I know that some of you who read this post won’t understand what I am about to say. I’m okay with that. It wasn’t until this last year that even I have to come to understand the thoughts you are about to read. What is important is that I am expressing them now.
“Though I know now that I was wrong, I did not know it then. I had meant what I said, and my unexamined life would not allow me to speak otherwise.” -James Baldwin
The topic for this week’s Nature Writing Challenge is: How My Public Lands Experience Has Changed in the Last 15 Years. I have had some time since Monday to think about this and in what ways has my own personal involvement changed since 2003. I can think of several ways, some of them quite benign. But the more I have thought about it, I have to say that the main difference between how I experienced public lands then and how I experience them now is from the perspective of a white racist.
And when I say white racist, I mean me.
Before this year, I thought that I knew what it mean to be a racist. Racism was prejudice (which we all have in some form, including myself) plus power. And I felt okay with that definition because power was something I felt I neither wielded or was privy to. Power was institutions, supervisors and authority.
But it turns out I hold power I didn’t give myself credit for. The simple act of being white and a part of the majority that holds power means I have power. And I use it whether or not I am conscious of it.
“People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.” -James Baldwin
Sure, as a woman, I experience sexism. And I have experienced it in the outdoors. But as a white woman I have power that a person of color, even a woman of color, does not. Just because I didn’t willfully choose that preferential treatment (or lack of bias) does not mean I can claim innocence nor absolution. Being a white racist means the very act of benefiting by being white in a society where white people hold the power.
So, what does this have to do with pubic lands and my experiences with them?
It means that what I see now that I did not see then is not only the narrative of inequality of people of color in regards to public lands but how the very concept of public lands is rooted in privilege and racism. I am currently reading a book by Carolyn Finney, Black Faces, White Spaces: Regaining The Relationship of African-Americans To The Great Outdoors and she opens with:
“The dominant environmental narrative in the United States is primarily constructed and informed by white, Western European, or Euro-American, voices (DeLuca and Demo 2001; Jacoby 1997; Taylor 1997). This narrative not only shapes the way the natural environment is represented, constructed and perceived in our everyday lives, but informs our national identity as well. Missing from the narrative is an African-American perspective, a nonessentialized black environment identity that is grounded in the legacy of African-American experiences in the United States, mediated by privilege (both intellectual and material, influenced by race, gender, class and other aspects of difference that can determine one’s ability to access spaces of power and decision-making), and informed by resistance to and/or acceptance of the dominant narrative.”
And the dominant narrative in the United States is one that benefits white people and marginalizes people of color. I wrote in a previous Nature Writing Challenge about the National Parks and how they are America’s best idea. And I still believe that is true. But the history of our national parks mirrors the history of America, for good and for bad.
“American history is longer, larger, more various, more beautiful, and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it.” -James Baldwin
When I visit national parks or any other public lands space, I see them from not only my own perspective but from one that increasingly takes on the perspective of those who have been excluded and marginalized through our country’s history not only with the creation of public lands but the use of them. Whether it be African-Americans or indigenous people. What I see is that public lands are filled with white people and tourists. People who have been given a narrative that says “you are welcome” here. When “we” visit public lands, we see a history that makes us feel comfortable when we shouldn’t.
I don’t feel as comfortable as I used to visiting public lands.
We live in a country that has not historically included people of color in the positive narrative of the relationship between Americans and public lands. It has worked very hard to make the ownership and use of public lands “by the people” to mean “by the white people”, whether through subtle advertising or blatant bias and discrimination. People of color have a long history with nature and public lands, some positive and some not so positive. But until we strive to learn what those stories are and incorporate them into the narrative of our public lands, inequality will continue to exist. When we do right by public lands, we will be doing right by those who have been marginalized.
What Do I Do Now?
A quote I read from an interview with Carolyn Finney on the blog, On She Goes, speaks to me and maybe it speaks to you. “When a person has an experience with nature that changes you—when people really write about that—it’s transformative. It goes back to the power of the travel writing I got into [when I was younger] because it’s about transformation. And nature gives us the opportunity all the time to understand transformation. That’s how you can truly understand transformation, and nobody controls that, as far as I’m concerned.”
I do not have all the answers, in fact I don’t claim to have many at all as I am still learning myself. Even the very act of writing this post comes from a place of privilege.
My views of public lands continue to change as I wonder how I can be a part of bringing on a new narrative. But one thing I do know is that one of the most powerful ways to fight racism is by sharing each other’s cultures and stories instead of lumping people into impersonal groups. Sharing brings us together. So I will continue to share my story and be open to hearing, understanding and sharing the story of others.
“I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am also, much more than that. So are we all.” -James Baldwin
If you would like to learn more from those who are diligently fighting to change the narrative of people of color in nature, you can learn more with organization like Outdoor Afro, Melanin Basecamp and Latino Outdoors. You can, also, learn more about racism with organizations like Undoing Racism.
This post was written in one hour (okay just a few minutes more this time) for the #naturewritingchallenge. Check out Twitter to learn more or see my other posts from the challenge here.
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