The Black Origins Of Surfing
Black History Year
PushBlack
4.6 • 2.2K Ratings
🗓️ 22 September 2025
⏱️ 3 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
We often hear that Black people don’t swim and do water sports. For example, many consider surfing a “white people activity.” But this is a bonafide ‘white’ lie.
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Transcript
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| 0:28.7 | We often hear that black people don't swim or do water sports. |
| 0:34.3 | For example, many consider surfing a white people activity, |
| 0:38.3 | but this is a bona fide white lie. |
| 0:42.3 | This is Two-Minute Black History, |
| 0:45.3 | What You Didn't Learn in School. |
| 0:53.3 | Like swimming in other water sports, many people consider surfing white people activities. |
| 1:02.0 | But this is one of their biggest lives. |
| 1:05.0 | When it comes to surfing, we did it first. |
| 1:09.0 | Popular histories claim that Polynesians were the only people to develop surfing. |
| 1:14.6 | That the first written account of surfing was in Hawaii in 1778, or that white filmmaker |
| 1:20.6 | Bruce Brown introduced surfing to West Africa. |
| 1:24.6 | According to Professor and Author of Undercurrents of Power, Aquatic Culture in the African Diaspora, Kevin Dawson, none of this is true. |
| 1:40.3 | The first known written account of wave riding was in the 1640s in present-day Ghana. |
| 1:50.0 | Surfing swelled with economic opportunities for coastal Africans to reach offshore fisheries. |
| 1:56.0 | As early as the 1400s, they designed surf canoes that could slice through 10-foot-high |
| 2:03.6 | waves. White supremacy campaigned to convince the world water wasn't meant for us, yet tides |
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