Addressing environmental racism in environmental education
June 2020 has gotten off to a difficult start, to say the least. The death of George Floyd and the experience of Christian Cooper in Central Park sparked an outpouring of anger nationwide about racial injustice. A Washington Post article calls these two events “two versions of racism that black Americans face every day.” I can’t stop wondering, how many other versions are out there?
I posted my concerns and feelings about racism on Facebook. A friend replied and told me a story. She and her husband frequently birded with an Asian couple in New Mexico, where they used to live. One day the couple told her that they would only go out birding with a group, never by themselves. “Why?” My friend was confused. They explained it wasn't safe to be out with binoculars because people would be suspicious.
The Asian couple’s fear is obviously shared by many bird-watchers of color. In a recent online panel that the National Audubon Society organized, Christian Cooper and several other Black birders shared their experiences and concerns of being uncomfortable or unsafe in many outdoor places. Each of them had a list of locations that they would not go birding by themselves or simply would never go regardless of having company or not. Being excluded or restricted in the outdoors because of one’s skin color and identity is one dimension of another version of racism: environmental racism.
The phrase environmental racism started to become recognized in the early 1980s when several civil rights activists initiated an effort to stop the state of North Carolina from dumping 120 million pounds of soil contaminated with polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in Warren County, the county with the highest percentage of Black population in the state. Over the past 40 years, a large number of studies have documented the disproportional environmental health burdens borne by people of color and the poor. And actions fighting against environmental injustice have persisted ever since.
Environmental racism, however, goes far beyond the fact that people of color are much more likely to live near polluters and breathe polluted air. There are many dimensions to the racial injustice in the environmental field and our socio-ecological landscape. The leadership and activists of the environmental movement, for instance, have been largely white. In 2014, Dr. Dorceta Taylor from the University of Michigan authored a report that revealed the troubling lack of racial diversity in major American environmental organizations and government agencies. In academia and higher education, environmental majors attract predominantly white students, researchers, and faculty members. This is partially a result of the structural racism that has disadvantaged students of color to pursue higher education. But the unsafe outdoor spaces for students of color are also making it more difficult for them to conduct field research in certain areas, which exacerbates the discrepancy. In Black Faces, White Spaces, Carolyn Finney discussed how the lack of racial diversity in the environmental field has led to a collective understanding and envisioning of the environmental discourse and debate “as shaded and inhabited primarily by white people.”
Environmental racism is also interwoven with the complex history of various racial and cultural groups being restricted from and deprived of access to natural resources. The loss of land ownership by African Americans and Indian communities throughout history divested their opportunities to build wealth and made them more vulnerable to economic exploitation. The great outdoors, such as parks and many other outdoor recreational opportunities, have always been less welcoming to people of color due to the restriction of socioeconomic resources, cultural factors, and racial discrimination. This deprivation of resources has also diminished or excluded the environmental experiences, stories, and narratives of people of color from social history, as depicted in Trace: Memory, History, Race and the American Land by Lauret Savoy. The disconnection to the past has a strong psychological impact in the present that goes beyond the distributional aspect of natural resources:
Silence can be a sanctuary or frame for stories told. Silence also obscures origins. My parents’ muteness once seemed tacit consent that generational history was no longer part of life or living memory. That a past survived was best left unexposed or even forgotten as self-defense. But unvoiced lives cut a sharp-felt absence. Neither school lessons nor images surging around me could offer salve or substitute. My greatest fear as a young girl was that I wasn’t meant to exist.
This April marked the 50th anniversary of Earth Day. It has also been almost 40 years since the first communities of color started fighting against environmental racism. Justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion have been key words for many environmental education organizations, from the NAAEE to regional and local programs. However, an observable disengagement between mainstream environmental education and environmental justice (including environmental racism) still exists at the practice level. In a study that analyzed 224 lessons from seven mainstream, national environmental education curricula, Ann Kushmerick, Lindsay Young, and Susan E. Stein from Drexel University found that while many lessons might include components related to environmental justice, such as the interconnectedness of the socio-ecological system and community perspectives, only 3% of the lessons actually discussed these topics in the context of environmental justice.
Environmental justice has not been widely taught in higher education environmental programs either. Marjorie Nussbaum from Georgia Southern University conducted a survey of nearly all undergraduate programs of environmental science and/or environmental studies in the U.S. and found that, while over half of faculty members in these departments thought environmental justice was important, very few of them could provide a general description of the definition, scope, causes, and solutions of environmental justice.
Many reasons may have led to this disconnect. Two of the major barriers for educators to teach any social justice topics, including environmental racism, seems to be the discomfort of discussing race and social classes and a lack of appropriate strategies, similar to the reason many parents, especially white parents, avoid talking about race with their children. Many pieces of evidence have shown that children started being aware of racial differences at a very young age, and it is of vital importance to teach them what the social construct of race means, how to understand the justice issues, and how to make things better.
One of the main goals of environmental education is to inform and inspire actions to create and maintain a sustainable environment for all humans and other living beings in the long run. Ultimately, this goal is about achieving intergenerational, intragenerational, and interspecies justices. Not only should environmental justice be incorporated into environmental education, it is foundational to the core ideas of environmental education.
Luckily, a few programs and educators have realized the gap and started taking action. In the past week, I conducted focus groups for one of PEER’s clients to evaluate one of their teacher professional development programs on climate change education. The middle school and high school teachers involved in the program actively talked about how to bridge the gap between science and social studies and bring together social justice and climate change. One middle school teacher noted: “It is imperative that we incorporate social justice.”
What is needed for educators to teach environmental justice and address environmental racism? Here are a few things to consider:
Build a good knowledge base of environmental justice and environmental racism. High-quality professional development programs on environmental justice and environmental racism are needed. Many online resources on social justice in general, such as this one, can be helpful.
Create a safe, inclusive learning space for students of all cultural and racial backgrounds.
Be positive and empowering. Acknowledge and make meaning of the issues such that that the students can take individual and collective actions to improve the situation.
Work with like-minded colleagues. Interdisciplinary collaboration is critical in connecting environmental education to social justice topics. Professional learning networks can provide support and resources.
Reach out to the community. Bring in guest speakers, use community resources, and connect students with their community.
Apply some creativity. How about using hip-hop to teach environmental justice and race?
By Qing Ren (qing@peerassociates.net)