“And what, if not a class struggle, is the basis for localism and social tensions at every beach on the planet?” Art: Damian Fulton
The recent hazing and harassment allegations brought against Richie Incognito by Jonathan Martin have brought the greatest sports-media attention to South Florida since Hurricane Sandy graced the region with chocolate-hued barrels better suited to a South Pacific atoll than Brevard County.
Allegations of racism meet allegations of death threats meet allegations of a morally corrupt team culture meet retorts that the two players in question were actually best buds and Incognito’s claim that “[m]y actions were coming from a place of love.” The whole Martin-Incognito situation is perverse, strangely ironic, and overwhelming f-cked-up regardless of who is at fault for the whole tragic shitshow, be it Incognito, the franchise, or professional football at large. It is indeed indicative of a whole slew of social and cultural difficulties that the NFL and broader sporting culture, recreational surfing included, are reticent to confront.
Based on much of the reporting on the situation, the biggest sticking point for onlookers seems to be the liberal use of racial slurs by Incognito, who is white, against fellow lineman Martin, who is black. Most incomprehensible to many following the situation (myself included) is that the rest of the Miami Dolphins core, who are largely African-American, has backed Incognito, even making official statements to the effect that he’s earned the right to use the strongest of racial epithets in his chosen professional setting (IF we can claim that “professional” has the same connotation in athletic pursuits as it does in other vocations…and I’m not sure that we can).
While there is no discussing this situation “beyond skin color” in some de-racialized rhetorical vacuum—the mere suggestion of ignoring the racial politics of Incognito and Martin’s interaction strikes me as offensive—the situation-at-large signals something else highly relevant to surfing: a clash of social class and a politics of aggression predicated upon tensions between the haves and the have-nots.
You see, rich and poor just plain don’t get along in most contexts, NFL locker rooms and localized surf zones among them. And the issue that the majority of the Dolphins’ clubhouse had with Martin doesn’t seem to be wholly about definitions of African-American masculinity or his intellectual prowess, but rather, more about perceived differences in social class.
Incognito’s father, Richard Sr., was the son of immigrant parents, his Italian father assigned the family name “Incognito” upon immigration processing at Ellis Island. Proud of his “hard-nosed, working-class” background, the elder Incognito was raised in Union City, New Jersey, before serving in Vietnam and moving his family to Arizona, where he found work building swimming pools. Given Richard Sr.’s rise to a middle class existence in Glendale, Arizona (median 2012 household income, $45,015) that enabled his son to excel on the football field, one would think that Incognito wouldn’t squander his professional career and the lifestyle the NFL affords him (his last contract was for $13 million) by harassing a rookie teammate. But notions of class run deep.
Well-reported in the media is the fact that Martin attended the prestigious Harvard-Westlake school, an academic haven for the privileged children of the Los Angeles elite with a price tag of around $35,000 a year in tuition and fees. His family has a serious corporate and academic pedigree, and it’s common knowledge that Martin would have been the first fourth-generation African-American Harvard graduate had he not elected Stanford in order to play Division I football. Prior to entering the draft, Martin had already professed his plans to attend law school after the NFL.
Okay, so Incognito was the progeny of immigrant tradesmen (though hardly a product of the roughest of inner-city environs) and Martin was a Harvard legacy in the making, what’s my point? Running the numbers, it would appear that Martin’s alienation from his teammates and castigation by Incognito had less to do with Martin’s intellectual ability or race than with social class, a background that damn well informs everyone’s base understanding of the world and people around them, including surfers.
Even among millionaire football players, hypothetically bonded by supernatural athletic ability, the toils of endless training, their ascent to elite competition, and the embodiment of the “live-fast, die-young” fast money lifestyle, notions of class run deep enough to allow for, and potentially even motivate, transgressions as despicable and paradoxical as Incognito’s.
And what, if not a class struggle, is the basis for localism and social tensions at every beach on the planet? Sure, there are the obvious differences that propagate shitty attitudes and aggression in the water: Ability level. Waveriding etiquette. Equipment type. Place and duration of residence. Lest we forget race, gender, and nationality. These are significant and real factors that socially organize surf zones and inform localism, be it manifested in bad attitudes or outright violence. But in many cases of domestic surf rage, hating on others in and around the surf has a lot more to do with social class and economic outlook than much anything else.
Oxnard vs. Santa Barbara (and the entire 805), Palos Verdes vs. the South Bay, Maroubra vs. Bondi: the list goes on and on. The historical tensions between these respective surfing communities and hundreds of others are built on the backs of socioeconomic identity and very little else. And every stretch of coast, as much as global coastal demographics may have changed in the last five decades, knows which side of the tracks their waves break on.
Chalk it up to surfers and their communities identifying their own socioeconomic lot and converting that identity into a culture of exclusion. Grow up in an affluent beach community? The angry local in the European sedan proclaims, “F-ck everyone else, they’re scum and don’t have the right to enjoy my idyllic stretch of coast or bring down my property value” (see the reactions to the 2013 Huntington U.S. Open ‘Riots’, in which many blamed Long Beach, L.A., and inland lowlifes, a mere rhetorical thread from pointing fingers at “poor outsiders”). Grow up on a working class beach? The guy in the construction truck retorts, “F-ck you, you rich pricks, these waves are all I have, go back to your private schools, trust funds, and investments. And don’t even think of buying the house next door, raising prices, and running me out.” Pseudo-aristocratic social protectionism and a sincere fear of gentrification are the contrasting motors behind the vanguard of localist attitudes.
Sure, not everybody in the water is cocked and ready to go, relishing the opportunity to have words and get shitty in the lineup. But, as Stanford Assistant Coach Lance Anderson commented in light of the Martin-Incognito situation, “[the NFL] is a different culture, different personalities. You’re around players that have different backgrounds than you have, different values and ideals,” and what is the regular practice of surfing, locally or abroad, by Tom, Dick, and Harry’s like you and I, if not an exercise in dealing with different backgrounds and personalities in close quarters? And among those personalities, we’ve got our own instigators like Richie Incognito, and they’re from beaches on both sides of the socioeconomic tracks.
As the cost of coastal living has exploded worldwide, coastal communities from greater L.A. to seemingly idyllic expatriate communities in far-flung locales demonstrate the convergence of diverse bank accounts, backgrounds, values, and ideals. And these tense realities, maybe most historically-poignant in Californian or Australian beaches of decades past, are most manifest these days on the surf tourism and expatriate circuits from Baja to Bali, where the juxtaposition is not one of builders vs. bankers, but rather of local citizens and foreign investors. As in the tech booms of New York or San Francisco, gentrification is the bedfellow of expatriation, and there are serious economic concerns among local communities who have received foreign surfers in droves and seen disparity, displacement, and economic dependency increase in lieu of sincere development. And if Oxnard has built a reputation of infamy for keeping wealthier outsiders out, I’d forecast a similar, potentially more violent response in locales where land grabs are rapidly transforming the social map of coastal life.
Richie Incognito is not from the worst of American slums, yet he bullied Jonathan Martin out of spite for his social pedigree, a barrier that proved insurmountable for two elite athletes with much in common and significant income at stake. The implications are grave for a diverse corps of international surfers with even less in common and whose attitudes and circumstances are directly related to fluctuations in local coastal economies. So next time you see someone get intentionally burned, sent to the beach, or accosted in the parking lot or the cantina, look beyond the surf, and maybe to the parking lot. Because localism isn’t about surfing; it’s about class.
