Photo: Technine
There’s not a lot left to be said about snowboarding’s early influences, especially when it comes to skateboarding. For many, especially those that didn’t live in mountain towns, the urge to snowboard was a direct result of being a skateboarder who lived somewhere with snow.
One reason snowboarding has struggled to form its own cultural identity is because it’s so associated with skating, not to mention surfing. Nearly every snowboarding trend has been lifted or borrowed from one of its board sport brethren. You can see it on the hill: many snowboarders either look like they watch the Supreme video too often, or that they wish they were on a beach.
But as far style is concerned—meaning the sport’s look–snowboarding’s main source of inspiration comes from the “urban influence,” most closely associated with skating. Snowboarders, since at least the early 90’s, have adopted skateboarding’s inner-city influence with reckless abandon, everyone from Vermont to Big Bear was dressing like their skateboarding counterparts, without a hint of irony.
One of the most significant areas to be impacted by this sweeping trend was Utah, one of the whitest and most wealthy states in the union. In the mid 90’s, lead by the likes of J.P Walker and Jeremy Jones (the jibber) the Salt Lake City snowboard scene was suddenly overrun by affluent white kids wearing baggy pants, do-rags, and large chains. JP even goes so far as to mock himself in Mack Dawg’s The Resistance, where Walker can be seen rocking the whitest cornrows ever and getting beat up at the end by two large black men (below).
While JP and Jeremey might have sparked a trend that swept Utah (and really all of snowboarding, myself included), they certainly weren’t the ones who pushed the appropriation to extreme limits. That would happen courtesy of a binding company called Technine founded in Avon Colorado, a sleepy resort town of under 7,000.
Technine, while taking appropriation to an embarrassing level, even for most hip-hop loving snowboarders, was not the only company to steal from both black and street culture while primarily selling to a wealthy white consumer base, as pretty much every major brand from 32 to Burton has been guilty of this.
However, Technine, with their blue and red bandana-colored bindings and outerwear, overly baggy clothing and large fake diamond pendants, set the standard for cultural appropriation for well over a decade. It doesn’t mean that Technine hasn’t made some positive contributions to the snowboard community with riders like Dylan Thompson, MFM, and Lucas Magoon riding for the brand, it just means that they haven’t made any positive contributions to the community they were directly stealing from and profiting off of.
You’d have to be living under a rock to be unaware of the social injustices currently facing communities of color. From police shootings to a lack of clean drinking water, minority communities, the same communities that snowboarding has time and again pillaged for cultural identity, are facing vast injustices.
And yet with all that is going on, snowboard brands and many industry influencers remain overwhelmingly quiet on these issues. None are publicly calling for justice or supporting community groups like Black Lives Matter. This seems grossly inappropriate for an industry that has so belligerently profited off of black identity and culture.
This is also where snowboarding looks less like its preferred influencer skateboarding, which is a multicultural, often inner-city activity, and more like its true predecessor, skiing. Skateboarding, with its low cost of entry and multicultural roots, is a much more diverse affair with people of color on team rosters and in brand leadership roles. While this doesn’t mean skateboarding, like all industries in America, doesn’t have room for growth, it just means that skateboarding when compared to skiing or snowboarding is light years ahead in terms of diversity.
Many skateboard brands have been vocal about their support for communities of color. Brands have been willing to take risks to push forth social commentary (google Sean Cliver and REN, below) which is most likely a sign of both skateboarding’s diversity and punk and hip-hop ethos.
Of course it’s just easier for brands to hide in the background and hope no one is watching, that way they can continue to profit from black and brown culture, without actually rocking the boat. This is the definition of cowardice and I hope that our industry will take a long hard look at how it can support progressive social issues, especially as it continues to profit from cultural theft.
There will undoubtedly be the people who read this article and either comment or think that snowboarding doesn’t need to stick it’s nose in racial, social or political issues, but these people are wrong. Any industry that is openly appropriating other cultures has a responsibility to give back and support those communities. Ignorance may be bliss for many, but for the communities that are directly taken from, feigning ignorance is not an option.
This responsibility doesn’t rest solely on the brands however, as this should be the goal of all snowboarders, becoming a diverse and inclusive culture will help set the precedent for snowboarding’s growth and evolution for years to come. As a consumer you can support brands who are willing to take a stand on relevant issues whether that be social or environmental, as your money is the greatest influencer of all.
As for brands and industry influencers, it’s time to be bigger than your fears, take a stand for what’s right and just. In my book, an industry that claims to be at the forefront of progression in its sport, should probably use that voice to effect positive “progression” in society as well.
