NEW YORK (AP) - Nearly 60 percent of African-American children can't swim, almost twice the figure for white children, according to a first-of-its-kind survey which USA Swimming hopes will strengthen its efforts to lower minority drowning rates and draw more blacks into the sport.

Stark statistics underlie the initiative by the national governing body for swimming. Black children drown at a rate almost three times the overall rate. And less than 2 percent of USA Swimming's nearly 252,000 members who swim competitively year-round are black.

I'm sure Reverend Wright thinks that the US government has purposely kept blacks from learning to swim so that more of them drown. After all, if more blacks could swim, blowing up the levees to flood New Orleans wouldn't have been nearly as effective, would it?

keep 'em coming