by Nina Revoyr
Last month, two friends and I backpacked for a week in the Sierra
Nevada. We hiked through meadows dotted with wildflowers, slept beneath
snow-draped peaks and met plenty of other hikers: the dad and son whose
Green Bay Packers caps sparked a conversation about our mutual ties to
Wisconsin; scientists from UC Santa Cruz studying flowers and rock
formations; five recent college grads from Kentucky who were hiking the
John Muir Trail before they scattered to begin their adult lives.
But as the days passed, I grew increasingly troubled by the people we didn’t meet. There were a few Asian hikers, including a couple of hapas
like me (I’m half Japanese and half Polish) and one of my friends was
half-Iranian, but not a single backpacker who was Latino or African
American.
This near-total absence of people of color — which I’ve noticed on past
trips as well — was particularly striking because it was such a contrast
to my everyday life. I live and work in Los Angeles. The majority of
people in my working life are Latino, African American or Asian, and the
people in my personal life, including my Mexican American spouse, are
reflective of the city’s population. And yet, a few hours’ drive from
Los Angeles, there was hardly a person of color to be found. We were on
public lands — including Kings Canyon National Park — but the people
enjoying them weren’t representative of the public.
This month, as the National Park Service celebrates its centennial, it
is publicizing efforts to increase the diversity of its visitors — who
according to its own survey are nearly 80% white — as well as its
staff. Mainstream environmental groups like the Sierra Club, which
recently hired its first director of diversity, equity and inclusion,
are trying to counter the impression that the outdoors is a privileged
domain for white people. One take on this problem is the biting video
short “Black Hiker,” in which Blair Underwood’s nature-loving character
is tracked and photographed by whites who are stunned, delighted and a
little confused to find a black man in their midst.
...Connecting people of color with nature matters because the very
existence of the nation's public lands is threatened if they aren’t
enjoyed by a broad cross-section of our population...
As the number of minorities increase in the general population, and as more minority Congressmen are elected, membership in enviro orgs will decline and funding for their favorite programs will be jeopardized. That is what really has them concerned.
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