The event, organized by Textured Waves, Changing Tides Foundation, Kindhumans, and Sal Masekela, on June 3, saw surfers spell out ‘Unity’ with their boards and take part in a silence for eight minutes and 46 seconds, the same amount of time African American George Floyd was suffocated by a white police officer on May 35.
“We need to remember who we are, we need to remember, united we stand, divided we fall,” said Justin Wilkenfeld, co-founder of Kindhumans, to FOX 5 news.
Danielle Black Lyons co-founder of Textured Waves, who helped organize the event, said it was all about bringing people together. “My culture and my surf community, bringing those two together and marrying them in a beautiful way in a tribute in the form of a paddle out, there’s nothing more sacred than that.”
Lyons set up Textured Waves so black people could be better represented in surfing.
“We just didn’t see ourselves represented in any surf media, social media, really anywhere,” she told Surfer Magazine. “There was one image we continuously saw—the white savior pushing black children into waves—and that was not our experience. It’s a beautiful image, but it’s not the only image out there. We wanted to spread a message that there are actually people of color who do surf.”
Jim Crow laws dating back to the ’60s banned black people from using public areas like beaches and swimming pools.
The lack of encouragement and exposure of water-based activities to an entire generation of young black has had a profound historic impact on the development of black athletes in ocean sports and activities like surfing, explained Lyons, “It’s cyclical, and it’s going to take generations to fix.”
Local Lifeguards told FOX 5 that Paddle Out for Unity in Encinitas was the largest gathering in the area they had seen without incident.
