Historical racism in the outdoors 

The outdoors weren’t hard for BIPOC communities to access, but discriminatory practices and perpetuated cultural beliefs may have led them to become less accessible throughout U.S.  history. 

“When we think about the Great American cowboy, those folks were Black and Mexican,” Nuñez of CSU Fullerton said. “They weren’t necessarily the white cowboys that we see on the spaghetti westerns.” 

The relationships between people of color and the outdoors evolved as powerful players in U.S. history shaped the country and its landscape in their favor. 

The country’s first white settlers colonized Indigenous lands and communities; in the 19th century, some white people romanticized the outdoors in contrast to urban areas, which were largely populated by people of color and immigrants and often viewed as unsanitary. Even President Theodore Roosevelt’s dedication to the national parks system reflected a desire to keep masculinity alive specifically among white men, Krymkowski said. 

Such discrimination and exclusion throughout history have left Black communities with fewer opportunities to explore interests in outdoor activities like hiking, he said.

The legacy of these patterns still show today. Over the years, Black Americans age 29 and older faced higher drowning death rates than their white counterparts, a fact Krymkowski said ties directly back to segregationist policies governing swimming pools. 

Incidents like the 2020 racial profiling of New York City bird watcher Christian Cooper, on whom a white woman called the police, reveal to some a pattern of continued racism in the outdoors. 

For many communities of color, the outdoors can also represent a real danger. 

“I’m from the South,” Powell of the Refuge Outdoor Festival said. “We had really some severe ramifications if you went into the woods alone. Or people were taken into the woods alone and came back – if they came back – traumatized.” 

Trina Baker didn’t grow up hiking, camping or adventuring in the snow. However, as soon as she began walking outdoors with GirlTrek, a program designed to get Black women outdoors, Baker said she fell in love with nature.

“Hiking has been my spiritual place,” Baker said at a Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission work session today in Ilwaco, Washington, near Cape Disappointment State Park.

Now, Baker has made part of her mission to get other Black Washingtonians to head outdoors.

A recent survey by the Black Washingtonians Workgroup on Outdoor Recreation found fewer than 1.5% of State Parks visitors are Black.

Some barriers included safety concerns, a lack of access to transportation, and access to outdoor equipment, which can be expensive.

The 12-member workgroup surveyed Black Washingtonians about these barriers to participating in outdoor recreation. In addition, the group presented potential solutions to lower those barriers.

Reco Bembry, the workgroup’s facilitator, said learning more about these barriers is a critical conversation. However, he said, this discussion should be only the beginning.

“It’s a very critical conversation to have about ways to create greater humanity for our citizens, and I think outdoor recreation serves to do that a lot,” Bembry said.

The workgroup reviewed at least 76 scholarly articles, he said.

Talking to Black community members, the group found at least 57 barriers to getting outdoors. The biggest concern, Bembry said, is safety, especially for parents taking children outside.

“Outdoor Recreating While Black, in Washington, is a modern-day safety hazard,” Bembry said.

To help with potential hazards, a Black couple, Anthony and Marlie Love, created a travel show that rates how safe and comfortable they feel while traveling around the Pacific Northwest, similar to the green book that guided travelers across the country.

The Black community has faced more than 100 years of barriers to recreate in state parks, which were created through systematic racism and white supremacy, he said.

“Parks were set up specifically for people that don’t look like me,” Bembry said. “When parks and recreation as a whole was set up, it was a place for white citizens to go to get away from this diversity in the urban settings.”

In addition, he said, laws and norms have led to the oppression of Black, Indigenous and People of Color, or BIPOC, Washingtonians in the outdoors.

Now, parks have changed, Bembry said, which is something he’s noticed after spending around six decades outside.

“I also can still feel the barriers that exist,” he said.

However, Bembry said the racist system that set up parks is changing slowly.

“It’s like turning a cruise ship. It takes time,” he said.

In addition, adequate transportation can become a major barrier to getting people outside, as well as discretionary money for entrance fees, gas, and outdoor clothing, Bembry said.

To help with some of those struggles, Bembry and Baker recently held two outdoor events for Black Washingtonians, with transportation, food and entrance fees covered by Black Washingtonian groups and businesses.

Meeting up at a specific location to travel together can reduce transportation issues, Bembry said. In addition, communicating plans in-depth beforehand helps people understand what to expect, he said.

Good advertising, for example, attracted 68 people to a snow tubing trip in March – it was designed for 30 people.

“That’s a good problem to have,” Baker said.

Bembry said Black people tend to trust community members who are planning and leading events, such as Black People Who Hike or Outdoor Afro. These groups can help people learn how to get outdoors, a significant barrier when first starting out, Bembry said. People seem to be more comfortable initially going outdoors in large groups with 10 or more people, he said.

“You’d be surprised about how many people in multiple communities around this country don’t know how to set up a tent,” Bembry said. “These are simple learning lessons that a lot of people are uncomfortable with and just need to learn.”

A little bit of help from more experienced people can go a long way, he said.

Experienced community members also can help Black people overcome generations of what Bembry called historical trauma, which leads to a fear of nature, Bembry said. He said he still remembers his grandmother telling him not to go into the woods at night.

