Always wanted to be a lifeguard but can’t swim? At public pools in Phoenix, Ariz., that’s not a problem — as long as you’re a minority.
If you thought universities took affirmative action too far, you ain’t seen nothing yet. The Phoenix aquatics department is looking to hire more minority lifeguards, but knowing how to swim is optional.
“We will work with you in your swimming abilities,” the city’s Melissa Boyle told NPR.
The reasoning behind this bold move is the culture and language gaps between the lifeguards, who are mostly white, and the swimmers, who are mostly Latino and African-American.
“The kids in the pool are all either Hispanic or black or whatever, and every lifeguard is white, and we don’t like that,” Boyle’s co-worker Kelly Martinez said. “The kids don’t relate; there’s language issues.”
“Do you speak Spanish?” she asked a Latina student at a recruiting event held at a local high school. “We need more lifeguards who can speak Spanish.”
Becky Hulett, the supervisor of Phoenix’s public pools, has been strategizing how to pull more minorities into her lifeguard staff over the past two years.
“It’s that catch-22,” Hulett told NPR. “If the kids don’t learn how to swim, as adults they are not going to swim, [and] they aren’t going to take their own kids to swim.”
She’s raised $15,000 in scholarships to pay for students’ lifeguard-certification courses and now anyone who passes a simple swim test can try out to be a lifeguard.
But when it comes to saving lives, the color of the lifeguard’s skin and the language he or she speaks seems much less important than their ability to swim — and therefore actually save lives.
