As much as you might want to forget about politics, and embrace escapism, when you’re riding trails on your bike, hitting backcountry on your snowboard / skis, hiking over green hills, surfing through barrels, camping out beneath the stars or climbing up a slab of rock – the time has come for all of us to face the fact that we’re either going to be part of the problem or part of the solution.

Everything is connected, and decisions taken miles away from wilderness feed into its narrative in positive and negative ways. It does this whether or not you’re confronting it in any meaningful way.

As Phil Young pointed out so well in his piece on race and the outdoors back in April, a willingness to make the outdoors a more racially inclusive place should be a priority for anyone who cares about the environment, climate change, and saving our natural spaces from ruin. 

“We’re either going to be part of the problem or part of the solution”

When the outdoors is essentially just a white space, you’re inevitably going to get predominantly white people fighting for its survival against the impact of climate change. To be a truly powerful, policy changing, force for good though the environmental movement needs everyone onboard. It needs the world, or a better representation of it at least, rather than just a group of well-meaning white people. Fractions add up to a whole, and we need the whole. 

The importance of the race and the outdoors issue, it’s worth stressing, obviously goes way beyond ensuring we still have some snow to ride through in future winters.

As cases such as Ahmaud Arbery – a black jogger shot and killed while running in Glynn County, Georgia at the end of February – have underlined, for black people the simple act of doing some very basic exercise outside can literally become a matter of life and death. 

Killings like Arbery’s not only once again highlight what damage racists with access to firearms can do, they also speak to wider issues around the whiteness of jogging itself as well as criminalising stereotypes surrounding black men who go running in urban environments. 

In 2017, sociologist Rashawn Ray published the paper ‘Black people don’t exercise in my neighborhood’. In it, Ray documents a striking pattern of middle-class black men choosing to exercise in majority-white neighborhoods less than they do in majority-black or racially mixed ones. According to Ray, this pattern reflects black runners’ concerns over mistreatment in white spaces. The paper shines a spotlight on the group’s fear of being wrongly perceived as a criminal, and ending up on the receiving end of vigilante justice or police brutality as a result. 

America is America, of course but be in no doubt that the United Kingdom has more than its fair share of problems. Ongoing debates over whether or not we should still have monuments to literal slave traders on our streets in 2020 being an excellent case in point. 

“The United Kingdom has more than its fair share of problems”

A recent disagreement in the Derbyshire Dales town of Ashbourne, one that resulted in a long-standing racist caricature bust of a black man in the town being hidden by a Tory councillor so it can be put back up at a later date, has underlined some of the prevailing attitudes to ethnic minorities outside of the UK’s big cities. The outdoors, we like to tell people, is for everyone but places like Ashbourne, a launchpad for exploring the beautiful scenery on offer in the Derbyshire Dales, seem to counter that. 

I have no doubt that there are many progressive welcoming people in Ashbourne but its recent news coverage inevitably feeds into the narrative that outsiders who are pro-diversity aren’t welcome there, and in places like it. The result of the Brexit Referendum, where big cities in England like Bristol, London, and Manchester were majority Remain in contrast to less urban, Leave-voting, areas was the country’s division between non-rural and rural environments writ large for all to see. 

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We know and acknowledge that for too long, racism has made the world unequal and unsafe. We recognize the pain and suffering racism has caused and are making a commitment to be part of the solution. We are standing up, because we owe it to everyone affected, ourselves and you. Find out more via link in bio.

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Brands cutting their ties with conspiracy theorists, sharing racially offensive material, is a step in the right direction; a bare minimum. Moving forward however, we want to see brands taking proactive steps to make the outdoors a more inclusive and diverse place. We have, for example, been impressed by The North Face putting some of their money where their mouth is by donating $50,000 to the ACLU, $25,000 to Outdoor Afro, and $25,000 to PGM ONE. 

These donations on top of The North Face’s ten year project the Explore Fund, which has seen $500,000 go directly to benefitting BAME communities in the outdoors, and their Walls Are Meant For Climbing program are clear signs of positive steps being taken. 

The North Face and Patagonia’s decision to stop spending ad money with Facebook and Instagram, as part of the #StopHateForProfit campaign, is another welcome commitment from the industry. While both brands would be the first to admit that there’s a long way to go, it’s great to see brands of their size and status reflecting on the current situation and putting pledges to do more into tangible, concrete, action. 

“Let’s be proactive, instead of reactive”

In his recent piece in the New Statesman, titled ‘We Can’t Breathe’, Gary Younge says “Since we didn’t get to this place by accident, we won’t get out of it by chance.” 

Younge was predominantly talking about COVID-19 and the disproportionate impact it’s had on BAME people, but I think the words make for a good rallying call around which the outdoors community can bring about change in its own space. 

Let’s be proactive, instead of reactive. Let’s do better. 

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Wondering how you can be a better ally? As a starting point, we’d recommend giving a listen to episode 126 of the Looking Sideways podcast – featuring a discussion with Phil Young.

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Since publishing this article, we were notified that over the weekend just gone Oakley announced on Instagram their parting of ways with snowboarder Nicolas Müller. 

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