To be fair , black people are statistically less likely to know how to swim than white people . Some of this is economic , but some of it ' s cultural . White people are expected to know how to swim , while manynot all , but manyblack people I know don ' t know how to swim or have been told their whole lives that black people don ' t swim . It creates a vicious cycle . Now , as I said , some of this is economic . When I was in school and we had swim class , who was a good swimmer really depended on your economic class as much as anything . The poor kids normally didn ' t have swim lessons like the more economically privileged kids . <| sep |> Not actually true . He modeled them on Jews . Tolkein was rather a fan of Jews at a time when they were being oppressed . There is a lot of information on this .