Racial diversity in skateboarding: destabilising whiteness, decentring heartlands

Abstract

Racial diversity has shaped skateboarding in the US and beyond. Scholarly attention to race and skateboarding, however, remains fixated with critiquing whiteness and consequently racial diversity is considered ethereal, subordinate, or exploited for profit. Rarely are skateboarders afforded the capacity for navigating complex racial dynamics or fluid racial identities. While wary of romanticising racial diversity in skateboarding, this article explores three possibilities for thinking about skateboarding and race drawn from media made for consumption within skate culture, video in this case. First, racial diversity is integral to skate culture in its heartlands and around the world. Second, skateboarding appeals to racially diverse participants, offering ways of being and belonging outside of families, communities, and institutions. Third, skateboarding, as a sport and culture, is overlooked as site for alternative stories about race, racism, and racial diversity both challenging and affirming broader socio-cultural experiences and narratives in time and place.