Race baiting is at an all time high. Who can unite us all?
Two months ago, Rory Parker predicted that dear Adriano de Souza would win both the World Surf League crown and also the Pipeline Masters (HERE). And how prescient is that? It made me very happy because I felt the little man’s tireless work ethic, his up-by-the-bootstraps pluck, his gold chain resting against hairy chest would coalesce the world under a banner of happy reconciliation (HERE).
And don’t you want a people’s champ to hold the trophy this year? Our world is very fractured. The 1% fights the 99%. Islamic radicals fight good-livin’ folk. Donald Trump fights Mexicans and Muslims and handicapped people. An ADS championship could unite us all. Don’t you want that? Don’t you wish for world peace?
I wrote at the time and then he did win and the surf world did not unite in peace but, rather, exploded into racist hyperbole. The camps shot back and forth with Brazilians preferring a generally angry/shouty FUCK YOU AUSSIE FUCK tone and non-Brazilians preferring a less obvious/more insidious type of institutionalized bigotry. Like commenting on ADS’s, but also Medina’s and Toledo’s “style” which is really just another way of saying the boys surf “non-white” no?
And has the surf world ever been more divided down racial lines? It has always been extremely territorial, and territorial claims have, from time to time, exploded. It has also been generally classist, but has it ever been this explicitly racist? I think not.
It’ll be interesting to see if the animosity spills from online comment boards into real life. Like, will Bali’s various waves turn into mini-apocalypses with roving bands of Brazilian youth fighting roving bands of white youth? Pitchforks and things? Will it feel like West Side Story with the Jets vs. Sharks?
Is there a Brazilian surfer who can unite the camps, a shreddy Gandhi? Is there an American/Australian surfer who can? A rippy Robert Kennedy?
And, if not, who will choreograph our dance rumbles?