Poetry in Motion: How Black and Brown Communities Are Rewriting the Rules of Action Sports
From roller-skating to bungee jumping, non-traditional sports are on the rise in the Black and brown communities. Okayplayer speaks to T.I, Jessie Reyez, and more about the phenomenon.
Stock photos from Getty Images. Photo illustration by Okayplayer.
For Black and Brown communities, freedom doesn’t sit still; it rolls, it rides, it jumps, and it dives headfirst into the unfamiliar. From roller skating and skateboarding to surfing and bungee jumping, active, non-traditional sports have provided a sense of identity to underserved populations for years.
Pop culture will tell you that certain sports were designed with certain communities in mind, but underserved communities have found space inside niche counter cultures that allow them to feel validated and vindicated while trying to stand up and stand out in a world where they were often overlooked. These spaces were once referred to as extreme sports, but they’re now known as action sports — a shift that reflects the evolution of the people living it, including Dr. Neftalie Williams. A skateboard scholar and author of The Skateboard Life (which will release on Oct. 28, 2025), the San Diego State University professor reminds us, “people work within their ability.” And that ability isn’t about pushing past limits, it’s about redefining them. Think about the ways Pharrell “Skateboard P” Williams, Tyshawn Jones, Harold Hunter, and Kareem Campbell are revamping the classic skater image, or how organizations like Black Girls Surf are revolutionizing the ways Black and Brown communities show up in “forbidden” spaces.
No one’s journey is the same, but everyone’s journey will always have one thing in common: the ineffable ability to be free and feel seen — by people who look just like you.
So, from artists and influencers to community leaders, we’re giving you a chance to hear directly from those living their lives out loud, like T.I. and Jessie Reyez, and that limits, as Jessie puts it, “are just a f***ing fable.”
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Roller Skating
(As Told By T.I.)
On Spotlighting the Sport in ATL
T.I.: ATL originally was called “Jelly Beans,” which was a skating rink in the hood in Atlanta on the southwest side. That skating rink just happened to be where all the kids in surrounding communities — the South Side, West Side and probably some [kids] from the East Side — all came and kicked it, skated, socialized, and just hung out on a weekly basis. A lot of our favorite rappers, producers, singers kind of met and began their thing, like everybody from Andre 3000, T-Boz from TLC, Dallas Austin, Jermaine Dupri…people like Rico Wade, Dungeon Family, Cee-Lo, all those people kind of went to that skating rink. So they all kind of met in passing at some time of going to the skating rink, and ATL was about that experience. I think it's actually the story of Dallas Austin and T-Boz. I believe Dallas was supposed to be Rashad and T-Boz was supposed to be New New, if I'm not mistaken.
Bringing skating into ATL was always a part of [the story], from conception — just as sure as marching bands were integrally a part of Drumline. It was always about skate culture and coming-of-age kids in the community, and how they responded or how they interacted within this culture.
On What Skating Represents
The skating rink meant something to me because we always went. That's where we went to meet girls… and to just kind of hang out and chill. I didn't skate as much as Rashad did. I wasn't a part of a skate crew. I was the guy who came to the skating rink and didn't skate. I was the guy who came, walked around, talked to girls, got phone numbers, and had it out with rivals. I was more of a knucklehead than a skater. That's my experience, but whatever it was, I still did it at the skating rink. I'm aware of how important the skating rink was. That was our nightclub. Before we could get in the club, we went to the rink. That's where we went to socialize and for fellowship. That was like our rite of passage as young adults or adolescents.
On the Importance of Skating in Black and Brown Communities
I believe that it's a unique experience that's kind of exclusive to us. You have young kids — in a different community — I feel like they kind of meet at country clubs, golf courses, bowling alleys and other things. I believe [those] would more fairly or accurately represent the same things for young white kids and teenagers as the skating rink would for us in our community. I think that Black people have not had the same level or amount of access to, let's just say, quality of life, traditionally. Our exposure to these things that are not as traditional just means that there's a higher level of inclusion moving into the future in certain things, and I think that level of inclusion would offer the opportunity for higher levels of success, or more success, in more areas.
Dr. Neftalie Williams: What happens in skateboarding is when you do those first steps, [you experience] the concept of moving faster than the world around you. You get to immediately push through a crowd, you're navigating that space, and there's meditation in it. Like, yo, you are really living a different life than everybody else who is walking down that path.
Photo by Leslie J. Reilly.
On the Presence of Black and Brown Communities in Skate Culture
We're not brand new. We've been here. [There’s a] center for skateboarding and action sports run by a Black scholar. We are driving the culture. When you are leaving us out of that, then you close the ability for Black and Brown folks to see themselves everywhere.
On Founding San Diego State University’s Center for Skateboarding, Action Sports, and Social Change
We do sociology and there's sociology of sport. It's an extension of the university's belief in the work that I'm doing in skateboarding: seeing how many skateboarders are simply present on their campuses and in the world. Creating the center was my idea because there are scholars all over the globe who are looking at skateboarding as this phenomenon that's happening. We wanted the center to be the hub to help those scholars who might be the only scholar in their school, [and] who are thinking about skateboarding and action sports in this way, to bring those researchers and research together, but also to be focused on making a space for young people to see themselves at the university. That's the reason kids don't go to school. You go to university when you think there is a space for you. I don't want them to want to be pro skaters. Right. I want them to be pro at life and understand that whatever thing that they're into, they can become scholars, they can be artists, [they can be] engineers.
