Officially, hazing is illegal and unwelcome just about everywhere you turn—but it continues as an open secret in far too many fraternities, sports teams, and other institutions. The latest revelations from Northwestern University’s football team are a stark reminder that we have a long way to go to uproot the culture of hazing for good. Anti-gender violence activist and documentarian Byron Hurt joins Edge of Sports for a timely discussion on the harm hazing does and how we can stop it. Dr. Neftalie Williams also joins the episode for a discussion on the uniqueness and global influence of skateboarding.
Studio Production: David Hebden, Cameron Granadino
Post-Production: Taylor Hebden
Audio Post-Production: David Hebden
Opening Sequence: Cameron Granadino
Music by: Eze Jackson & Carlos Guillen
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Dave Zirin:
Hazing in sports, what it is and what needs to be done. A sports scholar whose skateboarding study and activism has made waves around the world, and I have some choice words about the reexamination of the movie, The Blind Side, in the wake of some really disturbing allegations. Edge of Sports, let’s do it. (Singing)
Welcome to Edge of Sports TV. I’m Dave Zirin. This week we talked to documentary filmmaker, Byron Hurt, who’s shattering new film, Hazing is garnering tons of attention, and of course we’re going to discuss the hazing scandal at Northwestern. And later, we have Sports Scholar, Dr. Neftalie Williams, whose expertise lies in what he calls skateboard diplomacy. And I have some choice words about the movie The Blind Side. But first, Byron Hurt. Byron Hurt, thank you so much for joining us here on Edge of Sports.
Byron Hurt:
Thank you, Dave. It’s good to join you.
Dave Zirin:
Byron Hurt, you are one of those filmmakers who can choose your topic and then go after it. You’ve reached that level in the industry, but why hazing? Why did you say, “This is going to be my next project?”
Byron Hurt:
Well, Dave, it took me a long time to come to that conclusion to make that decision. For a long time I was afraid to take on a subject like this because of my own relationship with my fraternity, my own involvement with my fraternity. I know how taboo a topic it is to address. And I don’t know if you know this, but I’ve been working in gender violence prevention for many, many years. And so I’ve been dealing with issues around violence prevention. And so it made sense that this would be a topic for me to take on, but it wasn’t until I got on an airplane and I read the story about a young man named George Desdunes, who died at Cornell University. And I read a story in the New York Times that I got a call to address this topic.
And then months later, I watched a news clip about the death of Robert Champion, who of course is the band member who was beaten to death by his Florida A&M band-mates at FAMU. And that’s the story that sent me over the top and said, “Byron, you should make this film. You are the person to make this film. You have the credibility to make the film, and you have the background, you have the cultural competency to tell the story.”
Dave Zirin:
I’d like you, if you could, to take us down that road as far as why this film was so personal for you and how long you had been thinking about doing it but just were saying to yourself, “No, this is a line I can’t cross?” You just told us why you did cross that line, but I guess I’m curious about what prevented you from crossing it previously and also the initial question, if you could take us down that personal journey?
Byron Hurt:
Well, I’m a member of a Black Greek-Letter organization. I’m a member of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity Incorporated, and I love my fraternity. I have an uncle who plays the same fraternity back in the 60s. The fraternity is an incredible organization. I love my fraternity brothers, I love the organization, but back when I came through and I pledged the organization, I went through a process that is now illegal and should no longer take place, but it still happens in many organizations, not just Omega Psi Phi, but many organizations.
And I just felt like the time had come to really address the issue because there are people who are dying, young people who are dying, young people who are scarred emotionally and psychologically for years after they go through whatever process they go through to become members of their organization, and we’re talking beyond Greek life and we’re talking about sports culture. I mentioned Robert Champion, he was a member of a marching band at Florida A&M University.
So hazing is something that happens in a lot of different spaces and what helped me back from telling the story, Dave, quite honestly was fear. It was my own personal fear of the pushback and the backlash that could result from me taking on this story.
Dave Zirin:
Has it been better than you feared, worse than you feared, and what has been the reaction of some of your brothers?
Byron Hurt:
Well, initially the backlash was real. It was about what I expected. It took me 10 years to make this film, Dave, so I had a lot of time to ruminate and think about what the response would be for this film as we worked on the documentary and I knew the kind of stories that we were covering, I knew that there was going to be a very emotional response to it. So I was prepared for that emotionally, but initially, when their initial trailer went viral and it went viral through my organization in particular, there was a really strong reaction to it, very strong reaction to it, a very strong negative reaction to it.
