Why are so few?

[Pokemon 0]

This might not be the right forum but me and my friend were discussing this a few days ago. Please don´t take this as an racist question.

Why are so "few" black or asian skydivers out there? At least in the western world. I find it confusing and sort of weird.

Where I am from there aren´t many colored people so I can´t find any real answer when I look at my country.

And again I am not a racist and I hope you don´t find this question to be insulting.

[darkwing 4]

It is an interesting question, which has come up many times in my 32 years of skydiving. I have yet to hear a compelling response. I am certain that many sports and recreations have either under- or over-represented minority participants. Some of it may be due to a self-fulfilling mechanism which inhibits participation because there aren't others of similar ethnicity already participating. It may be that the embryo of our sport came from World War II paratroopers, who were overwhelming white (please corrrect me if I am wrong).

-- Jeff
My Skydiving History

[mattjw916 2]

Maybe the sight of all those white people running around bon-fires, in odd-colored clothing, consuming mass-quantities of alcohol scares them away.

NSCR-2376, SCR-15080

[airtwardo 6]

Why are so "few" black or asian skydivers out there?

***

They're tooooo busy playin' HOCKEY!

~ If you choke a Smurf, what color does it turn? ~

[reddevil1 0]

All mouth no ball's asked a couple to do a tadem yeah, up for that but ,when it comes to the crunch full of @hit no ball's.

The point of no return what a rush.

[mattjw916 2]

It can probably be said that most people are "all talk" when it comes to making a skydive. I have had quite a few people "talk mad smack" about making a skydive but in the end, no one ever shows up or is always "busy" regardless of their ethnicity. My g/f is Korean and has done a tandem and would love to do AFF but has funding issues, my ex-wife is Indian and wants to do a tandem and probably will later this year... and there is nothing I'd like better than to throw my ex-wife out of a plane.

NSCR-2376, SCR-15080

[KATO33 0]

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All mouth no ball's asked a couple to do a tadem yeah, up for that but ,when it comes to the crunch full of @hit no ball's.

So every White person who you asked on a tandem did it?

Blue Skies Black Death

[bmcd308 0]

I've posted this story on here before, but when I was making plans to do my first tandem, I asked tons of people to come with me, including almost everyone in my office. A black woman in the office looked me straight in the eye with a somewhat surprised look on her face and said, "Black people don't do stuff like that." She was not joking a bit, and I think she might have thought I was an idiot for not knowing it already.

----------------------------------
www.jumpelvis.com

[wildcard451 0]

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I've posted this story on here before, but when I was making plans to do my first tandem, I asked tons of people to come with me, including almost everyone in my office. A black woman in the office looked me straight in the eye with a somewhat surprised look on her face and said, "Black people don't do stuff like that." She was not joking a bit, and I think she might have thought I was an idiot for not knowing it already.

One of my really good friends at school gives me shit like that all the time when I ask him to come make a jump .....cracks me up every time.

[Zenister 0]

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surprised look on her face and said, "Black people don't do stuff like that."

guess i'll have to tell a few of my friends they arent really "Black"...

____________________________________
Those who fail to learn from the past are simply Doomed.

[lawrocket 3]

Hmmm. I always thought that white men can't jump. Dang, I go it all wrong..

My wife is hotter than your wife.

[Peej 0]

I took an Indian friend of mine on a tandem last year, i was waiting on the ground when they landed and the first thing that came out of her mouth when she landed was: "You white people are crazy!"

As far as a lack of black skydivers here in SA, that's easy, a large portion of the population is still poor and skydiving is an expensive hobby. It's way cool to see some of our packers progressing through the SL course though.

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[Orange1 0]

lawrocket - ROTFL!!

PJ is right about SA, but happily as incomes are rising in general so the proportion of at least potential entrants is... (2 of the group of 6 friends who did the FJC with me are black... unfortunately, they stopped after 2 and 3 jumps respectively... one was fear, the other 'too busy' to jump enough to keep up with currency...)

Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

[Unparagoned 0]

Maybe there are so few black and asian skydivers simply because there are more white people in the western world? You would have to find the proportion of people in the western world that are black and asian and then see if that proportion matches up with what proportion of skydivers are black or asian.

Other than that I know my dad gave me a hard time about skydiving saying it was dangerous... but I'm sure many parents have the same ideas regardless of colour.

