Читать книгу Empire in Waves. A Political History of Surfing онлайн

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He exhibited less nonchalance in celebrating the aquatic ascendance of his white compatriots. White mastery of surfing, Ford claimed, was grounded in the dynamics of race. “[I]t is the white children only who have successfully mastered the Hawaiian sports,” he wrote in 1908. The Chinese in Hawai‘i had not done so. Nor had the Portuguese. “The Japanese seemed never able to acquire the difficult knack.” It was only “the small white boy” who “very quickly became more adept than the native himself.”⁸⁷ The proof, he suggested, was in the competitions. Hawaiian surfers of course disagreed. Precluded from joining Ford’s club, frustrated by the encroachment of haole surfers in the waters off Waikiki, and “disgusted” with the racism of Outrigger members, Hawaiians officially formed the Hui Nalu (Club of the Waves), which had been loosely organized since 1905, as a surfing and swimming association in 1911.⁸⁸ The Hui Nalu contained numerous well-known surfers, from champion swimmer Duke Kahanamoku and his brothers to Jonah Kuhio Kalaniana‘ole, the prince who served after 1902 as the territory’s delegate to Congress. It also contained some women, though not in the numbers suggested by their historical prominence in wave-riding accounts.