However, on the flip side, there was also a very strong positive reaction to it. But that support and that reaction was mostly private, which I think is very interesting. So there was a public backlash, but a private solidarity, if you will, among fraternity brothers and other members of Divine Nine organizations or Greek organizations that are not exclusively black, who reached out to me to thank me for making the film, shared many of their personal stories, talked about some of the injuries that they sustained while they were going through their pledge process, some of the emotional scars that have been lasting.
So it was a mixed bag, but I would have to say that most of the people who responded positively to the film actually took the time to watch the film. The people who had a negative reaction to the film had not seen it. They were reacting to a 30-second trailer in which they thought that I was being disloyal to the organization.
Dave Zirin:
Wow. Funny how that works.
Byron Hurt:
I dispute, I dispute that flat out. I don’t see this film as being disloyal or betraying my fraternity on any level. Our fraternity, my fraternity, Omega Psi Phi Fraternity is a non-hazing organization. It’s publicly stated on our website that it is an anti-hazing organization and it does not tolerate hazing. So if anything, this film really should have been supported wholeheartedly by the fraternity because the goal of this film is to raise awareness and to change the culture of hazing.
Dave Zirin:
Would you resist being described as a whistleblower?
Byron Hurt:
I think being a whistleblower may be too strong a word, mainly because my goal is not to undermine any of these organizations and to stop them from existing. The goal of this film is to educate and to raise awareness about a practice, a tradition, and a practice that unfortunately and tragically is taking lives, right? Parents are sending their children off to college and unfortunately some are not making it back home. To me, that’s worthy of having a discussion about why this is happening and if they’re not, if let’s say for example, young people go off to college and they decide to pledge an organization or join an organization and they don’t die, it is very likely that they are going to live with some psychological or emotional trauma that is either discussed or not discussed.
And so I want to bring this discussion out into the open for people to talk about it, discuss it, and figure out ways to change the culture in a way that maintains the organizations, but eliminates some of the more risky, dangerous and unnecessary practices that have been going on for decades, if not centuries.
Dave Zirin:
Yeah, if not centuries. You mentioned the word sports earlier. Of course, hazing has been very much in the news, front page of the sports page with regards to the football program at Northwestern University. What was your response when you heard about this story?
Byron Hurt:
I was not surprised at all when I heard this story. One thing that I learned over the course of working on this documentary is that you can count on a new hazing story emerging once or twice every year, if not more. So when I heard about the story, I was not surprised. I think what made this story different than other stories was that it was sports related and young people experience hazing on sports team almost as much as they do, if not more than in Greek life. But what struck me about this particular story was the fact that it had happened on a big time football program at an elite school like Northwestern. Typically, when you see sports hazing that takes place, it usually happens more commonly on a high school level, and we see stories emerge that come out of small towns where some sort of a hazing scandal erupts. So the nature of this one being on a huge college campus and an elite private university like Northwestern is what struck me the most.
Dave Zirin:
Yeah, that I think struck a lot of people because I think a lot of times people think of these elite campuses as somehow being immune from this when it’s in the heart of the football program, which is at the heart of the university itself, which does get to my next question. The coach, Pat Fitzgerald, who’d been there forever was fired. And then the next thing you saw in the wake of this, hand ringing from the school president and the op-ed pieces talking about how we can fight this scourge. You have a lot of the players and the coaches wearing solidarity t-shirts on the field with Pat Fitzgerald and with words like Pride and things like that, basically saying, “We have done nothing to be ashamed of.” Did that reaction surprise you and where does that come from?
Byron Hurt:
No, that reaction did not surprise me at all. And it’s very typical for a team, players, the community that supports that team to rally around its head coach. Pat Fitzgerald was a beloved iconic coach at the school. He’s a former player. He was a highly decorated football player when he was a student there at Northwestern and became a pretty successful coach and was able to turn that football program around. So it’s very similar to the kind of reaction that students had at Penn State University when the Joe Paterno scandal was at its peak. People tend to strongly identify with the team and the coach when something bad happens or something impacts the team in a negative way.
So I wasn’t really surprised by that. I saw yesterday on espn.com that I think more than 1,000 players submitted a letter, and these were not only football players, but I think players who represented several sports, wrote a letter in support of the football team and the athletic program and the culture of the athletic program at Northwestern, and basically said they did not condone the hazing that took place, but spoke very highly about the culture that exists at Northwestern within the athletic program.
