Exploring the ‘good, bad and ugly’ of blacks, environment
VIDEO - The USDA Forest Services controls nearly 200 million arches of parkland. Even with the vast landscape, only one percent of Yosemite visitors are African American...
The USDA Forest Services controls nearly 200 million arches of parkland. Even with the vast landscape, only one percent of Yosemite visitors are African-American.
Dr. Carolyn Finney, assistant professor at UC Berkeley and serving on the National Park System Advisory Board, is writing a book that examines the “good, bad and ugly” relationship of African-Americans and other minorities to the environment.
Finney says that these ethnic groups are not engaged in environmental issues because of the “painful” history in which the public lands were founded.
“If we look at particularly African Americans who descended from enslaved Africans, who worked the land, were given 400,000 acres and had that land taken away, there is a legacy because of that,” Finney said.
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In order to increase the involvement and participation of African-Americans and other minority groups, Finney says that policies and services need to be more expansive in order to bring change.
“As a whole we don’t have the tools within in which to have a conversation about race in a real and meaningful way. So one of the first things I’m interested in is how we create new frameworks of engagement…what does it mean to sit down with each other and recognize our common humanity and move forward,” Finney said.
