On May 25 2020, Memorial Day, a black man named Christian Cooper was walking through New York's Central Park birding. Birding, for the uninitiated, is the, shorter, pithier term for bird-watching, an outdoor past-time enjoyed by many all over the world. Christian might have heard the song of a Chestnut-Sided Warbler, or spotted the brilliant blue plumage of an Indigo Bunting, or watched as a Red-Tailed Hawk soared on thermals over head. Particularly in times like these, he may find a particular sense of peace in his time spent outside, communing with nature, I know that I have. At some point in his walk, he encountered a women and her dog walking in the park, also presumably to enjoy the nature and fresh air. The woman's name was Amy Cooper, a white woman and self professed liberal, and her dog was off-leash, a violation of park policy. A dog allowed off leash can easily disturb and stress out the local birds, potentially harming the wildlife and quite materially spoiling Christian's birding. He therefore asks her to abide by park regulations and leash her dog. When she refused, their argument escalated and Christian began to record the interaction. Amy can be seen in the subsequent recording threatening to call the police, emphasizing Christian's status as an African-American man. As she dials 911, her voice rises in pitch and volume, performing the kind of hysteria that throughout history white women have weaponized against black people. Luckily, in our modern day and age, we have the power of the internet, and once Christian posted the video online, it went viral, and as we've seen before in recent times, millions of strangers on the internet rallied to his defense and vociferously called for there to be immediate consequences for Amy's vile, racist threats.
There are a lot of layers to this incident, whether it be the swiftness and totality of the online response, the culpability of white-liberals in upholding racist power structures, or the public desire for "perfect" victims who conform to white-supremacist ideals of success, value, and innocence. Many other wonderful writers and thinkers have explored these dimensions at length. As a biologist and avid outdoor enthusiast, this incident has resonated deeply with me, and has got me thinking about how race influences how we conceptualize and experience nature. As black folks, we have had to navigate a deluge of cultural messaging about who the outdoors are really for, and for a long time, the world of outdoor recreation has been displayed as a very white world. Whether it be hiking, camping, fishing, hunting, rock-climbing, cycling, kayaking, or birding in Christian's case, the outdoors are a place for the privileged and the white, so goes the cultural orthodoxy. Growing up in South Georgia, I gravitated towards nature and outdoor activities. I chased frogs, lizards and snakes in my backyard as a child, I volunteered for years at my town's local zoo, I even joined the Boy Scouts for the sole reason of having access to more outdoor opportunities. But in all of these contexts, I was either the only black person or one of a very small minority. This is especially concerning, in that in my town, black folks were by no means a minority. During that time, I often felt the need to perform, to constantly prove my right to be there by knowing more than anyone else around me. Don't get me wrong, I devoured every animal fact or tidbit of ecological trivia with gusto, but as often as I found genuine fulfillment in my learning, I'd fall back on this knowledge as a defense mechanism, to prove to myself and to others that I deserved to be in these spaces. Even as an older man and a practicing scientist conducting ecological field work in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California, I find myself on the defensive, ready to rattle off my credentials in case someone thinks I don't belong. With the Central Park incident, I can't help but see an ugly manifestation of these racial dynamics, white folks insisting that black folks don't belong in outdoor spaces. Amy Cooper, a white woman, had the idea that Christian Cooper, a black man, was trespassing in nature, that he had no right to tell her how to inhabit that space. She may claim she isn't racist, she may genuinely regret her actions, but when it came down to it, she sought to use her power and privilege to assert her authority to utilize public space in the way SHE saw fit, Christian's rights to utilize that same space in peace be damned. She did this by threatening a black man's freedom and his life. In the Central Park incident, we can see echoes of the fraught history of public spaces in this country. For a long time, I idolized John Muir, the famed California naturalist and conservationist who was instrumental in the formation of our National Park System, and I still greatly appreciate his contributions to the conservationist movement in the US. However, one can't reckon with Muir's legacy without recognizing how his push for the formation of Yosemite National Park came at great cost to local Miwuk and Paiute tribes that have lived in Yosemite Valley for generations (which they called Ahwahnee Valley). Indigenous tribes were forced out of their ancestral homes to make way for the park, often quite violently. As for Muir, he may be well known for his stirring and poetic descriptions of the "pristine" wilderness of the Western United States, but his words for the indigenous inhabitants were less rosy, calling them "most ugly, and some altogether hideous". While Muir's attitude to native people softened over time, and he grew to deeply respect their culture, his actions caused irreparable harm. The pristine image of nature championed by Muir was quite deliberately used to erase indigenous peoples and their claims on the lands they inhabited, instead touting an apocryphal untouched wilderness that was for the enjoyment of white settlers. This mentality is still pervasive in our country, and is a big part of why outdoor recreation has remained so white for so long. This may seem far removed from the incident in Central Park, but we can see how American outdoor culture contains echoes of our imperialist, expansionist, frontier mentality, which in turn echoes into modern ideas of race in the outdoors. Making outdoor spaces safe and welcoming for black folks cannot happen until we reckon with these difficult truths. In a world beset by climate change, habitat destruction, and deadly zoonotic pandemics, now more than ever we need to strengthen our awareness of and connection to the natural world. It's no surprise that these crises are poised to hit our most marginalized communities hardest. Ask any environmental scientist, ecologist, marine biologist etc. why they do what they do, and most of them will relay a deep and abiding love and reverence of the natural world. Making sure that everyone, particularly our most most marginalized are welcome in outdoor spaces is of vital importance. I want to see more people who look like me involved in the kind of work that has brought me so much joy over the years, and that will get us through the next natural crisis. More importantly, I want black folks to be able to watch birds and feel safe while doing it, to simply exist and feel safe doing so. Things are moving positively, there are tons of amazing black educators, scientists, and content creators out there working hard to change preconceptions of who can enjoy the outdoors. Folks like Earyn McGee, Corina Newsome, and Jason Ward are sharing their love of nature, while also sharing their whole selves in the process. Jason's excellent YouTube show, Birds of North America, even features an appearance from Christian Cooper. Please give it a watch, and follow all the dope naturalists I mentioned on Twitter @Afro_Herper, @hood_naturalist, @JasonWardNY. I'll leave you with a quote from Christian, which I think really captures that sense of wonder and joy one can derive from nature, a joy that everyone should be able to experience, not just the privileged. "There are seven things that make birding absolutely spectacular... The seventh one is probably the best one, what I call the unicorn effect. You hear about birds, you see them in a book, and you're like 'Oh wow that's an amazing bird, I'd love to see that someday!', and then one day you're walking through the woods or walking through a swamp or whatever, and suddenly flap-flap-flap..." Stay healthy and stay safe y'all, get outside, and maybe watch some birds while you're at it. You might just find yourself a knew obsession. Kwasi
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