re: Surfing has a diversity problem, seen as a sport for straight white men for too long

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America’s history of systemic racism plays a major role in discouraging people of color from taking up water sports, according to Chelsea Woody, co-founder of Textured Waves, a surf collective for women of color.

“Segregation laws of this country really restricted who could participate in leisure activities and zoning laws with who could buy land in certain areas and coastal towns,” Woody explains.

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Danielle Black Lyons, another Textured Waves co-founder, and Woody, both understand that not seeing people who look like you in the water can be discouraging, but they are also persistent in encouraging people of color to paddle out.

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Swim Caps Are Keeping Black Women Out of Pools
Their limited design is yet another contributor to America’s racial disparities in swimming.

But one thing that’s often overlooked is that swim caps aren’t designed to protect common hairstyles among black women, adding yet another barrier to their participation in swimming, kayaking, water polo, diving, and other aquatic activities. “It’s an epidemic,” Singleton says of their exclusion.

For black women, hair is a long-standing point of pride, self-expression, status, and heritage. Some women will spend hundreds of dollars—and sit for hours—to get box braids or install a weave. That’s not including the hair products required for daily maintenance. All this makes swimming risky. Chlorine can damage the softness of an afro, the tightness of a box braid or sisterlock, or the clean scalp hidden under a sew-in weave. For some hairstyles, the prospect of starting over with washing, conditioning, sitting under a hair dryer, combing or picking out hair, and restyling in general is frustrating.

While doing research for an earlier version of the USA Swimming Foundation report, Carol Irwin, an associate professor at the University of Memphis School of Health Studies and one of the lead researchers on the study, remembers asking black women around campus if they swam. Most said they did not, because of their hair and chemicals that dried out their skin. So Irwin and her colleagues put the hair question on the 2010 survey, “thinking it might be significant.” Black respondents reported significantly greater concern about getting their hair wet, and about the negative impact of chemicals on children’s appearances, than white respondents did.

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