On the Power of Skateboarding
Skaters are just skating and enjoying each other and being inspired by each other. What’s special about skateboarding is you could start and own a skateboarding company right now. You could just decide the aesthetic that you are into and go, okay, I can get some boards pressed and made and make my company. It doesn't have to be a big deal. Maybe it's just you and your girls. You make 12 boards up with the graphics that you like — they might just be [simple] graphics — but you can do that. And you can't do that with [an] NFL team.
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Surfing
(As Told by Rhonda Harper, Founder, Black Girls Surf)
On Discovering Surfing as a Black Girl
Rhonda: I was 7 years old when I first discovered surfing, and it was accidental, during the summer months in Kansas City, which is where I'm from. The Wizard of Oz is [a] whole thing. That’s our hero. Dorothy's gonna go and find all of these different scarecrows and all these different things, so Rhonda found surfing. I started calling myself Dorothy after that because I wanted to go on the Yellow Brick Road to get to this surf mecca that Stevie Wonder is involved in. I was going to be in that scene no matter what. And there were no Black people other than him. My mom took us to a beach [in California]. I was in love. I never wanted to leave. I jumped right in the ocean. That was the first time I'd ever seen the water. I was 10. I was never going back.
On Starting a Surfing Non-Profit Fighting for Black Girls to be Seen
My family has been in civil rights — I was born into it. At 5 years old, I'm passing out pamphlets at NAACP meetings. By the time I'm seven, I'm doing the Martin Luther King speech in front of 700 NAACP people. That was who I was. If our community messed up, I'm gonna say it. If anybody's community, I'm gonna say it. I've always been outspoken. This community has been racist for a long time, and it's time that we start being included in some stuff — that means magazines, TVs, interviews, all these things, all these things that we've been left out of.
On Why You Should Experience Black Girls Surf
When you're with us, it's a cultural exchange. This is about our culture. This is about us learning from each other and uniting as a surf community. That's why I started all of this. Every time I open a magazine and or see somebody surfing, it's somebody blonde and blue-eyed. We're not blonde and blue-eyed. And we're still out here surfing. If you only see this one group of surfers, you're going to think that's the amount of people that are actually surfing. That's not the case.
On Using Surfing for Social Change
When George Floyd was killed… I called the city of Santa Monica, I called the [World Surf League]… and I said, listen, let's organize a protest for George Floyd. And I only asked seven countries, seven people, and those seven people, and then I posted the paddle out flye… by the time I woke up, there was like 71 countries that had tied into that situation. The day of our paddle out, I woke up in tears because Indonesia had already had their paddle out. It was like a rotation for like a week. People were still doing paddle outs internationally for George Floyd. That was us speaking out.
Action Sports
(As Told by Jessie Reyez)
On Being Introduced to Action Sports
Jessie Reyez: I was lucky that my pops happened to do diving back in Colombia, competitive and for fun. So when I was little, he put me into it. So I was jumping off platforms, I'd go camping often when I was a kid, and my pops would be jumping into lakes. I'd watch him jump off cliffs, and I caught the bug.
On Why It’s Important for Black and Brown People to be Visible in These Spaces
It’s important that people be seen, and that people be shown examples outside of what their norm is, of someone who looks like them, so they understand that limits are just a f-cking fable. You belong wherever you want to belong, you know? God's a green earth. If you want to go to the lake, go to the lake. If you want to go to the woods, go to the woods. I think that these sorts of experiences and activities can bring people together because, especially if it's documented, it shows people, listen, this might be out of your comfort zone, but the people who are doing it look just like you, and have had similar cultural experiences and [have] similar roots as you. If you're afraid, maybe you lose some of the fear once you see people that look just like you.
On What Motivates Her to Document Her Adventures so Vividly
I'm a musician and an artist, and part of my persona is public. My buddy talked to me about this study that was done that says that people who look back on their photos and look back on their videos and look back on their memories are significantly happier than the person who doesn't. So I love being able to watch back a video and feel an ounce of the calmness that I felt when I was taking it.
On How Action Sports Build Character and Resilience
You end up becoming very familiar with hard sh-t, you know? It builds thicker skin. It's not like you're always going to be great at it, especially when you're doing extreme sports. There's just a lot of room for error, and failure sometimes just becomes a part of your experience. And that's a beautiful thing that you can give to someone — to teach them how to view failure as something regular that needs to be experienced, but [that] you keep it f-cking moving. That's a gift. And I don't just learn it [by] doing this, I've learned it in different areas of my life: to view failure as an opportunity, or view failure as a calling to keep it moving forward — to find where failure isn't.
On How Action Sports Teach Trust, Fear, and Freedom
It's taught me that fear is just f-cking a mental mountain, and fear is not rewarded. If anything, I've learned to view fear with disgust. I do all that I can to either eliminate it or to do it scared, you know? [I] run towards what I'm afraid of more often so that I can build that muscle. It's taught me, especially when jumping off high spots, if I ever feel a little bit of reluctance, man, I really, really count one, two, three, go! My goal is sacred, my goal is my North Star: to do it even if I'm scared. It’s taught me that freedom in just feeling weightless. Whether I'm jumping and I'm in the air, whether I'm in the middle of a lake, the freedom I feel from the weightlessness that those experiences give me is so sacred. I now trust myself to challenge myself, and even if sh-t goes left and I don't succeed or I fail, I trust myself enough to know that I might lick my wounds for a bit, but then I'll get the f-ck back up and I'll try again.
