Embracing Wilderness, Resisting Whiteness
By: Sarah Olson Michel
Tags: Racial Justice, Outdoors, Race, BlackLivesMatter, Nature

The coronavirus pandemic lockdown across the United States has encouraged a new generation of bird watchers. According to the New York Times, bird-watching is experiencing a surge in popularity under the stay-at-home order. More people find themselves watching the birds in their backyard or while venturing outdoors for a walk.

Birding is an art that involves both learning to see and to listen. You must be quiet and attentive, attuned to your environment, to notice and identify them. Lynn Thomson, author of Birding With Yeats, wrote that “the most important quality in a birdwatcher is a willingness to stand quietly and see what comes.” It could also be argued that the qualities of listening and seeing are essential for white people to learn in order to be allies to people of color.

Birding is a primarily white activity. According to a 2011 report by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, approximately 93 percent of birders are white. They noted that the “scarcity of minority birders is not just a reflection of their relatively low numbers in the population at large; it’s also a function of low participation rates.”

Unfortunately, the stereotype of birding as an activity for older white men (the predominant demographic among birders) is preventing people of color, particularly Black people, from being represented and accepted in birding and naturalist activities. But it isn’t just a lack of representation and inclusion that Black birders are up against: it’s a lack of safety, perpetuated by racism and hostility.

This past Memorial Day, an incident in the Ramble in Central Park arose when a Black birder named Christian Cooper asked a white woman to leash her dog. When the woman refused, despite the fact leashes are required in that area of the park, an argument ensued. According to the video Mr. Cooper took with his phone camera, the woman told him she would call the police and say that an “African-American man” was “threatening” her. Her lie — and the threat to Mr. Cooper — was obvious.

Mr. Cooper, who is on the board of the New York Audubon Society, told the New York Times that “I am one of the few male African-Americans who birds the Ramble regularly, and I have always been aware that if I am crawling around behind a shrub trying to catch a glimpse of that rare bird, holding a metal object in my hands, I will be perceived differently than a white man if police come across that scene.”

The incident in Central Park happened the same week as the brutal death of George Floyd, and not long after the murder of Breonna Taylor, two more avoidable tragedies indicating the harm that continues to be done to Black people at the hands of police. The fact that police could have stormed in and killed Christian Cooper was not lost on those who criticized the woman’s actions.

“I’m going to tell them there’s an African American man threatening my life.” The way she snarled those words made clear she knew she was lying about Cooper’s being a threat — the ultimate weapon in the white-lady arsenal, given the history of police violently responding to claims about “threatening” black men. — New York Times

Birding while black, it seems, is in and of itself a political act. “We should be out here. The birds belong to all of us,” Mr. Cooper told the New York Times after the video went viral. “The birds don’t care what color you are.”

In response to these events, a group of young Black scientists on Twitter came together and started Black Birders Week to showcase Black naturalists and raise awareness about birding while Black. Hosted by a Twitter account called Black AF in STEM, the event aims to share Black experiences outdoors and represent Black birders in a positive light.

“When the incident happened with Christian Cooper in Central Park, it hit home for us,” said Kassandra Ford, one of the organizers and a doctoral fellow at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. “A lot of our members do field research or spend time outdoors, and we realized that could have been any one of us — and in many ways, still could be.”

Ford, who describes herself as a fish biologist and birding hobbyist, said the goal of the week was to start a conversation on social media regarding “the differences in how Black people experience the outdoors versus non-Black people,” she said.

“We wanted to do so in a mainly positive way, to show that we want to use this space, but we can’t always do it the way we want to,” said Ford. “People with all different levels of experience can be involved, even if you’re not a birder.”

Those who aren’t birders are represented with the hashtag #BlackInNature, which trended on Twitter the first day of Black Birders Week as Black scientists, birders, and naturalists shared pictures of themselves outdoors in the hope of helping normalize their presence. The juxtaposition of their positive, uplifting posts displayed side-by-side with the violent images and videos of police brutality perpetuated against Black protesters was profound. Both — though in different ways — screamed for the necessity of change.

“The narrative of the Great Outdoors in the United States is explicitly informed by a rhetoric of wilderness conquest,” writes Carolyn Finney in her book Black Faces, White Spaces. “Implicitly, it is informed by a legacy of Eurocentrism and the linkage of wilderness to whiteness, wherein both become naturalized and universalized.”

Through their social media movement and work in outdoors, these young Black birders challenged that rhetoric — as well as the notion that they are inherently less interested in nature than their white peers.

“While economic limitations have been cited as primary reasons why nonwhite peoples, and in particular, African Americans, lack enthusiasm for the national parks, others feel that a history of subjugation to the land and racial prejudice have given rise to indifference to national park concerns,” Finney explains in her book. The Black birders are carving out a space for themselves in the outdoors, challenging prejudiced assumptions and resisting the default of whiteness. Representation will also help with the recruitment of young Black people, helping them become more interested in engaging with the outdoors.