[Adriandavies 0]

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This might not be the right forum but me and my friend were discussing this a few days ago. Please don´t take this as an racist question.

Why are so "few" black or asian skydivers out there? At least in the western world. I find it confusing and sort of weird.

Where I am from there aren´t many colored people so I can´t find any real answer when I look at my country.

And again I am not a racist and I hope you don´t find this question to be insulting.

I live in Leicester in England. In the next few years it is expected this will be the first city in the country to have a majority Black/Asian (particularly Asian) population. This will mean that 100,000-150,000 of the population will be from ethnic minorities. I jump at British Parachute Schools (BPS) at Langar, Nottinghamshire. BPS is one of the largest UK DZ's making up to 30,000 jumps per year and at a rough estimate having 200 - 250 regular skydivers. I'd say that only 5-10 of these are not white ie about 4%!

In a way the lack of Asian participation surprises me because of the number of local Asians but looking at other sports maybe I shouldn't be so surprised. As a kid I used to participate in archery then I did a lot of canoe slalom. Neither of these sports had many non white participants. Later I got into motorbikes but again I found very few Black/Asian bikers. I can't think of many other sports which have a wide range of non whites apart from football (soccer) and athletics and I guess in the US American football and basketball.

I'd love to see more skydivers in general and a greater ethnic diversity making up our numbers, although I can think of one or two skydivers who would not like to see more Asians jumping. I don't think it is anything to do with our sport in particular that it doesn't attract a wide range of people. Loads of people from every background are put off because of the risk or the cost and as I have said there are very few sports in Western countries which do have levels of participation which reflect the ethnic make up of the country or region.

[airtwardo 6]

I took an Indian friend of mine on a tandem last year...


***
Dot or Feather?

~ If you choke a Smurf, what color does it turn? ~

[Peej 0]

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I took an Indian friend of mine on a tandem last year...


***
Dot or Feather?

Dot

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[Joellercoaster 6]

Skydiving is expensive.

Demographically, there just aren't that many non-white people affluent enough to take it up. And, as someone else pointed out in this thread, those who might be have other priorities for their wealth than pissing it away on jump tickets.

White South Africans seem to have a much better grasp of the differences in opportunity between racial groups than the rest of us. Possibly because they haven't spent so many generations telling themselves that we all really do have economic equality...

--
"I'll tell you how all skydivers are judged, . They are judged by the laws of physics." - kkeenan

"You jump out, pull the string and either live or die. What's there to be good at?

[Orange1 0]

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White South Africans seem to have a much better grasp of the differences in opportunity between racial groups than the rest of us. Possibly because they haven't spent so many generations telling themselves that we all really do have economic equality...

Funnily enough, after my previous post I happened to come across a report showing average household wealth by race in the US - it's a demographic report and only shows ages 65+ but I guess it's a reasonable representation, with white households worth over 5x that of black ones.

Maybe that answers the question.

Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

[Pokemon 0]

These answers do help

• Quote

[rustywardlow 0]

Have you ever seen a China man play Hockey?






"CAPTAIN THE DILITHIUM CRYSTALS JUST CAN'T TAKE THE STRESSSSSSS."

[kelpdiver 2]

The other generalization that will explain some of it is that most DZs exist in rural areas, or on the far outskirts of the big cities. There the population is whiter than the country as a whole. And people tend to the recreational options right in front of them, not the ones that are a 2 hour drive away.

I wonder what it would look like if you removed all the 2nd generation jumpers from the statistics, too. If you row on a dragon boat team, it's hardly surprising that 90% of the participants are Chinese.

[dayle 0]

Skydiving isn't the only place where this pops up. Before I started skydiving, I used to downhill ski a fair bit. guess what, there isn't much "colour" on the slopes either.

I don't know what the exact reason is, could be socio/economic, but I'm not sure.

Dayle

Dayle

[mnealtx 0]

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"Black people don't do stuff like that."

Two of my coworkers said the exact same thing....

Mike
I love you, Shannon and Jim.
POPS 9708 , SCR 14706

[eflynn 0]

It's a lot easier to do something you're kinda interested in if there's someone who looks like you who does it. It never really mattered to me because it just looked like fun but not everyone is like that.

A friend of mine I jump with has an African American co worker he'd been trying to get to jump for a few years. I talked him into it in 5 minutes. He said "Man, I thought there were all going to be crazy like Point Break but they're just normal people. You're normal too."