So I think that is pretty typical. You’re talking about people who bled, who sweated, who gave their blood, their sweat and their tears for that university and they want to support it. One thing that really struck me in that article though, Dave, is that there was one, and I’m paraphrasing the letter, but it says something to the effect of that these hazing incidents should not in any way paint a broad brush against the entire university or the entire athletic department. And I think that that’s really interesting because when I did a lot of gender violence prevention work, one of the things that we said when we worked with student athletes is that one rape case on the football team could severely damage the school’s reputation, the team’s reputation, the reputation of the guys who participate on the team.
So I would make the argument that it’s in the best interest of colleges and universities to get ahead of any sort of hazing activities that are going on on their campus and really invest in some really solid prevention and education programs for their teams, and also better supervision. Because one story like this, or a series of stories that we have more than 10 allegations here could severely wound the reputation of that organization or that athletic department.
Dave Zirin:
Is football particularly prone to hazing because of what we understand to be the violence of the sport and some of the machismo that’s inherent in the sport? Do you see that getting broken down at all in recent years? I feel like there’s been at least somewhat of a cultural change in football over the last decade in terms of talking about certain issues from mental health to sexuality, but at the same time, it’s still football. What do you see at the intersection of football and hazing?
Byron Hurt:
Well, there is no question that football is one of the most hyper-masculine team sports. The only way to eliminate that is if you eliminate the violent aspect of the game. I played football from the time that I was seven years old until I was about 20, 21 years old. So I’m intimately familiar with the level of contact and violence in that sport. However, there are other sports that are non-contact sports that also experienced hazing. You have one volleyball player, former volleyball player who came forward and said that she was hazed at Northwestern. I’ve heard stories of women on soccer teams, young men on soccer teams that went through some sort of hazing ritual in order to be seen as a full member of the team.
So there is definitely an intersection. I think perhaps in the kind of hazing that took place is what makes this particular situation under Northwestern a little bit different. I’ve read some of the stories, some of the claims made by some of the former players who have filed lawsuits, and there’s a tremendous culture of masculinity that is, I guess a part of some of these practices that have been alleged on the football team.
So yeah, I think that there’s hyper-masculinity, I think that there was some homosocial behavior clearly that was taking place with some of these practices. And I think the fact that because football is such a manly, hyper-masculine sport, it makes it more difficult for players to opt out of it because as a football player, you are supposed to be tough. You’re supposed to be able to withstand and endure physical punishment in the interest of the team, right? To be a team player, right? So the goal if you are a new member of the football team is to fit in to the team’s structure, the team’s culture, and I think that’s probably what happened with a lot of the football players at Northwestern.
Dave Zirin:
You’ve been so generous with your time, though I can’t let you leave without saying something about hip hop because of course you did Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes, a tremendous documentary about some of the issues we’re talking about right now.
Byron Hurt:
Yeah, absolutely.
Dave Zirin:
And how they relate to hip hop. So anybody who sees that documentary will also I think get some insight in how you’ve backgrounded yourself to have this discussion.
Byron Hurt:
Sure.
Dave Zirin:
Well, therein lies the question. Last night I saw Big Daddy Kane, Rakim, KRS-One, Spinderella, Roxanne Shante, of course, Doug E. Fresh and Slick Rick. It was a tremendous show to celebrate Hip Hop 50, and I was wondering who you were listening to these days to experience some of the last 50 years?
Byron Hurt:
It’s so interesting that you said that, Dave, because I’ve been listening to a whole lot of Jay-Z lately. I have been listening to Jay-Z on repeat, and I plan to go see the exhibit at the Brooklyn Library, hopefully before the weekend is over. But I marvel at Jay-Z’s ability as a lyricist, and also just how prolific he’s been over the course of his career, cranking out hit after hit after hit. But when I listen to hip hop, I’m typically listening to artists like Black Thought, Nas, J. Cole. Rhapsody is an artist who I absolutely love and I think is a brilliant artist. So those are my go-to artists when I’m listening to hip hop on my headphones.
Dave Zirin:
Wow. Appreciate you, Brian Hurt. Before you go though, how can people access Hazing?
Byron Hurt:
Well, the film is going to be available on Prime Video, Comcast and iTunes starting September 12th, so you can find it there. It’s also available for purchase at the Media Education Foundation, mediaed.org, mediaed.org, and that’s for colleges and high schools and other educational institutions who want to show the film on their campus or purchase the film.
