Make the outdoors more equitable.
In today's piece, I'd like us to reflect on the idea of reclamation. So much of this work isn't about granting new access and opportunity, but a reclaiming of rights given to us before oppressive systems even existed. The notion that some of us experience discrimination while exploring the great outdoors is appalling to me, and represents the core of this work – our need to reclaim the most fundamental parts of being human. I'm grateful to share this space with Juan so he can tell his story on reclaiming our right to blaze our own trail.
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Nicole
TAKE ACTION
Check out In Solidarity for resources on promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion in the outdoors
Contact major industry brands and associations like the Outdoor Industry Association and Merrell and ask them to support connecting Black communities to the outdoors
Organize and support trips that introduce Black schools and families to the outdoors
Write letters to your local representatives to demand greater funding and services in Black neighborhoods
GET EDUCATED
By Juan Michael Porter II (he/him)
Last month I wrote an essay in Outdoors cataloging my negative encounters with white people who "didn't expect to see me”: a Black man hiking Mt. Katahdin, the highest peak in Maine and a favorite destination of extreme hikers. During my many visits to Katahdin, I have been screamed at, accused of following people, questioned about why I was on the mountain, and treated with such hostility that I have questioned whether I was doing something illegal. I was not.
My experiences are far from unique. There are numerous accounts from hikers of color about racist hostility that they have received from white people on the open trail (Outside, OPB, The Guardian).
Though I have grown accustomed to these reactions, I was unprepared for the large volume of emails that I received after writing that piece. Some of those letters were kind, though misguided: white people offered to take me hiking in a paternalistic show of solidarity and protectionism. Rather than shower me in virtue signaling (Vanity Fair), I wish that they would focus on eliminating racism so that all Black people could venture into the outdoors without fearing reprisal.
Mixed in with these solidarity statements were denouncements of disbelief that I had experienced racism at all. These screeds oscillated between denying my experience to threatening to “show me what real racism looks like.” It felt as if these white people lived in a different universe from me.
In one regard, they do: they have the privilege of hiking without fear that someone will assume that they are perpetrating harm. As a Black man, I am always greeted with suspicion, even while on an isolated mountain summit in a state that has fewer than 40,000 Black people living in it (Maine Census).
Despite the threats, I keep hiking because I refuse to be defined by fear or to limit the freedom that I feel by being outdoors. In fact, I returned to Katahdin last weekend to reclaim the space as a place of joy for me. Pursuing pleasure is my version of radical activism, especially in a time when so many Black lives are under threat from COVID-19, police brutality, and governmental neglect (Center for Disease Control and Prevention, NYTimes).
I speak out against these issues, as so many other Black people do, because if we stop, the white community (which has the privilege of occupying the outdoors without suspicion) will keep promoting the lie that racism is dead while also blaming us for the threats that we receive for doing nothing more than sleeping in our own beds (Poynter).
I interviewed Shilletha Curtis, a hiker who is of the same mindset. She aims to be the first Black gay woman to complete hiking’s Triple Crown (the Appalachian, Pacific Crest, and Continental Divide trails). Though Curtis has experienced horrible harassment since she started hiking in March—most notably in a Facebook group for hikers after she expressed concern for her safety as a Black woman hiking in the South—she refuses to apologize for “speaking her truth.”
After Curtis was kicked out of the Appalachian Trail Facebook group for discussing race, rather than stay angry, she says, “I took all of that anger and passion and I threw it into words. I put it into something educational; that isn't harmful." Curtis responds to comments such as “there's no racism on the trail” or “the trees don't know any color” by pointing out, “but humans do.”
Whenever I encounter racism, I recall the words of Paul Laurence Dunbar and decide that I will not "wear the mask that grins and lies" (Poetry Foundation). Instead, I work on decolonizing the outdoors and promoting accessibility to Black people. America’s natural splendor is our inheritance, left to us by kidnapped Africans who were forced to work on stolen lands; who fled bondage through valleys and across rivers as they pursued their natural rights as freed people (History, BBC News, Smithsonian Mag, USA Today).
Denying Black people access to outdoor leisure has a long history in the United States. Consider Madison Grant, who helped engineer the national parks system and promoted the pseudo-science behind eugenics. He had no problem with Black people as long as they remained “willing followers who ask only to obey and to further the ideals and wishes of the master (white) race” (Mother Jones, New Yorker). Grant was intent on preserving the parks to the exclusion of Black people. His racist attitudes blossom throughout white-dominated outdoor spaces even today.
Non-Hispanic white people make up only 63% of the U.S. population, but they account for 88% to 95% of all visitors to its public lands (Resource Magazine). Many white people blanch when I point to these facts as signs of pervasive racism and exclusion. Ultimately, I don’t care about what they think. I care about introducing Black people to the stress relieving and lifesaving experience that comes from spending time in nature (TIME, Science Daily). And if that means snatching a few edges, so be it.
You can join me in reclaiming the outdoors as a safe space for Black people by organizing as many people as you can to build a coalition of support that fearlessly and relentlessly advocates for Black communities. Black people deserve their time in the outdoors as much as anyone else does.
Like Shilletha Curtis, I fulfill this mission by serving as a role model for Black people who do not realize that the outdoors is for them, even if that just means visiting a local park. It may be a small step over the mountain of racism, but through grassroots and political initiatives, together we are all building a coalition to reclaim our birthright. Instead of “40 acres and a mule”, we Black people deserve access to every golden valley, from sea to shining sea.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Black people face hostility and racism in the outdoor community and at recreation centers.
Non-Hispanic white people make up only 63% of the population in this country, but they account for 88% to 95% of all visitors to public lands across the U.S. (Resource Magazine)
Confronting racism is important, but arguing with racists is less effective than advocating for Black communities fearlessly and relentlessly.
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