When will the trendies learn to stop giving material to the Daily Mail?
The British countryside is a ‘racist, colonial’ white space, wildlife charities have insisted in a report to MPs. The claim was made by Wildlife and Countryside Link, a group with 80 members including WWF, the RSPCA and National Trust.
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The group said ‘our policy recommendations ensure that all people have the right to a healthy natural environment – all people must have access to nature’. But it added: ‘Racist colonial legacies continue to frame nature in the UK as a ”white space” and people of colour as ”out of place” in these spaces and environmental sector.’
Do they? Where? How?
It continued: ‘Cultural barriers reflect that in the UK, it is white British cultural values that have been embedded into the design and management of green spaces and into society’s expectations of how people should engage with them.’ It said the perception that green spaces are dominated by whites can prevent people from ethnic minority backgrounds from using them.
What are these white British cultural values that have been embedded? What is the evidence that they have been so embedded? How does Wildlife and Countryside Link know there is such a perception?
It could be that the Mail is just being selective in its reporting. Toward the end of the story it admits there is a chain of reasoning involved.
Link’s Mr Benwell said: ‘Sadly, evidence shows that people of colour in the UK are more likely to live in areas with less green space and that are more heavily polluted, and at the same time they are significantly less likely to visit natural spaces.’
Or to put it another way it’s poverty that makes it difficult for people to visit natural spaces, and race and poverty are linked.
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10 responses to “Racist hiking boots”
“The British countryside is a ‘racist, colonial’ white space…”
Out of curiosity, can anyone seriously explain to me what exactly is meant by “colonial” these days? I think either I or the plot may have gotten lost…
It’s also okay for a people to embed their culture in their designs and for their designs to be part of their culture. When I go to England, I expect to encounter English culture and English spaces. The same relation holds when I go to Ireland, to Spain, to Japan, to India, and anywhere else. If this weren’t the case, then we ought always use nondescript, culturally neutral designs. … But this, too, would be a culturally informed design, just one that is joyless and inhuman.
ibbica: Something is colonial if it can be associated in any way (except as the object of colonization) with a nation, people, or idea that has colonized, is colonizing, will colonize, attempted to colonize, or can be constructed as colonial through Critique.
Telling people not to litter is very ethnocentric. It’s like colonizing their hands.
Until the Thames is again biologically dead and as vibrant with garbage as the Ganges, it oppresses people of color.
The rhetorical question opening the above-the-line post strongly reminded me of the story of the 19th Century Irish Catholic prelate who held that shooting at British police was wrong because of the risk of missing and hitting an innocent by-stander.
I have seen similar about why the NBA is filled with talented black athletes whereas swimming is almost totally white. A basketball hoop can be erected anywhere there is a small square of ground. Same for Golf and Tennis, with Tiger Woods and the Williams sisters being outliers and examples that non white people can do just as well as whites when their economic situations align.
Ah yes, I hadn’t thought of that – basketball as an accessible sport. Interesting.
I think it’s a bit more complex than this. After all, there’s plenty of rural poverty in the UK, just as there is in the U.S. The type of poverty also matters, and it is here where much of the racial divide comes. From what I can tell (admittedly, this is more based on media consumed than academic research), the various immigrant populations in the UK are vastly located in the largest urban centers, and dramatically underrepresented in the more rural counties–moreso than in the US, even, where you can find plenty of black rural towns. If you live close to the woods, it doesn’t matter how much money you have–you can still go for a walk down the trails. Segregation and housing discrimination are things, and these can amplify the effects of poverty.
Nullius#2. Can you define what ‘English culture’ is? Or what ‘English spaces’ are? What are your expectations in these respects? On what are these expectations founded? What might disappoint them? What do your expectations have to do with the fact (which even the Daily Heil finally admits) that ‘people of colour’ (what a horrible locution) ‘ in the UK are more likely to live in areas with less green space and that are more heavily polluted, and at the same time they are significantly less likely to visit natural spaces’? That is to say, ‘people of colour’ mostly live in large cities, and not in places with ready access to the countryside. Are those spaces called ‘cities’, which apart from populations that are far from being all echt English also contain vast numbers of Indian, Pakistani & Chinese restaurants, somehow less ‘English’? I note, by the way, that the original article refers to ‘British’ rather than ‘English’ spaces.
Re accessible sports, a few years ago I heard a discussion on the radio about who was the better athlete–Michael Phelps or Usain Bolt. Someone pointed out in response that Bolt was effectively competing against the entire world (a bit of an exaggeration, but point made).