“A lot of folks are overcoming that fear,” he said. “It takes one, two or three trips for folks to really get over that completely. The risk and reward function kicks in about the second or third trip.”

In addition, equipment costs can create a hardship for people first looking to head outdoors, Bembry said.

For example, he said, hiking boots can cost $200 to $300.

For her part, Commissioner Sophia Danenberg, the only Black member of the Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission, said it’s also hard to know where to buy equipment when first heading outdoors. She purchased her first outdoor equipment from Goodwill, including an external-framed backpack formerly used by the Boy Scouts.

Moreover, Washington State Parks needs more inclusivity in its own hiring, volunteer development, and vendor partnerships, said Chevon Powell, a member of the workgroup who owns the outdoor event company Golden Brick Events.

Earlier in the meeting, Valerie Roberts, State Parks Volunteer Program manager, said the Volunteer Program is building relationships with new volunteers from many communities in Washington.

For her part, Danenberg said State Parks isn’t diverse in its employment or volunteers. At an event in Goldendale last week, she said she saw one other person of color.

“I’ve got to say, I saw one Black woman, and just as I was about to be like, ‘Hey Girl!’ when I realized that she was part of Gov. Inslee’s security detail,” Danenberg said.

To increase diversity, equity and inclusion when dealing with the public, she suggested increasing diversity training and the diversity of camp hosts at state parks.

To make camp hosting easier, Commissioner Mike Latimer said State Parks could look at creating camp host positions in places with yurts or cabins so that hosts don’t have to buy their own RVs.

However, Danenberg said, it’s difficult to bring in more diverse volunteers.

“You’re effectively asking for free labor from people who have been denied the ability to build generational wealth,” Danenberg said.

Next, Bembry said, the state needs to study more deeply how Black Washingtonians recreate outdoors, including focus groups and a more extensive survey of people who don’t already visit state parks.

“Reconnecting with nature is an inalienable right,” Bembry said.

The Seattle chapter of the Audubon Society announced that it is dropping “Audubon” from its name because of its association with white supremacy.

There are hundreds of state and local chapters of the National Audubon Society, the nonprofit dedicated to protecting birds and their habitats, but Seattle Audubon is one of the largest in the country.

Earlier this month, the board voted to change the chapter’s name because the man the organization is named after – illustrator, painter and bird lover John James Audubon, author of the seminal work “The Birds of America” – owned enslaved people and opposed abolition.

J. Drew Lanham, a former board member of the National Audubon Society and a wildlife ecology professor at Clemson University, called the move courageous.

Lanham, who has written about Audubon and left the national chapter over concerns the nonprofit was not doing enough about racial equity, says organizations need to grapple with what to do about monuments that represent the worst of humanity. Names are part of that, Lanham said.

Audubon was a “genius artist in many ways but a despicable human being,” Lanham said.

“To excuse inhumane acts as just being in the context of their time is, I think, a lazy excuse,” Lanham continued. “Those are the excuses the privileged tend to lean on when they don’t want to make changes.”

Lanham added that it is particularly important for conservation efforts to strive toward diversity and inclusion because environmental conditions often impact Black, Indigenous and other people of color the most.

Chevon Powell, who five years ago started King County’s Refuge Outdoor Festival, which is specifically geared toward diverse communities, called the decision to change the chapter’s name long overdue.

Powell says those who take up birding will slowly learn about the history and then might think to themselves “oh, actually, this space isn’t for me.”

Powell says without significant changes – such as the stripping of names of white supremacists – “eventually, some folks will be like ‘I’m going to step away from this.”

Last year, the Audubon Naturalist Society, a Washington, D.C.-based environmental organization, announced it, too, would be removing “Audubon” from its name, but it is not affiliated with the National Audubon Society. Seattle Audubon is the first large chapter of the National Audubon Society to signal its intention to change its name.

Claire Catania, executive director of Seattle Audubon, said discussions about a possible name change at the organization coincided with larger questions about the role of racism in the United States that arose in 2020 as protests over police brutality erupted across the country.

Soon after, dozens of American birding experts launched “Bird Names for Birds,” a campaignto change the names of birds named after white men who perpetuated colonialism and racism. For example, the group has pointed to the need to change the name Bachman’s Sparrow, a bird named after the Reverend John Bachman, a former slave owner.

Catania says the biographies of Audubon and others whom birds are named after have taken their majority white membership by surprise.

Still, she says she hopes other chapters will study the issue and make similar changes.

“It’s our hope that by making this public declaration now we can blaze a trail that hopefully will be easier for others to follow,” Catania said.

In the end, Seattle Audubon says its main goal is for more people to feel welcome in spaces dedicated to conservation.

Seattle Audubon plans to hold a listening session on Tuesday, and choose a new name by the end of the year.

Eilis O’Neill

08/16/2019August 16, 2019

Being among nature is known to be restorative. But while it might seem accessible to everyone, in the US the National Park Service found that — of the more than 300 million visitors a year to their parks — only about 25% weren’t white, despite minorities making up 40% of the population. That’s what an American woman named Chevon Powell has been working to change. Eilis O’Neill met up with her.

https://p.dw.com/p/3O0sS