So I’m very pleased and very happy. The film has had a very strong film festival run that has come to an end, and so now we’re focused on the digital distribution of it, and hopefully people will have access to it and we’ll be able to watch it, and the film will continue to do its work, raising awareness about hazing culture.
Dave Zirin:
Byron Hurt, thank you so much for joining us here on Edge of Sports TV.
Byron Hurt:
Thank you.
Dave Zirin:
And now some choice words. Okay. Look, if retired NFL offensive lineman, Michael Oher had his life right stolen by Sean and Leigh Touhy, people who claim to be his adopted parents, then the Touhys would’ve enacted a rancid and larcenist grift. A 14-page complaint filed in Tennessee says that contrary to the narrative that became a bestselling book and hit movie, The Blind Side, the Touhys never adopted Oher. Instead, three months after he turned 18, the Touhys tricked him into signing a document that made them his conservators, leaving him with fewer legal rights than a child.
If these charges are true, then the book and movie, which grossed $300 million and helped win Sandra Bullock an Oscar, was part of a racket that leveraged white America’s love affair with itself to scam Oher out of millions of dollars. The author of the book about Oher and the Touhys, a sales machine named Michael Lewis who wrote Moneyball, also needs to come to be held to account because Michael Lewis is somebody who right now is bashing Michael Oher for what he’s going through, siding with the Touhys when what he should be doing is answering the question, what did he know and when did he know it? Was Michael Lewis duped? Or was Michael Lewis part of the grift?
Because what we do know though is that it was Lewis who spun this piece of Caucasian catnip, the tale of the white Southern Christian Touhy family who adopted troubled teen Michael Oher, who is presented in the book and film as incredibly simple-minded and turned him into a wealthy football player through their Christian will. Now in court documents, Oher is saying that he learned several months ago that after going through his own legal papers, he had never actually been adopted by the Touhys. It was a sham perpetrated without his consent in order to get him to sign over his life’s rights for nothing. They were not his parents in any legal or moral sense. They were conservators like Britney Spears’ dad. As ESPN’s Michael Fletcher wrote in his expose, “The Touhys used their power as conservators to strike a deal that paid them and their two birth children millions of dollars in royalties, while Oher would get nothing for a story that would not have existed without him.”
Now, for the film, you got to hear this, the Touhys’ two children got a $225,000 payment and 2.5% of the net proceeds for having their likenesses portrayed. That worked out to almost $5 million per kid and nothing for Oher. With that film deal, they tipped their hand as to who was really family. Yet this alleged swindle perpetrated by the Touhys is also only an extension of what is so grotesque about The Blind Side itself. A feel good story that even without this lawsuit is hyper exploitative trash.
The smash hit starred Sandra Bullock as the white woman with a heart of gold, and Hollywood rarely fails with this trope that tells white America that it is, despite all historic evidence to the contrary, morally righteous as it accepts Rudyard Kipling’s white man’s burden to extend a hand to the poor and downtrodden. This trope has been used by liberal Hollywood since at least 1939 when Scarlet O’Hara let Mammy Sasser out of the goodness of her heart in Gone With the Wind.
The list of white savior prestige films is long, Mississippi Burning, Dangerous Minds that praised garbage documentary about school reform, Waiting for Superman. Those all come to mind. All of these movies sell the same tired fiction. When The Blind Side film was released in 2009, the allegedly slow Oher spoke out against his depiction and refused to do publicity. Few noticed or wrote about it at the time. Oher may not have known about the fake adoption then, but he knew one thing about the movie that the Academy did not, that it was a terrible and racist film.
The emerging truth about The Blind Side fits neatly within our cultural moment. We are living in an era where people are realizing that waiting for a superman is a fool’s pursuit, and people who present themselves as white saviors are more often than not white beneficiaries of black pain, just as the Touhys profited off of Oher’s hardships.
If the charges are true and the court documents are damning, then maybe this will go down as a turning point to never trust this trope again. There already is a growing consensus and understanding among young white activists about the difference between allyship and paternalism, the importance of creating space for others to speak and lead, and the understanding that the white savior concept is a dangerous myth that has hurt far more than it has ever helped.
Lewis was wrong to valorize this narrative. The Touhys were wrong to exploit it, which frankly they did whether these charges are proven or not, and Oher is right to take his name back. He’s a hell of a lot smarter than Lewis or the Touhys have presented and that may prove to be their undoing because the flip side to white saviorship is white underestimation. The Touhys underestimated Michael Oher, and now the whole world knows it.
