"People are being snatched out of schools and places of business literally at AR gunpoint in neighbourhoods not far from where I live."
If it doesn’t rain it pours and when it don’t tis dry,” goes the old couplet.
Ain’t that the case with the surf broadcaster, master storyteller and son of the South African jazz king and anti-apartheid activist Hugh Masekela, Carlsbad’s own Selema Masekela.
Selema Masekela, who is fifty-three, had a dry spell on BeachGrit for many years. I fell under his spell, you must remember, at Kelly Slater’s Surf Ranch in 2017 when Selema, then just Sal, shared with me his chocolate flavoured protein bars with no limit stipulated should I want more than one.
Then, a brief flutter in the spotlight, after his relationship with 12 Years a Slave star Lupita Nyong’o was officially ended when Lupita posted, “It is necessary for me to share a personal truth and publicly dissociate myself from someone I can no longer trust.”
Yesterday, BeachGrit reported on Selema’s claim that surfing is roiled by White Supremacy.
“That’s one of the insidious things about White Supremacy as a construct,” Selema Masekela said on New Yorker Justin Jay’s podcast. “This idea that you can put people in boxes of what they are allowed to do so whiteness or White Supremacy holding up a barrier to where you’re allowed to go, who you’re allowed to be, at a certain point, the people who are being subjected to these rules, they start to believe it!”
And today, Selema delivered a powerful monologue to his fans after, he says, at least one thousand of his Instagram followers split his camp following his opposition to the Trump admin’s hardline stance on illegal immigrants.
“I lost one thousand followers in the last 24 hours, for choosing to support hardworking citizens in Los Angeles, most of whom are brown, being snatched out of schools and places of business and off the streets, literally at gunpoint, AR gunpoint, in neighbourhoods not far from where I live,” he said.
“And I’m grateful. I’m grateful to those thousand plus who departed, to those of you who thought that because perhaps we both enjoy surfing, snowboarding, skateboarding, freestyle motocross, any of the things that you might have in common with me or that you might have looked to me for, as a voice, that when you hear my actual voice it makes you cringe and feel some sort of way.
“Blessings to all of you that have departed and to those of you who decide to stay. Listen, I don’t have a choice but to use my voice. I am the son of immigrants. My mother came here from Haiti. My grandmother was fleeing political unrest. My father came here from South Africa as a political exile, fleeing the repressive, racist, evil, apartheid government and was a political exile for 30 years and never stopped using his voice through his art and through his music and helped to raise enough awareness in the world, he and others, that apartheid ended in his lifetime.
“So I don’t have a choice. I also came to Southern California when I was 16 years of age, and I remember distinctly how comfortable kids were with calling the Mexican kids in my school beaners or wetbacks, and I remember when I had to literally take my forearm and put this dude up against the lockers and be like, don’t say that shit around me.
“And it was funny because those same kids that love to scream out La Migra at Mexican kids, they were the first ones to want to go to Roberto’s or Filiberto’s or Juanita’s for their favorite bean and cheese burrito.
“So yeah, we’re in this for the long game. And I’m going to continue to use my voice in the best way that I can. And if that offends you, well, y’all know where the door is.”
Among the comments was the scandal-prone adult surf learner website The Inertia, long known for speaking truth to power etc.
“Sadly, we’ve seen this 100X on our own page over the years. Whether we share op-Eds that are meant to start thoughtful discussions or we share blunt, matter of fact news, if people don’t like what they’re hearing we can typically predict ahead of time that something is going to lose us hundreds or even thousands of followers.”
