Lizelle Jackson Is DIVERSIFYING Surf Culture

Article by Shai Goodman, photography by Emily Monforte.

Lizelle Jackson surfs every wave like there isn’t another one coming right behind it; fast and hard with an unsparing desire for the next set to roll through. The gentle smile she wears seems to dissipate as she sees her wave approaching in the distance, and when that wave comes in, she’s all business. Flying through each section on her 5’5 Mini Simmons, there is no part of the wave left untouched as she kicks out. Paddling back into the line-up, her smile returns as if nothing ever happened, and that she didn’t just kick that last wave to shit.

 A lifelong competitor and former professional athlete, Lizelle has always seen herself as her biggest competition. Since her professional volleyball career ended a decade ago, she now channels her energy into outdoor adventures. Whether it’s training with Team Onyx—a multi-sport team of Black endurance athletes—or chasing waves along the California coast, Lizelle’s clarity comes, as she explains, “when I’m a part of nature. As a mixed kid where I never really fit in, being in nature let me break away from all that pressure that I had in my head.”

Lizelle Jackson wants people of color to know that “You don’t have to conform to this idea of what a surfer is supposed to look like, you can bring your whole identity into the water with you.”

Fueled by her love of the natural world, and the desire to share that love with other Black, Indigenous, and people of color, Lizelle co-founded Color The Water with surfer and educator David Malana, an organization that provides free surf lessons to BIPOC. Lizelle and David are creating a space where BIPOC can show-up in the water fully, without having to change any aspect of their identity.

After a few hours of trying to keep up with Lizelle in the water, we got a chance to speak with her and hear a bit about her experiences as both a surfer and founder of CTW, as well as her hopes for the future of surf culture.

Can you tell me a little bit about where you grew up? 

I grew up in Palmdale, in the high desert just about an hour northeast of the city [Los Angeles]. It was a cool place to grow up, and there was a lot of outdoor activities to get into… but obviously the beach was a bit of a trek so that was a couple times a year opportunity. It was just me and my mom and grandmother. They were always pretty active as well, so we just spent a lot of time hiking and camping, things like that.

When you were growing up, what did you like about being outside and playing so many sports?

At the time, it [sports] was just always something I did. I was always competitive—both with other people but predominantly myself. I push myself even if nobody is around. When I’m training… you know and it's just you and the outdoors, there’s no outside pressure of anything, you can be authentically yourself there, and there was always such a freedom in that.

Do you and your mom still share a lot of outdoor adventures together now?

Last week I was on a hike, you know training, and I ran into her! I was like there’s 500 miles of trails out here and I ran into her!

Seeing your mom so active while you were growing up must have been really cool.

For me that was just normal. It was like, what do you mean your mom doesn’t run marathons? My mom was a phone technician, she was the person climbing the telephone poles and crawling under houses. I grew up with her and my grandmother, we did everything ourselves, there was no male presence there. If we needed to get the yard done, we put the sprinkler system in ourselves. There was always a female empowerment at play, and I don’t think I ever realized growing up how much that shaped my ideas of what we can do as women. I think also though, as a mixed kid, you know my father is a Black man, he didn’t grow up with this exposure to the outdoors like my mom did, for various reasons. He didn’t know how to swim— he brought me out to the beach and was like “don’t go out past the whitewash I’m not coming to get you.” I think there was always a part of me that imagined, “what would my relationship be to the outdoors had I’d been raised by my dad?” That’s always where it’s been important for me to try and share my love of the outdoors with specifically the Black community because that representation is not there. When I’m out on a hike or mountain bike ride, I know that I’m probably going to be the only woman of color out there that I see, and I want that to change.

Was that a big drive for you to start Color The Water?

For sure. It’s an anti-racist organization, and we want to do our part to fight racism, specifically within surf culture, but I think more importantly for me it’s about representation. It’s about having people see themselves in the water— having other people that look like them out there, and knowing that, this is something I can do. For a lot of people you grow up thinking you know, surfing is for white people, that’s white people stuff, and so if you want to partake in it, then it’s almost like you have to separate from part of your identity, or you have to like whitewash yourself in a way. Let’s be real, in surf culture there are not a lot of people of color that are represented in imagery, and so if we can change that, if we can make it so that seeing people of color in the water is normal, then you know it’ll make it that much more accessible for a lot of people.

 So many of our [Color The Water] surfers are business professionals, they are in their 30s and 40s. They’ve navigated the business world and things like that. They tell us these stories— they’ve come to the beach every day, they’ve sat out there and have never had the confidence to go out in the water, because nobody looks like them, or they don’t feel like it’s a welcoming space for them. And that's difficult, it’s difficult to enter a sea of white faces if you’re the only other. I think that’s just a huge part of our work, is making it more accessible for people.

What do you hope people get from their experience at Color The Water?

You can be who you are in the world, in the water. You don’t have to conform to this idea of what a surfer is supposed to look like, you can bring your whole identity into the water with you. That’s something we really try and make sure that our surfers know at Color The Water is that you show up as you. We want this space to be for folks to come as they are, and not feel that they have to change themselves in any way. We have this surfer Ty, 

that is working hard to realize his dream of competing in the Paralympics. He's got this son who is only two years old, Taj, and they come out to the beach all the time and I am recognizing that Taj is now growing up with this as normal—seeing his dad, a single-leg amputee, along with all these other people of color surfing on a consistent basis is not going to be strange for him.

How do you feel that your personality and identity come across in your surfing?

I think the ocean just lays you out bare. I think there are a lot of parallels between who you are in the world and how you interact with the water… I like the speed; I like going for wave after wave. 

So, do you think of yourself as a surfer?

I'm always trying to buck the idea that just because I might not be the best surfer, doesn’t mean I’m not one. I think if you’re out there, and surfing is a part of your daily practice, weekly practice, whatever it is, then call yourself a surfer.

You can support Lizelle’s Non Profit, Color The Water, by donating to their GoFundMe and Patreon  and following them on Instagram at @Color_The_Water.