And now on Ask a Sports Scholar, we have someone who studies the intersection of skateboarding, diversity, equity, inclusion, international diplomacy, and I don’t know, for all I know a balanced breakfast, I don’t know. But it’s such an honor to have him here on the show. Dr. Turn, Neftalie Williams. How you doing, sir?
Neftalie Williams:
I’m doing great, sir. It’s an honor to be on the show.
Dave Zirin:
Oh, it’s great to have you. So let’s take a step back for a second. You’re going through life, you’re going through school. How did you come to see skateboarding as an area of study?
Neftalie Williams:
Well, it really goes back to my early days back in Massachusetts. When I first got started skateboarding, what I saw was a way for kids who’d normally not be associated with each other or didn’t really have any common backgrounds to find a new way to actually build a community and have fun together. And that was something that was very different because our parents, I’m African-American, they were Asian-American skaters who were there at the time, Latinx skaters, people from all walks of life. And our parents weren’t really connected. It was more, “Keep to yourself, this is our group, this is your racial group, this is how we identify.” But it was skateboarding that was so new that it broke down those barriers.
And because there were no coaches and there were no teachers, we all were… Basically, I didn’t have the words for it then, but we were all doing experiential learning, we’re all learning together, figuring out what to do. And I saw that that was something that was special in skateboarding culture, that we needed to do this and learn together. And that was really the basis of saying, “What are the ways in which we need to create a better world and have more people who don’t have similar backgrounds find a common ground?” So I’ve chased that thread my whole life.
Dave Zirin:
That’s so unique about skateboarding. I wish more of our social activities had people imagining different worlds and breaking down barriers and coming together over the artificial divisions that keep us apart. What do you think it is uniquely about skateboarding that allows for that kind of interaction and that kind of imagination?
Neftalie Williams:
Well, what I really think is, to be honest with you, it’s marginalized sport, right? This is not traditional sport. It doesn’t have all the airplay on ESPN. It’s not talked about every morning. It’s always operated in a marginal space. And because it’s operated in a marginal space, it forced everyone to be part of the culture and to be really down for each other. And so that has remained the same since in my early days back in Massachusetts, but just as recently as my time at the X Games just a few weekends ago, that same sphere has always been with it.
And understanding that you’ve always been the underdog and the lack of the same resources really makes it be something special and something unique that works across the globe because everyone is experiencing the same thing, and there’s no particular body type you need. There’s no particular amount of money you need to have or particular space. That’s perfect. So because of that, it really is this universal activity that everyone can get involved with and we need to extract from that and use that to build new spaces for everyone. Those are the lessons we can learn from skateboarding.
Dave Zirin:
One barrier I can see for doing that is the state itself. I certainly know of a lot of local examples of the criminalization of youth skateboarders. Is that an international phenomenon?
Neftalie Williams:
I would say generally yes because what happens is it’s marginalized because the generations before, not a lot of people were actually practicing skateboarding. So to them, there might be stigmas or stereotypes about who skateboarders are, what the skateboarding lifestyle is like. And so it’s something that I do see universally, but universally in Western countries because in some spaces it’s so new that everyone is excited about it. And that’s something that you’ll see and the way that non-profits like Skateistan, which Skateistan was operating in Afghanistan and making it so young girls were not traditionally allowed to practice sport.
Well, they weren’t seeing it as sport. It wasn’t something that had a history. It was just this new activity that anybody could participate in. And because of that, that’s when it operates in these great ways. And I do work in Cuba as a diplomat, both for the Department of State, and when I was working for Cuba Skate. And in those instances, they have different values around sport, right? They like baseball, but skateboarding is operating in this new space where it’s so new that it doesn’t have the same stigma of being attached to a US sport. But at the same time, it offers the values that they like in collectivism and they give themselves as one Cuba. But on the US side, it also gives them the ability to have self-expression and it’s really think about their own individual identity.
So it really works in all of the spaces as we have new generations of skaters moving into academia or move into television or broadcast, as the skateboarders themselves move, that changes those stereotypes. And we now are seeing two generations of skaters, three generations of skaters, and that’s improved that climate of criminality, but it still does happen.
