Flo Ngala Captured Black Ice Skaters Beautifully
There’s something to be said about the history of Black athletes practicing sports that are considered traditionally white. For centuries, cultural norms have shaped and supported how people perceive Black players, particularly those on the ice.
An ice princess sport, figure skating has always been partial to mainstream ideologies. Think Dorothy Hamill or Sarah Hughes — white women who dominated the ice during their time. Seldom were images of Black women like Rory Flack Burghart and Surya Bonaly symbolic of what people thought when they heard the words figure skater.
After all, it wasn’t that long ago Black skaters weren’t allowed on the ice rink. A pioneer in figure skating, Mabel Fairbanks was rejected for the color of her skin, facing a slew of racism in the late 1920s throughout her career, unable to skate competitively, and denied entry to the Olympics.
“None of the white skaters wanted to be outshone by someone Black,” she states in a 1998 L.A. Times interview. “I remember [being told], ‘we don’t have [Blacks] in ice shows.’ But I didn’t let that get in my way, because I loved to skate.” Hailed as breaking the color barrier in figure skating, Fairbanks paved the way for skaters of color who lacked the money, access, and resources — creating space for the Rorys and Suryas of the world.
Double the rate of their white counterparts, one in four Black households live in poverty, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau, which is why the existence of initiatives like Figure Skating in Harlem and its sister organization Figure Skating in Detroit matter. Without the financial backing and access to expensive skating lessons and gear, the scarcity of Black athletes in figure skating and winter sports will continue.
Exploring the issue of inclusivity at her first solo exhibition, curated by Cierra Britton, Harlem Ice: The Selects Folder, Nigerian Cameroonian New York–based photographer and former figure skater Flo Ngala displayed never-before-seen images highlighting Black girls on the ice. Celebratory of Figure Skating in Harlem, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to build champions in life through the artistic discipline of figure skating, these images follow a recent cover story Flo photographed for the New York Times titled “When I Skate It Just Feels Free.”
“This work and program are so personal and the opportunity to share [it] on the Times platform was a dream, but I also knew there were tons of photos that hit a little deeper and evoked emotion that I felt people needed to see,” Flo tells Teen Vogue. “As a former figure skater, a big part of the sport for me was the emotion that went into it all; it’s something a skater and the audience feel. So when capturing the girls of the program it was not a surprise that those feelings flooded back to me.”
Challenging the norm, Flo’s exhibition was a beautiful reminder that community does exist among young girls of color in sports. Visibility now, more than ever before, is necessary and Flo echoes these same sentiments: “I’m not the first or last person to say this, but it is so important to show women of color and people of color in a light that those who do not look like us do not typically see us. It speaks to strength in numbers and sisterhood, and what it means to find something you love and decide to commit to even though it was not a space created for you.”
Fostering the dialogue around representation and lack of acceptance concerning the Black ice princess as a narrative, Flo explains that “we need to continue [these] conversations in ways that we may relate to it and bring to the forefront new angles and perspectives.” Especially with image politics at play for Black women in sports.
Figure skating has always held image, femininity in particular, on a pedestal, with white woman as the unspoken standard. Judged not only on technical elements like their jumps and spins, skaters are also subject to examination of how their feminine charm reads on the ice. That of which inevitably evokes bias, as what’s breathtaking to one may be middling to another.
And although the scoring system has changed to be more impartial, “there are [still] new forms of bias that are manifesting themselves in the system,” former figure skater Chloe Katz tell NBC News.
“Society remains uneasy with female strength of any stripe and still prefers and champions delicate damsels — an outdated sentiment that limits all women. But because the damsel’s face is still viewed as unequivocally white and female, it is a particular problem for Black women,” especially in sports, Tamara Winfrey Harris writes in The Sisters Are Alright: Changing the Broken Narrative of Black Women in America. “As long as vulnerability and softness are the basis for acceptable femininity, women who are perpetually framed because of their race as supernaturally indestructible will not be viewed with regard.”
Prevalent on and off the ice, the expectation for Black skaters to prove their femininity even exists as an assertion that they too are just as delicate and docile as their white counterparts, an unfortunate truth for Black ice queens like Surya, who was often ridiculed for being “too athletic.” It’s the double bind that comes with being Black and a woman in sports.
“Coming from a competitive gymnastics background, [Surya] had an unorthodox jumping and technical style, which, at the time, was not in line with the traditional style of skating that was expected and accepted by the broader skating community,” Sonja Kaminski, former U.S. Figure Skating Gold and Regional judge tells the Undefeated. “That time in skating was the ‘age of elegance’ and Surya…displayed athleticism, not finesse…which opened the door for the judges to give her lower scores.”
Evocative of the many ways Black women’s bodies are condemned in a society where they are cast as other, the pressure for Black figure skaters to fit into a singular image on the ice is burdensome. Often met with language like “masculine,” and “not graceful enough,” figure skating has proven to be a homogenous sport that lacks in diversity.
And while there is no clear data on the ethnic makeup of figure skaters, what is clear is of the more than 2,500 medals that have been issued for winter sports since the first Winter Olympics in 1924 — only 12 of those medals are occupied by Black athletes. Of the 271 medals awarded for figure skating, only two are held by Black skaters: Debi Thomas, who won bronze in 1988, and Robin Szolkowy, who won bronze in 2010.
As a self-proclaimed “dark skin girl on white ice,” Flo recalls never fitting into the one-dimensional mold skating upholds and feeling “less girly” because of it. She even highlights how the subtlety of the tights she wore as a skater enforced the notion that people who look like her don’t belong: “There were these tights skaters would wear when performing that were ‘flesh-colored’ but it was tan and beige, not brown ones, which was always weird [to me].”
The friction between artistry and athleticism that plague Black skaters and more broadly Black athletes are reasons why work like Flo’s is so important. Image is powerful and the ability to inspire can ignite change.
Flo is looking forward to a future where Black people are no longer the “firsts” or “onlys” in the competitive spaces. “[I] hope the idea of women of color in sports like skating becomes more of the norm and more accessible for us.” Because, like she says, “It is imperative for opportunity and access to be shared with communities [like ours] that haven’t been exposed to it.”
See some of Flo's images from the original work, below, and stay tuned for updates about Harlem Ice: The Selects Folder exhibit.
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