Race and the Outdoors
As many of you probably know, February is Black History Month - a celebration of the achievements of the black community all across the United States and beyond.
Black History Month began in 1915, fifty years after the 13th Amendment abolished slavery in the United States. The celebration began as just a week and, in the late 1960s, evolved to a full month due in part to the growing awareness of Black identity and the civil rights movement, according to the History Channel.
Throughout 2020, as systemic racism was increasingly confronted across the nation, I began to witness a common trend. Countless companies across a variety of industries spoke up, expressing their need to do better for the BIPOC community. Some of them held true to their pledge to create more equity in their field, including a number of larger companies within the outdoor industry like REI and Patagonia.
As we saw this rise of companies pledging support for racial equity, I began to notice a familiar cry plaguing each and every social media post:
“Keep politics out of the outdoors. I support you because I like your gear, but politics don’t belong in nature.”
Every time I saw these comments, disappointment would boil up inside me. I couldn’t fathom how some would perceive equity, in any shape, as not belonging in certain spheres, let alone ignore the role racism has played in the outdoor industry for decades.
I’m often asked by community members why the WOC supports equity in the outdoors. Specifically, I’m asked how people of various backgrounds face barriers to accessing the outdoors. “The trail is free to hike on, how could anyone have trouble accessing it?”
For our February blog post, we wanted to answer this question by highlighting Black Americans making waves in the outdoor industry.
Diversity in the Great Outdoors: Is Everyone Welcome in America's Parks and Public Lands?
Written by Reyna Askew and Margaret A. Walls
It can be hard to understand the reasons why people face barriers to getting outdoors, but Reyna Askew and Margaret A. Walls do a beautiful job detailing the gaps in accessibility that people face all across the United States. Follow the link below to learn more about these barriers and what they believe the path forward is.
Going it Alone Written by Rahawa Haile
Rahawa Haile witnessed the impacts of racism first hand during her 2016 thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail. In her article, Going it Alone, she discusses the subtle and not-so-subtle ways racism permeated her experience backpacking one of America’s longest trail systems, and how representation matters in changing the narrative of who can and does access the outdoors.
An Open Letter to the Outdoor Industry on Diversity Written by Teresa Baker
With our country growing increasingly more diverse, the makeup of our consumers is changing. Teresa Baker writes in her open letter that the outdoor industry is behind in developing key strategies for welcoming diversity into the outdoors. Whether it’s through representation or working to increase inclusion in the industry itself, Teresa expresses that there is so much room for growth.
We hope these articles and resources can help shed some light on why equity in the outdoors in one of the Winona Outdoor Collaborative’s top priorities, but we encourage you to ask questions if you have them. Through dialogue, we hope to build a more inclusive, equitable outdoors that encourages our entire community to support one another in playing in nature.