Dave Zirin:
You’ve done so much to bring skateboarding into the light in a way that does shield it from state repression in some respects. Bringing it forward as this activity that has a legitimacy, if you will, and that’s incredibly positive and important work. But does it run a risk of eliminating, or at the very least sanding off some of the outlaw culture that has made skateboarding such a spectacular cultural force?
Neftalie Williams:
Thank you for that question. And a lot of skateboarding space in the Olympics right now has really prompted that discussion. And even sports scholars have said, “Well, you were doing something unique before, but now you’re in the system. Now you’re in the matrix because the Olympics.” Truly, they say, “Now you’re no better than anybody else.” So I do take that all with a grain of salt because the thing is skateboarding is still this individual activity and that ethos of your own free spirit, your own interpretation, your own relationship with the city and your community, that part doesn’t change just because the contest goes on. We’ve had contests since the 50s, and the truth is those contests were reasons to bring the community together. And that’s something that remained, even if it’s as big as the X Games or as big as the Olympics.
I don’t know if you saw the articles or not, but there were so much sports commentary, particularly the LA Times, there was an opinion piece that said the greatest sport that they saw during the Tokyo Olympics was skateboarding, and the reason for that was because there was a comradery. It didn’t matter what country. Everyone was rooting for each other. In particular, the Japanese team was pushing for Sky to… Even though she fell during her run, and that was happening throughout the content.
And it was actually a way for traditional sports to take note and to see like, “Wait a minute, why are we competing in the first place? Are we competing for these individuals to find joy and to find the comradery through the sport? Or are we only competing for bragging rights? What’s the sports industrial complex that’s behind that? What’s really happening with Simone Biles?” Simone Biles was having a need to take a break and step away from the game, or Naomi Osaka. I always think that if that were skateboarding, they would have the space to be themselves, film themselves just like we do because we’ve been a marginalized sport and we’ve grown and done this thing together and on our own.
Imagine what all the athletes could do in that kind of context too? And that’s not to say the sport… Of course, we want competitions, but these are competitions we have in order to be together, to really be a community. And that’s not something that happens. So I think there’s a lot for traditional sport to take away from skateboarding, and having those on bigger stages only makes it better for everyone to see and maybe adopt it in basketball or in football.
I think about Colin Kaepernick. Colin Kaepernick still doesn’t have a job, and I always talk about that in my classes, is that even though he helped bring everybody forward, he’s the one who suffers in that space. And if he was in skateboarding, he would have the ability to have… He’d have a bestselling skateboard or bestselling shoe because there’s the space for the individual at all times, and there’s such a low barrier to entry. If you want to start your own team, you can.
So that’s the other reason that there’s been a rise of women and LGBTQ folks in skateboarding. So as we get bigger, more people are just saying, “Whoa, nobody owns this? I want a part of that freedom.” So the bigger exposure is actually better for us because the values aren’t changing, and we do negotiate those spaces. It is something that’s not perfect. We negotiate with the Olympics with Fox Sports or those networks, but we know who we are as we participate in our activity, and I think that those values don’t change. And if they do, then it’s not skateboarding. Somebody’s trying to put one over on us all.
Dave Zirin:
The okie-doke, as it were.
Neftalie Williams:
Yes, yes, yes.
Dave Zirin:
I did want to circle back. Thank you. You’ve been so generous with your time, but you mentioned Cuba and Cuba Skate. I think that’ll just be a lot of interest to people. Could you first speak a little bit about Cuba Skate? And then there’s that question again, I want to circle back about the criminalization of youth and asking again, are you saying that that’s not something you see in Cuba with regards to skateboarding and what can we learn from skateboarding culture in Cuba?
Neftalie Williams:
Okay, so there’s-
Dave Zirin:
Three questions.
Neftalie Williams:
Yeah, yeah, that’s right. That’s okay. It’s only our first time together, so that’s right. That’s right. Well, what I would say is when I do see there is criminalization, because that’s something that happens everywhere because it’s new and there is the tie of… It’s more that adults who want to criminalize young people will always find an excuse to do that.
Dave Zirin:
Amen.
Neftalie Williams:
So that’s actually really what it comes down to. When young people are having fun. Some people just don’t like to see young people together in groups having fun to begin with, and that’s just how that happens. So it depends on the situation. There are times when I’ve been skating in Cuba, when I was working with the non-profit, Cuba Skate, where gentlemen would stop me and say, “You look like freedom.” I said, “What do you mean?” They said, “Because you don’t have the $5 Cuban haircut and that you’re pushing along in the way and you’re moving fast, you’re moving through space in your own way and that’s not something that we all get to do. And so we really love seeing you skateboarding.” And truly, they said to see a black man, and particularly when you think about the racial politics that are on the island, to see for them an Afro-Cuban, but for me, an African-American man, a dark-skinned man pushing on the skateboard, that had a significant feeling for a lot of folks.
