Meet David Malana of Color the Water in Venice Beach Area

Today we’d like to introduce you to David Malana.

David, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
In a perhaps irreconcilable irony, 2020 is the start of all this. With more and more Angelenos stuck at home amidst an intensifying pandemic, and after the murder of George Floyd, I attended a Paddle Out, the first of many in the LA Area in solidarity against systemic racism in America. I was coming back from a decade of international work and travel, grounded back home, as it were. I went alone, not even knowing where Inkwell beach was at. When I got there, I didn’t know what to expect, but I kind of did. White surfers gathered there in community and camaraderie with one another, while many surfers of color were more somber, uninitiated, and alone. I was called to action by the visible manifestation of white dominance over surf culture and the chance to provide the BIPOC community who wanted it a genuine chance at the healing powers of the ocean and surfing. “I gotta do SOMETHING or at least try. This paddle-out stuff is great, and we need it, but it’s supposed to the call to action, not the action itself. I gotta find a way to fight racism in my daily practice,” I thought. I started to offer free surf lessons and surf media through Instagram (I work in media literacy, videography, and photography).

At first it was slow, and new thoughts like “am I being performative” and “is my allyship actually contributing, not just absolving my own non-black guilt?” It was such a time of frantic emotion and paralyzing hesitation. Surfers started to come to me, though. Slowly at first, then more and more rapidly as summer passed, Color the Water started to grow. It started with four hopeful surfers, and now there are over 300 people signed up to be a part of it. Along the way, a woman I met at the very first paddle out reached out to me and told me that she wanted to be a part of what was going on. When she got there, things really started to take off, and the combination of our collective leadership and the contributions of some of our original surfers have led us to where we are now. We just received our non-profit status and have a fundraiser that is so close to completion. We are about to start a bank account for Color the Water, and of course the first thing we wanted to have our money move through a black-owned bank. We were on the site the other day and they had a debit card with Harriet Tubman making a Wakanada Forever gesture with her arms!

The fantasy is to have our whole chain, up and down, supplied by BIPOC businesses or at the very least anti-racist allies, and we are passionate about helping create as many autonomous surfers of colors as possible around the world and a community where anti-racist surfers have a space to struggle in the ocean, even if only for a couple of hours, away from the struggle of racism that pervades through almost every other experience. If we can do that, then surfing is no longer a guilty escape but an act of joyful anti-racist defiance, and we want to hold our foot in the gate of a surf culture that has gone astray. It was originated by people of color as a communal, often spiritual practice, nothing like the commodified, selfish, territorial, exclusive culture it’s become in the hands of colonizers. So we are aiming to be out here, genuinely, a self-sufficient contributor to the movement of institutionalized anti-racism, and for us, that all starts by coloring the water.

Has it been a smooth road?
Honestly, some of the bumps in the road have been unexpected and heartbreaking, as they have come from people of color. A Hawaiian Trump supporter came at me online because he didn’t like the term ocean equity and wanted to make sure that I knew that Hawaii was the actual originator of surfing, not Peru or West Africa. I told him that just because James Cook or whoever recorded it all in such detail doesn’t mean that the other places where wave riding wasn’t recorded by white people are less valid. I’ve been called out for speaking on behalf of black people by those who don’t know that every important decision with regard to racial expression moves through our all blackboard before any moves are made, and things we have done have been labeled performative, despite the quiet, action-based ways in which we have operated.

And, of course the boring details of trying to maintain free surf lessons for a BIPOC community while also paying rent and covering the expenses that come with non-profit work are all there. To be perfectly honest though, it’s been smooth, considering that wherever we go, we are (for now) an anomaly that draws attention. Most of the time it’s positive and supportive, but every once in a while it’s clear that the eyes behind the smile see something that they don’t like, and we hear about it in really snitch, roundabout ways. That’s how we know we are doing something that hits a nerve though, and the leadership around me has been incredible in affirming that these things are not struggles to hinder us but tests to affirm our strength. So far, that is what it all has done.

We’d love to hear more about your work and what you are currently focused on. What else should we know?
Well, Color the Water aims to create as many autonomous surfers as possible. So, we give bomb ass surf lessons and take bomb ass media, all for free. As far as I know, a surf lesson that also has a media package costs somewhere around $200, so we are out here really being the thing so many pioneer surfers of color never had – that friend that had a board you could use, a camera to make you look good while you do it, and a community of surfers that look like you and if they don’t they accept you wholeheartedly anyway. That community part… that is something that has taken by surprise. I thought it would be more like a traditional surf school or private lesson situation. I used to be a ballplayer and trainer, and I thought it would be like that – people get their game up, then head back to their crew or spot and hopefully share it with their friends and have it multiply that way.

To my surprise though, the community instead has stuck together and grown within, creating an amazing space that is homegrown and organic, elevated by all the people who are learning and contributing all at once, spreading this and serving in ways that feel like family. That is what I think I am most proud of – that the people who receive from color the water are just as passionate about giving and sharing. Then we hope to surf is like that too. We are hoping that one day, we are able to surf waves together, weaving in and out of the wave together. That is how the ancestors did it, and that is the surf culture we are channeling.

How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
I don’t know where the industry is going, but someone told us about how every seven years, the surf industry collapses. They rebuild it every time, and it continues on, but maybe this time in the rebuild, they will not have such a cultural wall that keeps surfers of color so far out, even if only in subtle ways. I went into a Rip Curl store in Santa Monica a month ago and counted the humans on the walls and TVs. There are about 77 of them, and only one of them was a person of color (Gabriel Medina, though, a world champion from Brazil). So even if you don’t see that or count the way I do, it still does something. It still does something when NO wetsuits can fit the types of bodies that we have and when there are literally zero black surfers at highest ranks of international surfing (let alone Filipino, Indian, etc.). I don’t know if the shifts coming are going to affect the big industry, but I know that a cultural shift is coming, built on pioneers who have been holding it down for a long time and a new generation for whom this culture is unacceptable… a generation that is ready to redefine this whole thing.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/color_the_water/

Image Credit:
John Suhar, Jessa Williams, David Malana, Rahzizi Ishakarah

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