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“Recoloring the Outdoors”

It is no accident that the majority of the credits I am taking this semester are somehow related to the outdoors. In addition to courses in chemistry and soils, am currently enrolled in a Wilderness Literature course (backpacking trip included!), a theory seminar about how to design protected areas to preserve biological and cultural diversity, and an environmental sustainability class. What’s more, by the end of March, I will have received two additional credits in exchange for volunteering as a counselor for “Outdoor School“, which is a weeklong nature camp for local elementary school kids run by the Penn State Shaver’s Creek Environmental Center. Needless to say, I consider my affinity for the outdoors to be an integral part of my personality, and I remind myself every day how lucky I am that it is becoming a part of my career path as well.

In my personal experience as a white, upper middle-class woman, I have never felt unwelcome in the outdoors. Prior to this semester, I had always perceived nature as a place where anyone – regardless of race, religion, sexuality, or nationality – could look to find solace, to quiet their mind, and to connect with the rest of the living world. But in recent weeks, thanks to no shortage of literature written by authors who come from backgrounds and experiences very different from my own, I have begun to look back on my time in the outdoors and wonder how I could have been so ignorant of the inherently discriminatory nature of “wilderness” as a Westernized ideal, and because this idea has been so prominent in my coursework over the past few weeks, I felt it was only fitting to find a TED Talk that had something to contribute to the conversation. 

The TED Talk I chose to watch this week is entitled “Recolor the Outdoors”, and it was given by high school educator and outdoor enthusiast Alex Bailey at a TEDx event in San Antonio. To briefly summarize the conversation that Bailey’s talk contributes to, it is important to relay that the entire history of Westernized wilderness has essentially been romanticized and overwritten by white men. While some minority groups have been blatantly discriminated against throughout that history — most notably, indigenous populations — other groups, despite not being physically removed from their land or being legally prohibited from taking part in the outdoors, have been made to feel ostracized or unwelcome in nature because of their ancestors’ experiences. As Bailey points out in his TED Talk, for many people of color, the wilderness is a traumatic reminder of lynchings, escape from slavery, and violence at the hand of white people. In his TED Talk, Bailey explains the root of his own grandmother’s mistrust and avoidance of the outdoors as a result of being “brutally sexually assaulted and beaten by a group of white teenagers” in her youth. He goes on to point out that many prominent figures in black history, such as Harriet Tubman or the Buffalo Soldiers, have never been acknowledged as a part of wilderness history. For example, though Harriet Tubman is known for having transported hundreds of runaway slaves to safety on the Underground Railroad, her rugged journey through thousands of miles of wilderness terrain is very rarely acknowledged. Bailey summarizes this notion by stating that in the case of black people in the outdoors, both their tragedies and their triumphs have been all but swept under the rug by the Westernized history of wilderness.

To conclude his TED Talk, Bailey argues that in order to recolor the outdoors, we need to acknowledge all sides of black history in the wilderness. He points out that representation of minority groups in wilderness advertising is significantly lacking (only 3% of outdoor advertisements feature African Americans, according to a book entitled “Black Faces, White Spaces” by Dr. Carolyn Finney), and that in order to convince new generations of black children that there is a place for them in the outdoors, we need to increase the advertisement of people who look like them and who are not afraid to confront their shared history of tragedy and triumph.

Ultimately, Bailey’s TED Talk has added the nuances of media representation and outdoor recreation leadership to my preexisting perspective on this topic. I am ashamed that it has taken me nineteen years of my life to remove the rose-colored lenses through which I have evidently observed wilderness in the past, but it is people like Alex Baily who are helping me learn that perhaps the first step towards improving inclusion in the outdoors is to acknowledge the scars which we have left on our fellow humans, and consequently to reevaluate how we choose to define wilderness itself within Western culture. To those who have been unfamiliar with this idea, as I still largely am, I implore you to listen to those who have unique perspectives to contribute to the matter. If you, like me, had never realized that bringing these vastly different perceptions of wilderness into dialogue is so critical, you too have been privileged enough to evade the consequences associated with the lack of discussing them. I hope that this post has opened your eyes to this idea as much as the past two months of class have opened mine, and I look forward to hearing your thoughts in the comments below.