Now, back to policing. There’s things that happens here in the US too, right? It is still criminalized. However, things are changing. And one of the things that’s happening is with me teaching my courses, which are focused on skateboarding and action sports culture, getting people to recognize that what young people are into is always the most important thing, and always what we’re supposed to be supporting. As a university, we should always be creating classes and curriculum that whatever topic that they’re into, it’s our job as adults to be the ones that are there going, “Hey, you know what You’re into that art side of skateboarding. You could get a degree in art. Or if you’re really out in the streets and you’re looking at the way the stairs are designed, the handrails are designing, you’re moving through space that way, maybe you’d be interested in architecture and design.”
So there’s all these different aspects that the university should be doing, and luckily that’s happening with me and my new university, the San Diego State down here. They’re really focused on that at SDSU and seeing the ways that skaters could be recognized. But that’s the same thing when I talk to Mary Karen Bath and her team, or if I’m operating over in Europe, it’s getting us as adults to understand that when young people are finding something great and finding… When you look at the diverse communities that make up any skateboarders in any city, in any town, we need to tap into that.
So all of that is really… That criminalization is changing, but when it is still happening, I’m very, very much an advocate in getting the older generations, legislators and all to understand there’s something special going on. When was the last time you saw somebody from age 70 or age seven inhabit the same space?
Dave Zirin:
Wow.
Neftalie Williams:
Right? That doesn’t happen in basketball. You play a pickup game in different generations. So this is something really special going on, intergenerational learning and moving beyond racial and ethnic and gender boundaries.
Dave Zirin:
And just lastly, skateboarding culture and hip hop have always walked arm in arm.
Neftalie Williams:
Always together.
Dave Zirin:
And if anybody who’s listened to what you’ve said about skateboarding, you could put the word hip hop in there a lot of times, the battle between being marginalized and being mainstream-
Neftalie Williams:
Yes, very much.
Dave Zirin:
How that’s negotiated, how it exists in different countries, the commonalities. Yeah, I heard so much of hip hop and everything you were saying, and we’re at Hip Hop at 50, and I was wondering, what is the hip hop for Dr. Williams?
Neftalie Williams:
Oh, that’s great. Well, I’ll tell you, I’m thinking about hip hop being 50 all the time, and I was listening to A Tribe Called Quest the other day, just like getting back to roots. And there is some research I will just tell you that I’ve been working on, which is looking at the relationship between hip hop and hardcore culture and skateboarding, that they’ve all been these youth voices and the way that Europe knows hip hop, as you think of A Tribe Called Quest or Method Man, or Wu Tang, all of that, those sounds weren’t just carried on the radio. They were carried through skateboarding videos that were circulated through all of those communities.
So my relationship to hip hop, I’m listening to what’s new, but also some of the throwback tracks because we were always lockstep hand in hand with the bands then and the bands now, particularly one last bit is thinking about Kendrick Lamar when he dropped his album, the last album when we were all listening to it and going crazy, I get a text from Ghana. The world was like, “The album dropped, Kendrick Lamar’s in Ghana.” Well, Kendrick Lamar was at the Freedom Skatepark in Ghana when that album dropped.
Dave Zirin:
What?
Neftalie Williams:
Yes. So that’s how deep our roots run. He was there, and I got the video and the texts from my friends who run that park, and that was just for me, just such a moment of connection to know he was there, showing them that he still had some skills from when he was younger in LA, and his presence there was just so wonderful to show that connection between hip hop, skateboarding on the global stage.
Dave Zirin:
My goodness. Dr. Williams, thank you so much for joining us on Edge of Sports TV.
Neftalie Williams:
Thank you.
Dave Zirin:
That was fantastic.
Neftalie Williams:
Thank you. I appreciate it. It was an honor to be on the show.
Dave Zirin:
Well, that’s all the time we have for this week’s Edge of Sports TV. Thank you so much, Byron Hurt. Thank you so much, Neftalie Williams. Big shout out to everybody here at The Real News Network. For everybody out there watching, please stay frosty. We are out of here. Peace.
Speaker 4:
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