Quick Take
Liza Monroy witnessed a racist altercation at Steamer Lane this past week. She intervened to stop it and is saddened that other surfers didn’t join her. She tells her story here.
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On the beautiful afternoon of swell on Oct. 14, Steamer Lane was crowded, as one would expect, with an array of skilled surfers, along with more intermediate-ish ones like me, all of us trying to catch our share of the perfectly forming medium-sized waves – big enough to be fun yet still accessible enough not to overwhelm the average surfer.
The type of conditions that definitely draw a crowd. Even on a Monday.
I noticed one Black surfer, an advanced one on a shortboard, to whom I smiled and said hello as I paddled out. It is well-documented that people of color have been historically excluded from predominantly white surf culture and coastal access as a whole. I feel relief when I see evidence of that changing and notice the lineup becoming more diverse. It’s not yet what it should be and by no means anywhere near equal. There’s a long way still to go. But one can see it, I believe, improving.
On this day, though, it was only a matter of minutes before I heard shouting from across the break.
“Hey you, what do you think you’re doing?”
Now, it’s not uncommon to hear a conflict erupt between two surfers at a competitive spot like the Lane or Pleasure Point. Usually it’s about priority on a wave, someone dropping in, and so forth, and at first this sounded like one of those typical ones, until I turned around to see who was yelling. A burly white man was screaming at the Black surfer.
“I’m surfing,” the man responded.
The white man started arguing about “dropping in” – when a surfer goes in front of someone who has priority on the wave because they are closer to the breaking whitewater, the peak. This kind of altercation happens frequently enough, and generally is not a reason to come to blows. An apology and a wave usually suffice.
However, within a beat, the white man’s shouting turned into a racist tirade.
He also loudly dispensed anti-immigrant slurs and other language not suitable for print. Though it was loud enough for everyone in the lineup to hear, every onlooker said nothing.
The white surfer kept badgering the Black man to take it out of the water, to go fight with him. He splashed him and screamed, “Go back to your country, you’re not welcome in America.” among worse things.
Many who were there might remember this incident. Every single surfer in the crowd of at least 10 or 15 people within hearing distance remained silent as the rant continued.
I was watching this unfold, too, waiting for someone to speak up, but nobody did. And so, I realized it was going to be me, a slight 5 foot-1-inch, middle-aged mom.
What I said was nothing groundbreaking or compelling or even especially effective; I just yelled back to the offending white man to please stop, that nobody wanted to hear this, that racism has no place in the ocean — some basic, off-the-cuff, “stop it” interjection.
The man continued undeterred, repeating the same insults and slurs over and over. I wondered if others would now join in trying to silence him, but no one did. Eventually, it blew over, with the racist paddling away on his own accord. The Black man continued to surf the rest of his session.
I was later told the white surfer waited on the cliff for the Black man to exit the water to instigate a fight, and that he was deterred only by a bystander ready to make a cellphone recording.
I felt compelled to write this in the aftermath, because, surfers! People! We can do better.
We need to. Silence when we witness a racist act makes us complicit. Not speaking up against it means you’re OK with it. And I believe the vast majority who witnessed this happening were not OK with it.
So why did not more of us speak up?
At the outset, a chorus of voices could have — and should have — drowned the racist ranter out. There were certainly enough of us there that the crowd (the only time anyone might say this in surfing) could have been greatly beneficial. If we see and hear such blatant racism we cannot be silent bystanders if we are to be on the side of justice.
I hope there will never be a next time, which is unfortunately an overly optimistic wish. So, if and when such an atrocity happens again, let’s please all raise our voices to drown out hate — in the water and out.