ABSTRACT
Sport has long been seen as a fertile site for political protests against social injustice, including racial exclusion (Carrington and McDonald, 2001b: 416). John Carlos’s and Tommie Smith’s Black Power salute at the 1968 Mexico Olympic Games remains one of the most prominent examples. In contrast, contemporary black athletes have been criticised for their lack of engagement with race-related activism: ‘[Since] Harry Edwards’s mobilization of efforts towards the end of the Civil Rights Movement in the late 1960s, there have been very few instances of black male athletic activism’ (Agyemang et al., 2010: 421). In this chapter, I discuss the ways in which, for some black surfers, surfing has become a politicised arena through which to confront, contest and attempt to change their individual and collective exclusion and marginality. The main collective vehicle for most of my interviewees was the Black Surfing Association (BSA). I outline the formation of the BSA, its aims and objectives, describing what the organisation does and the activities it promotes. Nonetheless, as Carrington advocates, our examinations of such examples of sporting resistance need to be rooted in theoretical questions about their wider impact (Carrington, 2010). Here I explore the reasons why surfing, specifically, was considered an important political sphere, also asking what kind of politics was involved, and how individuals’ political visions differed. I then assess some of the consequences of their politics for instigating broader social change. I explore the impact of sporting resistance, asking if they were solely ‘symbolic gestures or had a wider structural impact on contemporary racial formations and forms of contemporary racism (ibid.: 3).
