Black surf organizations are popping up from coast to coast to provide a safe space for Black surfers who say that they still face discrimination and racism when they’re in the water. NBC News’ Niala Charles has the story.
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#surfing #sport #culture
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Reading these ridiculous comments on a positive news piece. You know you're a white supremacist when you're triggered by a simple mention of a cultural tradition 😂
Surfing is racist too? 🙃
We da victims! 😅
This is pure comedy! The push for racial supremacy is definitely entertaining!
University of California history professor Kevin Dawson knows a thing or two about the longstanding connection between African people and the ocean – he literally wrote the book on it, in fact, with “Undercurrents of Power: Aquatic Culture in the African Diaspora”.
So it should come as no surprise that when African surf brand Mami Wata set out to make a gorgeous 300-page tome exploring African surf culture (called “Afrosurf”), they tapped Dawson to shed some light on just how deep Africa’s surfing roots go.
Excerpted from the book and the linked article:
"Popular histories of surfing tell us that Polynesians were the only people to develop surfing, that the first account of surfing was written in Hawai‘i in 1778 and that Bruce Brown, Robert August and Mike Hynson introduced surfing into West Africa. All these claims are incorrect.
The modern surf cultures currently developing along Africa’s long shoreline are not something new and introduced, they are a rebirth — the remembering and reimagining of 1,000-year-old traditions. The first known account of surfing was written during the 1640s in what is now Ghana. Surfing was independently developed from Senegal to Angola. Africa possesses thousands of miles of warm, surf-filled waters and populations of strong swimmers and sea-going fishermen and merchants who knew surf patterns and crewed surf-canoes capable of catching and riding waves upwards of ten feet high.
Africans surfed on 3- to 5-foot-long wooden surfboards in a prone, sitting, kneeling, or standing position, and in small one-person canoes. Despite Brown’s claim that “The Endless Summer” (1966) introduced surfing into Ghana, if viewers shift their eyes away from August and Hynson, they will see Ga youth of Labadi Village, near Accra, Ghana, riding traditional surfboards, which can still be found at some beaches. The ability of Ga men, in the film, to stand on the Americans’ longboards illustrates their surfing tradition.
Africans also rode longboards, about 12 feet long, and used them to paddle several miles. English anthropologist Robert Rattray provided the best description and photographs of paddleboards on Lake Bosumtwi located about 100 miles inland of Cape Coast, Ghana. The Asante believe the “anthropomorphic lake god,” Twi, prohibited canoes on the lake. Keeping with divine sanctions, people fished from paddleboards, called padua, or mpadua (plural) and used them to traverse this 5-mile-wide crater lake."
More at the following link and in the book "Afro Surf"
https://www.surfer.com/features/africans-surfed-long-before-bruce-brown-showed-up
Tomorrow will be…."Blacks reclaim their historical African flying heritage from 2,000 years before the Wright brothers!" 🙄🤣
Culture appropriation huh
"African tradition" lol
lol.. sorry.. nothing prevented africans in africa or america for going to a beach (even away from whites) and surfing. you saying the native Hawianns were told not to surf? please .. Revisionism
Next up: Black skiers work to reclaim a historic African tradition.
It's a little confusing, why is an American who is black an African American, but an American who is white is just American not European American?
You guys are joking about this aren’t you you’re trying to tell me surfing originated in Africa thousand years ago you people are just too much
Love this! Surfing is much harder than it looks.
Horrid surf. No face.
Africans didn't even Invent Surfing, Polynesians did like Indonesia, Hawaii, and the Pacific islands. So how has it been African Culture for 1000 years? So Blacks are just stealing Hawaiian Culture Now?
The victim hood never ends.
Growing up in los Angeles never saw a Black surfer until i moved to the Caribbean. I was stun. At 43 yrs old. In the Caribbean it's natural to see black surfers.
Many beaches in parts of the U.S. we're segregated and restrictive. Nice to see all kinds of people enjoying all kinds of
of sports.
commonsense101:
Blacks DONT surf, they chose not too… I have seen 2-3 in last 20 yrs here in Hawaii…..
ps a black man from Fiji/Samoa/Tonga etc. is NOT an African, he is a Melanesian by race and a Polynesian by culture…..
aloha
you know this is just part of integration.
This is cool! But, it definitely seems like surfing was invented in Polynesia a thousand years ago spreading through the Pacific Islands? Is there any evidence of surfing in Ghana a thousand years ago? I found one singular source that was not super reputable that referenced a surfer in Ghana in 1640 but that is far from a millennium ago and also one single non-substantiated source. Share if you have anything!
Can you teach me to surf pls
There is judgement at the end of the day for trump! He don’t lead the country well and place our nation at risk ! He trump
Can talk about women but not economy safety etc our nation is facing 😂it’s hard for a president who never been in college 😢
I thought ancient aliens invented surfing? 🤣
Wow. Let's "colorize" every aspect of our human existence. Yes, that's the way to improve everything.
The first Africans left on surf boards and boats and found the most remote islands like The Adamans, Fiji, Tasmania, Austrailia amongst manu others.
Yeah, bob marley
So they built the pyramids all over the world and invented surfing
Racist surfing!
I didn't know the ocean was racist. I guess it is. I hate the ocean now for being so racist
Basketball and Football is racist because they are almost all black
Surfing is now racist.
Racism and discrimination? No we're too busy worshiping black people to be racist and discriminatory against them.
Love your news channel! I love seeing young black youth in the water !! Your reporting is top-notch and keeps me informed. Thank you for delivering quality content consistently.
I have lived in Hawaii since 1957, only saw one black surfer in all my years of surfing.