A casual observer could be forgiven for missing snowboarding’s Black history. The sport’s most heralded athlete, after all, is a rock-and-roll-loving redhead whose last name is White. And while the sport has produced a pantheon of Black pros, they’ve been few and far between. Only a couple have secured their own board model, and none have made the U.S. Olympic Team.
But Black riders are crucial to understanding snowboarding’s style, and trajectory. The sport’s pioneering pros include Russell Winfield and Stevie Bell, who, in hitting tricks on unorthodox objects, became leaders of the so-called “jib movement,” as well as Keir Dillon, Ben Hinkley, and Dillon Ojo. “Their style was distinct and flamboyant in a way where you had to pay attention,” said Selema Masekela, a long-time X Games commentator. “They had a sense of self-expression born from their unique experiences.”
This is evident, for instance, with Winfield, who drew on his roots in the San Diego skate scene to help pioneer street snowboarding. Hinkley, for his part, pushed forward flip tricks, including his signature: the lawn dart. Then there’s Dillon, who, in September 2001, landed on the cover of Transworld Snowboarding throwing a McTwist, shirtless, with boombox headphones on. “That shit was iconic,” said Masekela, a former Transworld staffer. “And Black as fuck.”
This legacy of innovation lives on with riders like Zeb Powell, a 24-year-old pro known for the “knuckle huck,” who along with with Masekela and George Carpenter, the oldest son of the late snowboarding godfather Jake Burton Carpenter, co-founded Culture Shifters: an annual summit formed in 2021 to show off and strengthen representation on the slopes.
Powell’s pure love of the sport is evident by his playful approach to the mountain. He maintained his light composure years ago when a skier at his home resort, in North Carolina, screamed the n-word at him. Powell responded with a resounding “Hell no!” then took off down the mountain.
“I wasn’t trying to be that mean, but I caught him at a flat slope, slashed his ski off, and he puttered to the ground,” he explained recently, on the heels of this year’s Culture Shifters, which included a bunch of shredding, but also conversations about the history and future of diversity in athletics moderated by Neftalie Williams, the director of San Diego State University’s Center for Skateboarding, Action Sports & Social Change. Black snowboarders were well represented, but there were also Indigenous riders and those from other backgrounds.
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