Commitment to Anti-Racism in Skateboarding

As members of the global skateboarding community, we have come together to make a collective commitment to actively resist and challenge systemic racism in our own scenes, organizations, the skateboard industry, and wider society. Skateboarding and skateboarding-based social programs should always be safe spaces where everyone can thrive. However, we recognize that we operate within social and organizational systems that are larger than us. We aim to recognize power relationships exist and to be mindful of how racism can take many forms, both in overt, covert, and micro ways. We see it as our duty to put in the work – to cocreate spaces and areas of influence that are: welcoming, empowering, representative, and committed to racial equity for all individuals who are Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour (BIPOC).

As signatories, we aim to actively provide pathways and establish spaces where all voices are heard, valued, and have support and access to resources to contribute fully to the skateboarding community. We also aim to support each other in the work of challenging systemic racism that may appear at our skateparks, in our media, in our organizational structures, in skate programs that we run, and in the skateboard industry.

We also commit to co-creating spaces for learning and accountability for people with social privilege and especially racial or ethnic privilege. We agree to set a positive public example by acting in a manner that supports this vision of equity in skateboarding.

• We are committed to learning about and challenging all types of systemic racism that affect skateboarding and fellow skateboarders, either directly or indirectly.

• Together, we acknowledge the emotional labour, expertise, and valuable time of those oppressed by systemic racism.

• We recognize that it is our collective responsibility to do the work to educate ourselves about privilege and racism. • We welcome feedback and are open to change and learning.

• We encourage people to be open and share about our experiences with systemic racism if we feel safe to do so in order for the community to improve on this matter.

• We will endeavour to replace defensiveness and reaction with listening and reflecting.

• We recognize that we can only achieve progress if we let ourselves be vulnerable as we move towards equity. As with skateboarding, we have to be willing to potentially make mistakes and learn from them.

• We work to make space for each other and try to encourage one another to contribute to our collective knowledge-building and action.

• We are focused on the goal of dismantling racism and prejudice in the skateboarding community and industry worldwide.

Who’s Behind this Commitment?
The Commitment is an initiative from the Goodpush Alliance, which is a network of social skateboarding projects from around the world. In August and September 2020, Goodpush hosted two webinars on the topic of Anti-Racism Action. Several webinar participants suggested that we jointly create a commitment that the skateboarding community could sign on to, so that we can all strive to do better and unite ourselves in challenging racism within our communities, our organizations and the social structures around us. The Commitment and supporting resources were put together by a working group with members from a dozen social skateboarding organizations and skate companies.

If you want to give feedback, suggest improvements, or get involved please contact: info@goodpush.org