“Some people think surfing is a relationship with the sea,” his mother said one day, when Byron was struggling in the water, “but surfing is really a relationship between you and yourself. The sea is going to do whatever it wants.” She winked.
“What you need to do, Byron, is know who you are, and where you are, at all times. This is about you, finding and keeping your center. This is how you take on a wave. Then you might find that you need to practice more, or there’s a storm swell coming in, or the wave is simply too much for you. You might even decide that you’re just not cut out for the surfing and that’s all right, too. But you cannot know which of these is true unless you go out there with your head in the right place.” This was true of surfing and it was true of life, his ma said.
Earlier today, as Byron got himself organized to visit two middle schools, he did something a little different. He placed his backpack and laptop on the passenger seat of his Jeep then turned back to grab one of his surfboards. Why hadn’t he done this sooner, he thought, as he loaded the board into the back of the vehicle.
“How many of you have one of these?” Byron said, holding the longboard upright as he faced an assembly of students from several classrooms. Only two hands went up but Byron caught the wave, climbing through the connections between surfing and physics and his professional studies of the seafloor.
The idea to talk about surfing had come to Byron the evening before, as he sat in his car waiting for a highway cop to run a check on his driver’s license. It was the fourth time this year that he’d been pulled over by police, and to keep his nerves under control, Byron had breathed deeply and slowly and imagined himself running toward the water with a board under his arm. That was when he decided to make a little change to his usual Career Day presentation.
“Like most of you, I was born right here in Southern California,” Byron said as he faced a thousand students sitting on bleachers in the gym. “And I went to grade school, high school, and both of my universities in this state, always near the coast.” He held the surfboard in place with one hand and tapped it three times with the other.
“As you know, California is famous for its surfing. And I like to surf, but in all my years growing up in Orange County, I rarely saw another black guy on a surfboard. Now, why do you think that is?”
One kid put up his hand. “Tradition?” he said.
“Tradition,” Byron said. “I can see why you might think that. But whose tradition are we talking about?” He leans the board against the lectern and walks back to the kids.
“Black people surf in the Caribbean, where my parents were born. In fact, it was my mother who taught me how to surf. And folks surf in African countries, where more than a billion people live and where, as you know, most people happen to be black-or brown-skinned. And what about Asia? Long surfing history there. So why not here, in the surfing capital of the world?” Some of the kids were leaning forward now.
“Now, don’t get me wrong,” Byron said. “There’s actually a whole group of black surfers farther up the coast. They even give lessons on weekends. But when I was growing up in my area, it just wasn’t a thing. There are various reasons why surfing tended to be limited to only certain groups of people in California.”
Byron loves this. A whole room full of adolescents, listening.
“But I’m not going to get into all of that here, that’s a whole other story. What I want to say is this. The same thing is true for the work that I do. When I was still studying at university, I was the only black guy in my doctorate program.”
Byron raised his hands. “Now, I know you think we’re talking, like, the Neolithic Age.”
Laughter.
“But it wasn’t all that long ago. I’m happy to say that I finished my studies and I do useful work and I love my job. And now I see university students of different stripes getting into my line of research. Times have changed, it’s true. But the numbers of students going for the sciences and following that all the way through to the doctorate level, or to jobs that offer real opportunities for promotion, have not been keeping up as they should. So, what’s my point?”
Hands up, waving.
“Good, I want to hear your questions in just a minute, but let me just conclude by saying this: If you want to surf, don’t wait to find someone out there who looks just like you before you go surfing. And if you’re interested in my field, ocean sciences, remote sensing, or something like chemistry or biology or information technology, don’t wait for someone to give you permission. Just go ahead and study and apply for programs everywhere you can, because we need more talented young people, of all kinds, and you can’t win if you don’t play.”