2020 has been difficult for everyone, for various reasons. After witnessing what happened earlier this year with the BLM protests and uprisings, we felt like we had to do something. After many meetings and brainstorming, we thought that the best thing we could do was to use our platform to share the incredible stories and experiences of 9 skaters of color growing up in different parts of the World.
We immediately thought of Dr. Neftalie Williams as the ideal guest editor of this issue with no agenda or restrictions. He has been exploring race and diversity in skateboarding, has hosted many discussions and panels and recently received his PhD through his dissertation Colour in the lines: The racial politics and possibilities of US skateboarding culture.
This is a special issue which might not exactly follow all of ‘journalism rules’ or Skateism’s character that we had in our previous issues. However, we hope you enjoy this issue and learn as much as we did throughout the past few months creating it. We are also hoping that this is only the beginning of a much bigger discussion, and that we continue to educate ourselves, as well as our readers through our shared passion for skateboarding.
-The Skateism Team
Words by Dr. Neftalie Williams
Hello, my friends! My name is Dr. Neftalie Williams and I am excited to present the newest issue of Skateism. Guest editing this issue was a labor of love with many late-night calls between myself Denia and Moch and one dinner over Mexican in Athens before Covid-19 lockdown. I am honored to be entrusted with creating content and editorial direction for the pages of publication when the print medium is so sacred and valuable.
Secured in your palms is a slice of a conversation, a whisper of a broader dialogue with people I believed might offer insight into issues of race and ethnicity, social justice, and the march towards more significant equity through skateboarding culture. In this issue, I attempted to move the dialogue of racial justice and equity beyond the US conversation’s confines by including a more diverse global perspective.
Hopefully, this issue reintroduced some old friends and positions young alongside new skateboarding allies. I intend to provide a platform for you to draw upon the positive and negative experiences within skateboarding culture and use them equally as a robust catalyst for future discussions that create change in the world.
The stories presented offer anecdotes from skaters worldwide, reflecting on the impact of racial politics in their daily lives. Skaters Samarria Brevard, Jaime Reyes and Sal Barbier might be on your radar, but what about the unsung legendary lensman Mike John, one of the leading Black British photographers in the UK. Alternatively, Vietnamese American photographer Seu Trinh, or Brazil’s finest Thomas, the first Black or Afro Brazilian skateboarding photographer to reach prominence. Beyond them the rising stars, Khule Ngubane reports in from South Africa while Maicol Cortez discusses the state of Colombia.
Providing a network of stories should aid in the revelation that no one country owns all the responsibility for historical racism, sexism, and discrimination. Therefore, we all own it and are responsible for creating solutions to deliver all our people from the pain of systemic oppression. Deploying multiple viewpoints helps create a better way for us to understand how racism can be entrenched and moves fluidly across borders and contexts. These stories demonstrate how people of colour (POC) feel safe or unsafe, empowered, or disenfranchised, constrained or liberated. Reading through their narratives offers space for reflection and a moment to ponder how we might all grow together and understand each other’s position to create a more just society.
Luckily, our first push is a starting point where the joy of personal space and freedom stemming from skateboarding entering our lives. Each of us has deeply embraced the intoxication feeling of literally pushing harder, further, faster than the elements around you. It is a powerful shared experience between all skaters and offers a mutual ground that continues to provide a starting point for lifelong conversations. This issue intended to allow access and correspondence with your brothers and sisters from around the world so that we could collectively listen, feel, support, and grow with one another.
While this article’s aspirations are high, this issue has shortcomings; namely, it does not include everyone I wanted to feature. Nor does it solve the world’s problems in one passage. However, it is another cog in the wheel of my plans to create critical dialogue and meaningful discussions of racial politics to create change. I hope I delivered.
In every way possible, we tried to spotlight people of color in front of and behind the lens and give voice to their struggles, strategies and successful bids to create power for themselves amid the strategies, the racialized experiences of their lives. We also focused on their efforts to remain sane during the pandemic, the uprisings and protests and the new discourse surrounding Black Lives Matter.
These exchanges are not new lines of inquiry for me. If you feel a sense of familiarity within the communications, it is because of a framework of rapport built from a three-year research project documenting the experiences and racial politics of the lives of 50 professional skaters of color. Those experiences presented in my forthcoming book Color in the Lines: The Power and Possibilities of US Skateboarding Culture offered a foundation for discussion. This issue is also partially guided by my research with everyday skaters through the USC x Tony Hawk Foundation, Beyond the Board Study and my public forum for discussing race, gender, and diversity, the Nation Skate. Those studies guided my editorial decisions and reinforced the need for a global discussion on race in skateboarding culture. We must be steadfast and connected in our efforts to thwart racism and to build greater love for one another.
Please remember that all your questions may not be answered in these pages or every facet of your own life represented. Trust, however, that we will continue to engage with these topics in multiple forums for as long as I have breath. A progressive skateboarding culture contains the potential for change when we uplift each other and create space for marginalized voices.
I hope this issue prompts deep thought about your section of the world and how you can make a change in your locale. If that happens to everyone—we are going to roll stronger than we ever thought possible.
See you in the streets!
