Racism, The Forest Service, and Environmental History

Oh boy. Via Andrea:

The US Forest Service issued and then retracted a Labor Day warning advising hikers to “beware of campers in national forests drinking Tecate beer, eating tortillas and playing Spanish music” because “they could be armed marijuana growers.” A high-ranking Forest Service official in Colorado also identified people speaking Spanish and eating Spam or Tuna as “warning signs of possible drug trafficking.”

We might want to chock this up to a single Forest Service employee. I'm sure that someone (if not more than just one) lost their job over this. But while especially egregious, this incident reinforces long term racism revolving around who gets to use the environment. Who belongs in nature? The idea that seeing non-white people in the forest is somehow a threat comes straight out of a racist playbook in the environmental movement that's been around in one form or another for the last 120 years or so. Today, nature is for play. Work in nature is considered a bad thing. People who work in nature are raping the land or whatever. Never mind that Latinos form a huge percentage of reforestation and fire fighting crews. Since brown people are not supposed to have time to play, they must be growing drugs if they are in the forest. Now, it is somewhat rare to see non-white people in the forest. This is related to the fact that whites have more money and leisure time that they choose to spend in the forest.

Environmentalism and play in nature is associated with elite white people. Moreover, it has been for a long time. Since at least the 1880s, non-whites in the outdoors have been viewed with suspicion. Early environmentalists tried to separate working-class people from nature as much as possible, particularly those from non-desirable ethnic or racial groups. They cracked down on Italians because of their poaching (i.e., subsistence hunting so their families could eat) of songbirds and deer. Native American hunting was particularly looked down upon as wasteful, even though these same environmentalists romanticized Native Americans in their search for a more active and robust lifestyle. African-American hunters in the South were also seen as a menace who did not respect hunting laws and poached game that sporting whites should be allowed to kill. Early environmentalists like Theodore Roosevelt and Madison Grant (writer of the notorious eugenic book The Passing of the Great Race) saw race and nature as closely connected; game animals needed preservation in order to provide something for wealthy whites to kill. That killing was central to preserving the Anglo-Saxon masculinity that had supposedly been central to the nation's rise during the 18th and 19th centuries.

The United States Forest Service exists in no small part off land stolen from people of color. For example, the entirety of northern New Mexico forests exist of land stolen from New Mexican Hispanos who inherited that land through land grants that American courts refused to recognize despite promises they would do in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo that ended the Mexican War in 1848. In the 1960s, Hispanos fought back, leading to the 1967 raid by Reies Lopez Tijerina and his followers upon the courthouse in Tierra Amarilla, New Mexico to free people imprisoned for fighting to take back the stolen lands. Much other land of course once belonged to Native Americans and they certainly weren't welcome to use it in traditional ways after the arrival of the USFS.

These connections between race and nature have changed over time of course. In the late 1960s and 1970s, whites who continued to dominate all things conservation found room in nature for Native Americans through a new chapter in the history of whites romanticizing them. In this case, the anti-pollution Crying Indian ads are the most famous artifact. Native Americans took advantage of this in all sorts of ways, but when they didn't act toward nature in the ways that white environmentalists wanted (like developing their land or using their fishing rights), they were basically accused by whites as not being real Indians. This latest chapter in environmentalism that continues today hasn't found any room for other non-whites, thus their existence in the forests must mean they are doing something illegal.

Finally, tuna eater=Mexican? I did not know this. Nothing like a new stereotype... Also, I like Tecate, tortillas, and Mexican music. Does this mean that I am growing drugs? If so, why aren't I making any money?

Obama's Interior Policies Suck

Ralph Maughan's Wildlife News carefully follows federal government decisions regarding animals, public lands, and nature in general. After 3 1/2 months of the Obama Administration, he states:

In my view Obama’s public land policies are turning out to be no better than George W. Bush’s. What a disappointment!

I pretty much concur. Certainly it's been disappointing, beginning with the appointment of Ken Salazar to Interior. Is it as bad as Bush? No, I don't suppose so. The government isn't vocally in favor of mountaintop removal coal mining for instance.

But poor decisions still abound. The last straw for Maugham was the BLM authorizing uranium exploration near the Grand Canyon. This is a Bushian decision to be sure; undermining our national sacred spaces for energy development. Obama has also named a minor bureaucrat named Homer Lee Wilkes to be the undersecretary in the Agriculture Department for the United States Forest Service. While I can't speak to Wilkes' qualifications (though there is much more information here), as Maughan rightfully points out, it suggests that Obama is not prioritzing land issues.

In fact, there seems to be quite the disconnect in the Obama administration concering the environment. On climate, Obama and his team are putting in quite a bit of energy. How can you not love the Steven Chu appointment as Secretary of Energy! Although conservative Democrats in Congress don't want a climate package, I think we'll see something this year. But on land policy, Obama either doesn't care very much or is outright hostile to environmentalists' concerns. I suspect the former; one doesn't get the sense that this is a man who has spent much time in the forests or deserts. And obviously, Obama is overburdened with major problems. But even if land management is not at the top of his list, he could appoint satisfactory people to these positions.

In the end, I suspect that above all this might be a political calculation. The Democrats are building their party in the West and don't want to adopt environmentalist policies that might alienate potential voters. But I wonder if this isn't a misreading of local politics. In places like Colorado, Oregon, and Montana, you have Democrats who are often well to the left of center and conservatives who are often quite far to the right. There are really polarized states without the same kind of moderate middle ground you might see in Ohio or Florida. Much of the change in voting patterns in the West hasn't come from locals changing their minds, it's come from new residents--Latinos, young outdoorsy people, etc. For the most part, these are not consitutencies interested in continuing Bush era land policies. I hope Obama reads this political map better and realizes what he can do to protect the land while not undermining his electoral prospects in the West.