When I first saw the film, The Color Purple, I was particularly moved by early scenes of two young Black girls running, playing and laughing in the beautiful countryside. It was not until after the film that I realized my emotional response was so strong because I had never seen an aesthetically appealing depiction of Black people happy in nature. All the other "pictures" I had seen of Blacks in nature were either as naked "savages" as in National Geographic, or slaves and destitute sharecroppers engaged in brutal physical labor--hardly happy circumstances.
What I found remarkable was that I had lived for thirty years, been educated and deeply involved in the environmental movement, and had never come across images of African-Americans at home and joyous in their natural surroundings. The more frequent and persistent images of savagery and slavery were counter to my own feelings of connectedness with the natural world, yet those images became the background against which I judged my own "abnormality" of being a person of color and an environmentalist. Encouraged by the culturally homogenous environmental movement, I accepted this abnormality as a given, until my stereotype was challenged by powerful counter-images in the opening scenes of the film.
The absence of positive images of people of color in the natural world was not an accident but is central to the creation of a worldview called "environmentalism." My internalization of negative images was part of a complex dynamic involving my professional goals and sense of self. My professional encounters with environmentalists reinforced the idea that I was an anomaly, different in some way than "others" of my kind. In addition, the environmental movement had so totalized the definition of "environment" that there was no room for experiences outside the parameters and norms it had set. There was no validation of African, Chinese or Arab-American traditions or environmental experience; little representation of urban environmental experience; and marginal inclusion of low income and female relations to the environment. All such cultural experiences and relationships, buried beneath the surface of mainstream beliefs and values, were marginalized, discredited and painfully trivialized through the use of stereotypes.
The environmental movement is reminded, often in stereotypic fashion, that its origins can be traced back to the efforts of visionary white men to protect the natural world from the predatory interests of industrialists, and keep it safe for the use and enjoyment of the elite. Such an uncritically accepted, limited, and partial history of the movement has left environmentalism open to the charge that it is elitist and insulated from the needs, aspirations, and experiences of most people. Today, the environmental movement is being confronted with its limited history as people of color discover and assert their cultural ties to the natural world, redefine the notion of "environment" to include the city as a significant environment, and reveal the social justice dimensions of environmental issues.
By defining the environment as exclusively the "natural" environment (itself not a clear term), environmentalists have structured an environmental agenda that excludes other environments. The marginalization and trivialization of those places, and the people who live in them, has resulted in the phenomenon known as environmental racism.
Environmental racism is defined as the systematic discrimination, based on race, in the distribution of environmental degradation and amenities. This includes the discriminatory formulation, implementation and enforcement of environmental policy, regulations and laws, and disproportionately lower compensation and remediation of environmental degradation. (1) In response to environmental racism, the Environmental Justice movement has challenged the stereotypes of mainstream environmentalism.
During a seminar on multicultural environmental education that I conducted at the University of Michigan, the topic of the lack of people of color in the environmental movement and professions came up. I critiqued some of the typical answers frequently cited as explanations for the glaring absence of people of color from the ranks of environmentalism: "they" are simply not interested; or (a version of the Maslow hierarchy of needs), "they" are so busy trying to survive and get ahead that "they" don't have time for pursuits such as hiking, enjoying sunsets, and saving rare and endangered species; and (reflecting, perhaps, on the dubious science and reactionary arguments of the Bell Curve), "they" do not have the intelligence to understand the complexity and moral significance of the issues. One of the seminar participants asked me why those explanations sound so good if they are obviously not true?
These appealing explanations are based on widely held stereotypes of who "they" are and function, as stereotypes do, by providing attractive and simple explanations to save us from the complex task of thinking critically about our experiences. The persistence of such stereotypes is in part due to a history of discrimination and violence against people based on class, race, gender, religion, sexual orientation and other distinctions; but is also reinforced by our naiveté of the power of pictures and media to construct and reinforce particular images that sometimes serve regressive social purposes.
A stereotype is an overly broad, and usually negative and inaccurate generalization attributed to a group or class of people or species. Most people know stereotypes are inaccurate and hurtful, but frequently rely on them as a widely accepted and simplified explanation of reality. The origin and reproduction of stereotypes are frequently disguised and communicated nonverbally, or by specific words or phrases which depend on the prior understanding and shared background of those in the act of communication. They are often directed towards groups of people (targets) and function to reinforce misinformation about them: "welfare mothers," "bureaucrats," and "elitists" have been code works for target groups describing young, unwed mothers, in poverty, civil servants, and liberal intellectuals, respectively.
Stereotypes have a powerful ability to limit the range of thinking, perception and activity of people in subtle ways. As such, they not only diminish the targeted group but the person who holds and applies them as well. Stereotypes are also frequently unconsciously held and applied. This means that some people may not know that their "picture" is a biased one or that they are applying false information as though it were true--an action which can have the uncanny ability to create what it assumes.
