Preface
xi preface Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come. —Victor Hugo You can’t get to wonderful without passing through alright. —Bill Withers, Wisdom: The Greatest Gift One Generation Can Give to Another I n March of 2007, I was invited to the University of Vermont to speak to the academic community about the intersection of race and the environment . I had given versions of this talk at other universities where, with the exception of a few historically black colleges in the South, my audience was largely white. While the content of my talks did not change, I always found it interesting the way in which different audiences collectively responded to my assertions about the “black experience” and the mainstream environmental movement in the United States. Whether the audience was predominately white, black, or a mix of diverse individuals, responses were often a combination of surprise, anger, curiosity, and hope. To a lesser extent (and perhaps this is because people were less likely to reveal these feelings in a public setting), I could also sense doubt, denial, and even dismissal. In any case, there was always much back and forth between myself and audience members as we navigated the sometimes emotionally tumultuous waters of race. Along with sharing some facts and findings from my empirical research, I luxuriated in sharing stories about some of the people I was privileged to have interviewed. I found that personalizing the discussion about race and environment—either with my own stories or the stories of others— was a great way to invite people into the conversation by reminding them that this wasn’t just a black, white, or brown experience; it was a human experience. At the University of Vermont, I began with one such story. I was especially fond of speaking about John Francis, a man who had spent xii pre face twenty-two years walking across the United States to raise environmental awareness. On this particular day, I paused after saying “twenty-two years,” waiting for the audience to murmur and look simultaneously surprised and impressed. Then, as I usually did, I added the punch line: “And for seventeen of those years, he did it without talking.” A collective gasp ran through the audience: How is that possible? How did he communicate? Why did he do it? I loved this part—talking to people about how John earned his Ph.D. during this period (without talking), became a representative for the United Nations, and was one of the original architects of our oil spill policy that was instituted after the Exxon Valdez disaster infiltrated our seas and our environmental conversations. Pleased with myself, I ended this story by sharing how Hollywood was preparing to make a movie about his life. Won’t it be amazing, even revolutionary , to see a mainstream movie about a black man walking across America to raise environmental awareness? As I continued talking amid laughs and nods of agreement, a young white woman timidly raised her hand. “Yes?” I smiled. “Well—uh—I’m not sure how to say this, but I have to tell you that as you were telling the story about John Francis, I just assumed he was white.” Now, this was one of those moments a speaker loves. The young woman’s declaration was completely unplanned and unscripted, but it underscored the point I was trying to make in my talk: that we have collectively come to understand/see/envision the environmental debate as shaped and inhabited primarily by white people. And our ability to imagine others is colored by the narratives, images, and meanings we’ve come to hold as truths in relation to the environment. It is not unlike that old joke that challenged gender stereotypes: A boy gets into a bad car accident. The doctor at the hospital says, “I can’t operate on this boy, he’s my son.” When the joke teller asks, “who is the doctor?” we figure the doctor must be the boy’s father. Then we find out that he’s the boy’s mother. In the case of race and the environment, it’s not just who we imagine has something valuable to say. These assumptions, beliefs, and perceptions are at the very foundation of our environmental thinking, how we define the “environment,” and how we think of ourselves in relationship with the environment . Who do we see, what do we see? In Outside magazine, Eddy Harris , a black writer and...
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