Surfing, identity and race

In this chapter, I explore the formative and contemporary experiences of the African-American surfers I met and interviewed. While some aspects of their experiences and identities were shared with white and other ethnic minority surfers, what was most revealing was the range of difficulties or constraints that many of these African-American surfers had faced and that they saw as barriers to other African Americans becoming surfers. This is the focus of the first section of this chapter (‘Examining constraints’), where I explore the cultural and ideological factors that had a negative effect on their experiences. While some had been able to transcend difficulties and had become lifelong surfers, for others, the varying forms of exclusion and white racism they experienced continued to impact on their surfing experiences. In the second section of this chapter (‘“Space invaders”: African-American surfers’ experiences’), I explore how these surfers negotiated space and identity in the surfing subculture, and their experiences of racism and exclusion. I highlight various physical and verbal acts – ‘racial microaggressions’ (Burdsey, 2011c) – directed at individual black ¹ surfers, rather than the institutionally instigated processes discussed in Chapter 7. Nonetheless, these discrete acts need to be understood as an on-going process that was part of the broader discrimination and harassment affecting people’s lives (Burdsey, 2013). Given the dearth of research on black surfing experiences, I also offer some insights into the experiences, desires and difficulties of the black surfer subjectivity. ²