These organizations teach surfing and ocean skills to youth and adults of color, building community, and carving out a place for POC to get their stoke on in the water. Click on a logo to find out more.

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ACTION

THE POWER OF THE PEOPLE

If we want to create a truly equitable, diverse and inclusive

line-up, we need to make changes to the laws and political landscape that continue to marginalize people of color. These organizations work specifically to change public policy to ensure our beaches and oceans are safe, clean, and accessible to all.

May these films inspire you to help make sure the ocean is a place of inclusion, diversity and equity for all. 

ABOUT

I was raised in Southern California and spent almost all my time in the ocean. As a white person, I was in a privileged position to access the beach and ocean without question or discrimination. I grew up ingesting a false narrative about the history and culture of surfing and beach life. A story that normalized and foregrounded white experience, while erasing the participation and historical impact of people of color in creating, defining, and shaping the sport of surfing. This project was borne out of a sense of anger and shame to have been part of a racialized culture that created and allowed such intolerance and divisiveness to exist, then a conviction of responsibility to participate actively addressing these issues.

We must look deeply and critically at the white washing of surf culture, its participation in perpetuating racism, and the lack of representation and inclusion that persists to this day. Will the surf community embrace the generative lessons surfing has to offer- freedom, equality, community, and respect, or will we dishonor those values, as well as our oceans and beaches, by continuing to turn a blind eye to injustice?

If surfing culture does not commit to making a real, lasting, and structural change, the echoes of racism and exclusion will continue to lie beneath the surface of the waves as a form of oceanic pollution, coastal decimation, and climate disaster, troubling our waters and poisoning our humanity.

My hope is that this project promotes a reevaluation and reckoning in white surf culture, brings greater awareness to surfers of color, scholars, activists, and creatives working to change the culture, and opens further space to reimagine the beach and ocean as places of equity, inclusion, diversity, and community.

Together, we decide where we will go from here.

Acknowledgements
I am grateful to many people for the generosity of their time, insight, inspiration, scholarship, lived experience, encouragement, critique, and correctives for helping to make this project a reality, including but not limited to:

Dr. Alison Rose Jefferson, Dr. Kevin Dawson, Beyin Abrahms, Vanessa Yeager, Kayiita Johnson, Sahfilli Matturi, Esabella Bonner, Michelle Peres, Tyler Filkins, David Mesfin, Santa Cruz Black Surf Club, Latinx Surf Club, Sofly Surf School, & Black.Surfers Inc.

Thanks to the Basha/Chemers family, Carl Erez, Professor Scott Laderman, Marianne Weems, Dr. Michael Chemers, Dr. Karlton Hestor, and Dr. Alison Rose Jefferson.

Lastly, to my life partner Colleen and our son, Aidan. Your love and support are inestimable.

Diversify The Surf was awarded “Best of The Arts” at the 2022 Graduate Research Symposium at the University of California, Santa Cruz

This project was made possible by generous support from:
Arts Dean's Fund for Excellence and Equity
Digital Arts New Media Program at UCSC
Graduate Dean's Research Travel Grant
Florence J. French Scholarship Fund

Arts Council Santa Cruz County