While noted
leaders of color are taking more control of their own destiny, the net effect
is we are enabling another silo alongside sustainability. A doctrine that
espouses inclusive systems thinking is spawning an apparatchik marked by
separatism, not integration.
By Dave Newport
The Washington Post this
week published
an extensive piece on the lack of diversity in US environmental groups.
Sadly, it is old news.
A lot has been written about this. I recalled
Tufts professor Julian Agyeman’s stirring challenge to us
all at the Denver AASHE conference in “The
Death of Campus Sustainability” last year. Marcelo Bonta
wrote a great “what to do
about it” piece in Grist in 2008. The New York Times covered eco-diversity
pioneer Jerome Ringo in 2009. And so forth.
Yet the lack of diversity is still endemic
among the community of sustainability professionals, our leadership, our
professional organizations, and the universities, companies, and governments we
work for. Just in higher education, AASHE reports
that 92 percent of sustainability folks are white.
All old news.
Yes, I am an old white guy, and a borderline racist,
it appears. Not the hate-driven kind
that runs around burning religious symbols in peoples’ front yard. No, mine is
the unintentional, passive, clueless kind of racism born out of privilege.
My wake up call went like this:
Some years back a very sharp and wonderful
African American student who worked in our Center outted me. We were
talking about the excessive GHG emissions embedded in a meat diet vs. the less
carbon intensive vegetarian diet.
“Don’t come to my neighborhood and talk about
veggie burgers,” she admonished me. “Black people haven’t worked hard trying to
climb past discrimination so we can earn income sufficient buy a steak just to
have white-privileged Boulder greenies tell us to eat tofu.”
Serious reality check.
So when I read the Post’s story I expected to
get an update on what else I hadn’t noticed. I was looking for new news. I
found it in the comment section, not the story.
The father
of the environmental justice movement, Robert Bullard, spurned the idea
that people of color even wanted the mainstream environmental groups to
integrate.
“It was never the intent of our largely people
of color movement to "fold" ourselves into the national environmental
and conservation movement,” Dr. Bullard commented under the story. “The core of our movement has always been, ‘We
Speak for Ourselves!’”
Indeed, why should people of color supplicate
to the mainstream enviro groups and beg for inclusion? Other leaders note that
even when people of color are partnered with enviro groups, they are only
allowed to play supporting roles, not the lead.
“As the first and only female Hispanic
appointed by a [California] Governor to serve on the South Coast AQMD Governing Board, I observed
this far too often,” noted Cynthia
Verdugo-Peralta, who is also President and CEO of SEETA, (Strategic Energy, Environmental
and Transportation Alternatives, Inc), an NGO. “When the large
established enviro group "partners" with a minority enviro group,
they have them in the background, not out front where they need to be.”
Which explains where leaders of color are apparently
going these days: solo.
Majora
Carter spoke on campus a few weeks ago. She never said “sustainability.”
She said “empowerment.” She didn’t say “environment.” She said “quality of
life.” She never said “crime.” She said “hometown security.” She didn’t even say the word “justice.” She said,
“end bright flight.”
Most of all, she said it by herself just
fine. The Sierra Club wasn’t there.
Indeed, Carter’s organization is leading its
own charge. And she’s not alone.
We all have come to know Van Jones pretty
well over the past few years. Jones’ wiki reports he is “co-founder
of four non-profit organizations including Rebuild
the Dream, of which he is president. In 1996, he founded the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights,
a California non-governmental organization (NGO) working for alternatives to
violence. In 2005, he co-founded Color
of Change, an advocacy group for African Americans. In 2007,
he founded Green for All, a national NGO dedicated to
"building an inclusive green economy strong enough to lift people out of
poverty.”
People of color apparently have little hope
that the mainstream enviro movement is ever going to adequately represent their
interests—so they are going it alone. More power to them, literally! I love seeing Van Jones citied as an
environmental expert on CNN
where he is on camera seemingly 24/7.
Separate,
but unequal
Yet while Jones, Carter, Bullard, Verdugo-Peralta, and other noted
leaders of color are taking more control of their own destiny, the net effect
is we are enabling another silo alongside sustainability. A doctrine that
espouses inclusive systems-thinking is spawning an apparatchik marked by
separatism, not integration.
While there has been incremental progress on
social justice, it is still our least developed—yet perhaps most powerful—argument
for change. The group privilege that inbreeds among white-dominated enviro
groups and sustainabilistas perpetuates my brand of unintentional racism
informed by ignorance, not malice. But it’s racism nonetheless.
Bob Bullard has seen this trend for a long
time.
“Having written more than 18 books on the
topic over the past 25 years, beginning with "Dumping in
Dixie," its rather clear that environmental injustice and environmental
racism are real and alive and well in the U.S. and around the globe,” he writes
in the Post.
The environmental justice challenges faced by
communities of color stemming from close proximity to pollution sources are sad
and terrible--and tangible issues. The challenges the sustainability movement
faces from being clueless are more vexing in that intangibles are harder to
fix. As former Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld amply proved, “you don’t know what you don’t know.”
