This article is part of a package on the new green justice movement. For more, read Environmental Justice For All andThe Temperature Transcends Race.
In nearly two years of volunteering and working at an urban nature preserve, I have never seen another black woman come for a morning hike or a native-wildlife program.
The few I do encounter are teachers and chaperones with school groups, or aides assisting people with disabilities. When I commute by bus to the preserve, located in the middle of Louisville, Kentucky, I disembark with blacks and other minorities. Yet none of them ever seems to make it to the trails.
I might have assumed they simply weren’t interested, but then I saw that none of the center’s newsletters were mailed to areas of town predominantly populated by minorities, nor did any press releases go to popular minority radio stations or newspapers. Although the nature center seeks a stronger community presence and feels the same budget pinch as other small nonprofits, it has missed large swaths of the community with its message.
The terms environmentalist and minority conjure two distinct images in most people’s minds–a false dichotomy that threatens any chance of pulling the planet out of its current ecological tailspin. Some people think this country is on the precipice of a societal shift that will make environmental stewardship an integral part of our collective moral code. That is not going to happen, though, as long as we as a nation continue to think and act as if green automatically means white.
Assumptions about who values conservation cost the environmental movement both members and dollars. Religions, capitalists, and military recruiters learned ages ago to reach actively across the racial spectrum. In terms of winning over minorities, they have left environmentalism in the dust.
Not until I joined an environmental-journalism organization did information about serious environmental issues flood my mailbox, even though I have been volunteering in organic gardens, hiking, and camping for years. I had received solicitations for credit cards and political parties, fast food coupons, and a few Books of Mormon–but I had to seek out environmental groups.
Minorities make up one-third of the population, and as our numbers increase we are growing as an economic and financial force. We are a key to maintaining the energy that environmentalism has gained as a result of intense mainstream attention. That momentum will peter out without more people to act on the present sense of urgency. Imagine the power of 100 million Asians, African Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans invested in sustainable living, joining green organizations, voting for politicians and laws that protect the environment.
Nobody benefits from the perception that enjoying and caring for the environment is an exclusively white lifestyle. The truth is that brown, yellow, red, and black people like to go backpacking, too. Those of us with the means are buying organic, local, and hybrid. If environmentalism continues to appear mostly white and well-off, it will continue to be mostly white and well-off, even as racial and economic demographics change. The environmental movement will continue to overlook the nuances, found in diversity of experience, that reveal multiple facets of environmental problems–and their solutions.
Sooner or later, even global warming will be pushed off magazine covers, television screens, and the congressional floor. Before that time, we need to have in place something even more impressive: a racially diverse, numerically astounding mass of environmentalists ready to pick up the ball and run with it.
Jennifer Oladipo is a writer and independent journalist in Louisville, Kentucky. Reprinted from Orion (Nov.-Dec. 2007), a magazine about the environment, culture, and spirit. Subscriptions: $50/yr. (6 issues) from Box 469090, Escondido, CA 92046; www.orionmagazine.org.
