which whiteness and, with it, racialised forms of prejudice can become implicated in water safety and the development of swimming skills, within the context of the learn-to-swim environment. This study specifically aims to explore how whiteness is (re)produced through, and (re)productive of, the perspectives of a sample of white South African learn-to-swim instructors by examining their racialised perceptions and constructions of swimmers of colour and, in particular, their abilities in learning to swim. To this effect, six white learn-to-swim instructors from a swim school in Gauteng Province, South Africa, were recruited and participated in one-on-one, face-to-face, unstructured, individual interviews. The data was analysed using a thematic analysis, underpinned by a theoretical framework of social constructionism and critical whiteness studies. The predominant themes that arose from this study include: (1) stereotypes by white learn-to-swim instructors surrounding the challenges that people of colour (PoC) appear to have when learning to swim swim as a result of fear, physiology, and issues around access; (2) whiteness in the form of comparing swimmers of colour to the ‘standard of whiteness’, white privilege and subtle forms of whiteness; (3) racial colour-blindness, and structural-institutional suggestions in order to make swimming and learn-to-swim more accessible to PoC and to assist in promoting water safety and swimming skills. Furthermore, two integrated themes emerged from the main themes, namely: (1) the understandings of race and (2) racialised coaching approaches. The value of this study lies in presenting initial insights into the ways that race, broadly, and swimmers of colours, more specifically, are perceived and socially constructed through the perspectives and coaching approaches of white learn-to-swim instructors. In doing so, the study attempts to understand the ways in which black subjectivities and black bodies are perceived and constructed, through the lens of whiteness and the perspective of the white gaze, in relation to water and, ultimately, how both explicit and implicit racialised prejudices continue to be (re)produced in learn-to-swim spaces and coaching approaches.