Where do we start?
Sustainability
is another word for justice, for what is just is sustainable, and what is
unjust is not. ~ Rev Matthew Fox
This year we are going to try a different
approach in my Center and see where it takes us. For starters, our Energy And Climate
Conservation program is renovating its name to the Energy And Climate Justice
program. What will that do? Seems like a little thing. Fair question. We will
find out. But my hypothesis is that by following Aeygman’s advice and putting
the “justice” emphasis out front, we will signal to people of color what we’re
about.
Then we have to back it up. So the program
folks are looking at re-messaging all their outreach about energy and climate
to feature the justice elements therein. To do so, they will reach out to
people of color and hopefully foster a dialogue that helps evolve message
content that is both respectful and effective. The reaching out part is hard,
requires consistent effort, and will face serious skepticism. But eighty percent of success is
showing up. Other programmatic elements will also emerge from this
brainstorming, I hope. Stay tuned.
It’s important to remember another
fundamental truth of campus sustainability: students get it; follow their lead.
It’s staff and administrators like me that are behind the ball. For instance,
the Energy Action Coalition
and the California Student
Sustainability Coalition have done anti-oppression trainings as a
requirement for all their staff and student leaders for years. The CSSC chapter
at UCLA is called E3 (for Ecology,
Economy, Equity). Why? Because they have to be relevant to students, and
especially at UCLA, students are more ethnically, and (more so than a lot of
universities) socioeconomically diverse. The CSSC chapter at UC San Diego
also actively applies the three-legged stool model of sustainability,
integrating environment and justice.
Marcelo Bonta is the director of the Centerfor Diversity & the Environment. The Grist
article referenced above offers a tangible path towards increased diversity
any of us can navigate. He writes:
- “Find
opportunities to diversify within your spheres of influence. Figure out what you can
start doing today. What organizational responsibilities do you control and
have influence over? For example, if you have access to discretionary
funds or control of budgets, earmark money toward diversity activities. If
you work on outreach, learn how to become culturally competent, and expand
your outreach activities to include communities of color.
- Seek
opportunities to broaden your experience, expand your network and continue
learning. Attend or organize diversity workshops, sessions, and
trainings, which are becoming common at environmental conferences. Become
involved in efforts that bring a broad range of organizations and people
together, such as the Diverse Partners
for Environmental Progress series of national summits and
regional roundtables. Reach out to and learn from organizations that work
on diversity issues, such as Environmental
Learning for Kids. Numerous diversity resources can be found on the
websites of organizations, including the resources
section of the Center for Diversity & the Environment. The
book Diversity
and the Future of the U.S. Environmental Movement is one of
the premier resources on the topic.
- Find
allies. Talk to others at your
workplace and to people working on diversity issues outside your
organization. Organize a lunch discussion about diversity issues at your
workplace. Find or create a network of people with which you can
comfortably discuss diversity issues. For example, a group in Portland,
Ore., aptly named the Young Environmental Professionals of Color, meets
monthly to network, strategize, and discuss various environmental topics
that affect them.
- Broaden
your thought processes. Think long-term with an expansive vision. Constantly
question your “business as usual.” Ask yourself questions like “For whom
am I protecting these lands or waterways? When thinking of the communities
or constituencies I serve, who do I think of? Who should I think of? What
type of people would find working at my workplace appealing or not
appealing? Why?”
- Engage
leaders at your workplace and foundations. Talk to leaders about
adopting diversity as an organizational priority and taking action. Ask
for a commitment of resources, especially money and staff time. Lack of
funding devoted to diversity severely limits the scope for diversifying
the movement. Ask your funders to provide grants for diversity efforts.
- Start building relationships with communities and organizations of color now. If you want to start engaging people of color, you will need to invest time building relationships and trust, and provide something of value. You will need to do your homework about the community members, meet them, and speak to their environmental values.”
Some of these strategies might work
sometimes, and sometimes not. Different approaches for different contexts.
Either way, I should probably have been doing more of this right along. But I
am clueless, it seems. There are a lot of people smarter than me working hard
every day in sustainability. I suspect we vote the same, worry about the same
things in our society, and all try in our own ways to make things better. And
we may be unintentional racists not because of hatred or bigotry, but because
we are white people with a worldview informed by a relatively privileged life
and devoid of the experience many people of color naturally acquire. So I am
going to use the racist word to hopefully highlight the challenges we face—and
the talent that we have to fix it.
Racism
is a tough word itself beset by controversial definitions and interpretations—but
we live in tough times. The National Council of Churches Racial Justice
Working Group defines racism as “the
intentional or unintentional use of power to isolate, separate and exploit others
. . . Racism is more than just a personal attitude; it is the institutionalized
form of the attitude"
Here’s my attitude: If we don’t address the
diversity and social justice deficit in the movement to institutionalize sustainability
WE will ALL be old news.
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