As important as it is to focus on the individual using stereotypes, and on the specific stereotypes themselves, it is also essential to understand the function of stereotypes in the context of systematic oppression. Ricky Sherover-Marcuse created an analysis called the cycle of oppression in which she reveals the critical role of stereotypes in systems of discrimination and oppression. (2) She defines oppression as the systematic mistreatment of a group of people based on some shared characteristic. (3) This oppression relies on misinformation that becomes institutionalized as popular values, assumptions and the terms of discourse in society. These in turn become justifications for further oppression and the cycle continues anew.
Stereotypes are that form of misinformation which become ingrained in popular culture, and develop into a part of society's "normal" and frequently unquestioned consciousness. Stereotypes thus become structured in the institutions of society and are actualized as policies and practices which regulate the lives of citizens. The often repeated observation that there are so few people of color in the environmental professions and movement--beyond being merely an observation which seems to reflect on those absent--should be read as a charge that the field is structured in exclusionary ways, and that there exists institutionalized discrimination. One of the key and electrifying moments in the environmental justice movement occurred when activists charged that the environmental advocacy organizations were practicing discrimination because they employed few people of color in any positions of responsibility and had a long history of ignoring environmental issues affecting people of color (4)
Models and solutions seeking to facilitate the entry of people of color into environmental careers do not go far enough in solving the problem if they don't take on the structures and institutionalized practices of discrimination. In fact, they can divert attention from deeper causes and issues and operate as adjuncts or auxiliaries to the discriminatory structures they purport to change.
Stereotypes can also be internalized in a process known as internalized oppression, which causes the target to act as if the misinformation were true, thereby reinforcing its apparent truth and credibility. This particularly destructive form of oppression closes the circle and makes challenging the misinformation all the more difficult.
As a local environmental professional of color, I once participated in a museum program where predominately African-American 7th and 8th graders attempted to discover my profession. The students were aware that I was in the environmental field, but had to discover my specific job by asking one question per round before venturing a guess. After a number of questions and wrong guesses, one girl's face lit up and she raised her hand excitedly: "I know what you are:" she exclaimed, "a janitor!" I think it may have been difficult for her to conceive that an African-American male could be professionally involved in an environmental career. After all, images and contact with such professionals for children of color is rare. The lack of such powerful experiences and counter-images can cause stereotypes to have an appealing and seemingly indisputable truth-value, especially for children. These are then internalized and define the parameters of experience creating a situation where people enforce their own limitations and possibilities.
Internal stereotypes of this kind often function as excuses for us not to participate in an environmental discourse which intimately involves us as silent partners, (or silent victims). When environmental issues were raised in Hunter's Point, San Francisco, a youth of color said, "Ecology? That's the White man's problem." When he was shown an unfenced toxic waste dump that he and his friends walked across several times a day, he grew significantly more interested in the White man's problem. He discovered, in this case, that this environmental problem was actually the Black community's burden. (5)
Environmentalism has itself been a target group towards which stereotypes have been leveled. This has been, and continues to be, an effort to marginalize, trivialize and discredit not only environmental agenda, but the natural world as the subject of its concern.
What are some of the stereotypes or misinformation propagated about environmentalists and the environment?
The truth is each of these situations is more complex that the stereotypes allow.
In the late 1970's I worked extensively in the antinuclear movement in New England. When I learned that regional nuclear power stations would be fueled by uranium imported from then-apartheid South Africa, I immediately understood the relationship between the oppression of people and the destruction of the natural world. When I took this back to our local affinity groups, however, most members saw no connection between the two issues and felt no need to join ranks with the anti-apartheid movement then gathering strength in our region. The stereotype that environmental issues and social issues are not connected was too powerful to overcome. Challenging that stereotype required breaking out of isolated perspectives that pit people and issues against one another.
At a recent conference, an environmental educator demonstrated an activity for children. After he had gone through it, he cautioned the audience of educators that it would be necessary to adapt the activity for "inner city kids" of the same grade level. It would have to be made much simpler, he said, so they could understand it. There were no people of color present to counteract the stereotype. The challenge was provided by a white educator who had done years of work investigating race in the context of her personal life. Environmental educators have a special responsibility to get beyond such euphemisms, stereotypes and prejudices. Such challenges need not be ideological--they can be as simple as noticing and calling attention to the stereotype and challenging its veracity. Yet, without the presence of people of color in the environmental movement and professions, certain stereotypes may not receive the strenuous and vigorous challenge they require. This single fact is one of the best arguments for "diversifying" environmentalism.
If we don't challenge our values and behaviors--permeated by racism, sexism and classism--any discussion of building the coalitions essential to our success will be lip service, and have no substantive value. It is only by confronting ignorance and looking inward at our own prejudices that we can build a more inclusive environmental movement, and turn the tide in favor of what we hold most dear. We truly need one another.
Read the article, "Key Ideas of Multicultural Environmental Education," and "The Conversation Continues" for more insights from Running Grass.
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