Justin “Brick” Howze has a saying: “You can’t be it, if you can’t see it.”
“Just seeing Black people at the beach, surfing on waves, encourages others to enjoy the ocean,” Howze said.
The majority of surfers in the United States are white males, but a recently released study that tracks the sport’s participation highlights a cultural shift in the sea, with statistics showing more Black and Hispanic surfers taking up wave riding in recent years.
For Howze, who for the past year has hosted “Beach Bounce” gatherings for the Black community at Dockweiler Beach, there’s a needed change in a public place meant to be for all to enjoy.
“They don’t realize they are part of a social justice movement,” he said of the beach partygoers who show up to the gatherings, with another planned for Sunday, June 18. “They are just out there having a blast.”
Turning negative to positive
Howze calls himself an “unapologetic pandemic surfer,” who like many others, picked up the sport in pursuit of an outdoor pastime.
The Long Beach native, who also spent his younger years in North Carolina, was always drawn to alternative sports like BMX and hockey.
When he moved back to the Los Angeles area to pursuit a career as a music maker and DJ, he knew nothing about surfing, just that he was drawn to it. He didn’t take lessons, simply got a board from a friend and watched an online video on his way to the beach for his first surf session.
Just as he was getting the hang of it and learning the rules of the waves, he “dropped in” on another surfer, the faux pas of paddling into a wave someone already is riding, irking the more experienced wave rider.
That’s when another older surfer in the water butted into the exchange, calling Howze a derogatory, racially-charged word, shouting it out over and over again.
It wasn’t the man’s verbal attack that was bothersome, it’s something Howze said he has learned to shrug off over the years. But more concerning and perplexing was why no one in the water came to his defense.
“Nobody did anything about it. That was the thing that showed me nobody cared,” Howze said. “There’s no protection in this space, there’s no community in this space, at least for someone who looks like me.”
Howze has a social media following and recounted the incident online with his friend who was also in the water. News articles were written about the altercation, putting a spotlight on not just the incident, but the lack of Black community in the surfing world.
Howze started hosting beach gatherings under the name Ebony Beach Club, a nod to a Black beach club in 1957 that never got off the ground because of government interference.
The first Beach Bounce, which offered free surf lessons, drew 150 people last April, then doubled that number at the next gathering. The August gathering drew 2,000 and by September, 5,000 mostly people of color showed up, he said.
“This is what was needed, this is what was missing,” said Howze. “All these people are getting over their fear of the ocean and being able to do it together.”
Not all the Black beach partygoers want to learn to surf, Howze said. “But everyone knows they can now.”
A changing surf industry
Head to any popular Southern California surf break and you’ll instantly know that the sport of surfing is surging by the number of bodies bobbing on surfboards, waiting for waves.
The recently published study by the Sports & Fitness Industry Association, or SFIA, dug into surfing’s participation and demographics. The report is aimed at giving surf leaders and businesses insight into industry trends, but also offers a glimpse into the evolving cultural changes within the sport.
While modern-day surfing in the United States is a mostly white, affluent male activity, a growing number of Black and Hispanic surfers are adopting the board sport, according to ActionWatch, which compiles the data for the report.
In 2022, there were an estimated 3.7 million surfers, a number that grew from 2.9 million just three years earlier.
While the sport of surfing grew as a whole about 6% in recent years, Black surfers make up the largest group for percentage growth – a 120% increase in the past five years, said Eric Stanton, senior director for ActionWatch, the company that compiled the stats for the SFIA study.
“The growth has been pretty significant,” he said. “It happened across all ethnicities, but some have a more interesting growth than others.”
In 2022, Black surfers made up the third largest group in the water, with 423,000 surfers, compared to 218,000 surfers in 2019, doubling in participants.
Hispanics make up the second largest group with 686,7099 participants, up from 545,000 in 2019.
Asians and Pacific Islanders make up the smallest group, with 281,000 participants in 2022, up slightly from 252,000 in 2019.
From the surf business perspective, the question is how to keep those new customers engaged with surfing, to feel welcome enough to stick around.
Several surf brands have done collaborations with groups dedicated to diversifying the line up, said Vipe Desai, president of the Surf Industry Members Association. Hurley a few years ago teamed with Black Girls Surf, while Vans last year partnered with Textured Waves, another group dedicated to growing the number of women surfers of color.
“It’s one thing to have models, but it’s another to actually partner resources that promote growth with different ethnic groups,” Desai said. “All these things make a difference.”
The Surfrider Foundation last year launched the campaign “The Beach Belongs to Everyone,” a message of inclusion for all who want to enjoy the sea.
“It will take other efforts on a continual, consistent basis to show the sport of surfing is open and welcome to diversity,” said Desai. “I think this is a good start, but there’s much more that needs to happen as well.”
Other factors that have helped introduce surfing outside of affluent coastal communities include its Olympic debut in 2021 and wave pools popping up inland so even those living far away from the coast can learn to surf, Desai said.
Brands and businesses should be open to the new wave of surfers as a way to evolve the sport and industry, he said. “Let people in and let them do what they want to do with surfing and how they want to build it into their vibe and character.”
While overall surfing participation numbers have increased, the number of core surfers – the ones who went out more than eight times in a year – took a dip in recent years. So if businesses want to succeed, they need to think about the people testing out surfing and figure out how convert them into loyal surfers, he said.
“That’s where new people are going to come from,” he said. “the new diverse community of people will drive surfing’s next phase of growth.”
Howze hopes his efforts reverberates not just in the Black community, he said, but shows other groups such as the LBGTQ or Asian surf clubs that the ocean is welcoming for all.
“I want everyone to feel comfortable in each other’s spaces,” he said. “That’s when we start to see change.”