Black Faces, White Spaces: Reimagining the Relationship of African Americans to the Great Outdoors

5. It’s Not Easy Being Green

92 c h a p t e r f i v e It’s Not easy Being Green Black people have a complicated relationship with america. For us, it’s painful love. It has an old history filled with slavery and Jim crow, so to love america requires a lot more of us. —Dr. Blair Kelley, quoted in Touré, Who’s Afraid of Post-Blackness? I outgrew my rage, but retained my passion. —Betty Reid soskin, the oldest park ranger in the National park service O n a warm, autumn day in October of 2005, approximately eighty individuals assembled to spend three days at the Summit 2005 conference on “Diverse Partners for Environmental Progress” in Wakefield, Virginia. This historic conversation connected leaders from various environmental, community, and national organizations and movements to “develop a common framework that supports a pro-environment slate of issues” (“Steps for the Future” 2005). An ethnically and racially diverse group (people of color appeared to outnumber European Americans), they ranged from academics to environmental justice supporters, nonprofit groups, and representatives and leaders from the National Park Service, the Trust for Public Lands, and the civil rights movement. One of the primary goals of this three-day workshop was to discuss the “real and perceived” barriers to more effective collaborative efforts between those within the mainstream environmental movement and those who occupy the borders. While some consensus emerged around a few issues, such as the discrepancy in financial resources available to major environmental organizations compared with small nonprofits and the role of power in decision-making processes, the subject that seemed to garner the greatest consensus was that racism is a significant barrier to greater collaborative success in meeting the needs and concerns of environmentalists of color and their constituents. African American and Native American participants were particularly vocal on this subject, with many echoing the sentiment that, indeed, it’s not easy being green. i t’s not easy being green 93 Whether spoken or unspoken, this is the same conclusion that many African Americans come to, and it is arguably the issue most deeply embedded , highly contested, and emotionally charged. Yet a clear understanding of what racism is or agreement on how it is articulated institutionally or individually is not always apparent. Racism is also hotly debated in part because of the difficulty in arriving at a consensus on the “explanations and potential remedies” (Frazier, Margai, and Tettie-Fio 2003, 55). In this chapter, I discuss how racism and diversity are two hot-button topics that people seem to embrace or reject, but which arise either implicitly or explicitly in the “environment” conversation.1 How is African American participation perceived by environmental organizations, and how do African Americans actually experience the natural environment and the organizations that manage it? I will discuss the challenges that racism and diversity present to African Americans and mainstream environmental organizations that are interested in creating more inclusive contexts in which diverse individuals and communities can enter into environmental management. In addition, I will discuss some of the debates on racism and diversity and present findings that highlight the frustrations and concerns of African American professionals and leaders who struggle to develop strategies that effectively deal with racism in practical ways within decision-making contexts. Finally, I will argue that there is a general disconnect between African American environmental professionals and their white counterparts regarding the perception of exclusion and racism within an environmental context. racism in black and white In The Dictionary of Human Geography, racism is defined as “an ideology of difference whereby social significance is attributed to culturally constructed categories of race” (Jackson 1994, 496). While academic and concise, this definition belies the emotional nature of racism as well as its consequences. According to scholar-activist Ron Daniels, racism is not just individual acts perpetrated on one person by another. “Historically, racism constituted and constitutes a system of special privileges, benefits, and psychological and symbolic and material rewards for white people” (2002, 1). Racism is systemic—it is embedded in our institutions and our way of life. Racism is not the same as prejudice. While black people may have prejudicial feelings toward white people, these feelings “are in no way linked to a system of domination that affords [black people] any power to 94 it ’s n ot easy bei ng green coercively control the lives and well-being of white folks” (hooks 1992...