It is important when writing about cultural observations and intersectionalities of race and class to first consider one’s own subjectivity and how that might support or limit an understanding of any given cultural practice. This is the position from which I’m writing: I'm a white American woman living in the United States making middle class wages at a contract job for a Fortune 500 corporation. I have the privilege and luxury of inhabiting spaces that were inaccessible to me/my family as a child based on my former socioeconomic status.
I spent my adolescence growing up in a stereotypical trailer park in South Carolina without paved roads and street lamps. This somewhat impoverished upbringing has always made me conscious of the spaces I inhabit and where I (based on my class position) belong. For example, ski resorts are places I visit now as an adult. It wasn’t until 2014 that I was able to learn how to snowboard. I was never able to access such places because of geographical and economic constraints. Snowboarding is a luxury sport.
I am fortunate to have spent the past year living in a vacation rental cabin at the base of a mountain. It was an extremely luxurious and privileged experience compared to how some of our surrounding neighbors were housing themselves and, also, considering that the town is notorious for its problems with drugs. It was in this space that I came to truly understand the human need to be surrounded by beauty and nature to experience a greater sense of peace and a higher quality of life – namely, how important it is for any individual to have access to fields to roam, a river for swimming, or simply trees to climb and lie beneath on sunny days. It seems that we have not yet discovered a way to fully integrate nature and communities in this country.
It has been proven that human-plant interactions provide not only enhanced health, wellness, and interpersonal benefits, but also "useful products, [encourage] physical activity, [offer] opportunities to connect with and learn about nature, [help] strengthen social ties and cultural identities, and in some contexts, can serve as a strategic tool for ecological restoration" (Heckert 2013; McLain 2012; Morris 2003; Santiago 2014; Tsunetsugu 2013). Access to open, green spaces in nature is especially important for the emotional and physiological health of people who live in cities. There is a substantial amount of research on how rural and urban environments impact local populations’ physical health as well as their mental state and spirituality (as cited in Morris’ literature review).
There are, however, few places that are actually successful at combining community and nature, and the ones that do are generally populated by the upper middle class – those who are predominantly white Americans – because only those folks can afford it. The statistics are real: physical and social factors, like income and crime, hinder or limit a resident’s access to green spaces (Heckert 2013; Santiago 2014).
Heckert (2013)’s analysis of access and equity in greenspace provision relies on four geographic sets of data: public greenspaces, PLC lots that are actively maintained, another dataset focused on the street network of Philadelphia, and "census block group level demographics from the 2010 decennial census" (811). There were five groups to provide racial and ethnic demographic information: white non-Hispanics, black non-Hispanics, Asian non-Hispanics, other non-Hispanics (including mixed races or a selection of multiple races), and Hispanics. The results showed that white non-Hispanics correlated with higher greenspace access and "black, Asian, Hispanic, renter-occupied and female-headed households all negatively correlated with total amount of greenspace access:" while minorities and renters might be more likely to live closer to greenspace, they typically live near less greenspace than whites and/or homeowners (817-821). She goes on to say that these findings are consistent with similar cities in the United States: Baltimore, Tampa, Indianapolis, etc. However, it is important to note that these studies do not always address questions of bias, unlike the City of Philadelphia which considers bias to be an important factor in their future urban planning.
Although there is a gap in literature related to empirical research about green spaces and environmental justice, it has been shown that disproportionate access to green spaces and the health benefits gained from being in them further promotes environmental health disparities: "despite over three decades of research that articulates the benefits of green spaces, there are limited public policy strategies that include such benefits in human health promotion" (Jennings 2012).
Why is it that we’re not talking about this? Why is it that the "best" neighborhoods -- built in valleys with access to trails and people – seem to only exist for those of a certain socioeconomic status and can only really be attained after several years of positioning one's self in a higher income bracket? Yes, we know that land is valuable and expensive and desirable, but why are we choosing not to publicly fund man-made green spaces in neighborhoods?
We know there aren't enough higher paying jobs for everyone, particularly those who are minorities or marginalized. I would like to emphasize that while racism is part of this problem, the problem extends past the marginalized. We are all contributing to this issue in our embedded cultural practices. Why aren't we building more communities IN nature for people of all races and classes? Why aren't we uplifting the spirits of the demographics that especially need it because of their limited station in life – for example, disadvantaged Black youth on the streets of Harlem?
When slavery was abolished in the South, African Americans moved north with the promise of freedom and prosperity. Unfortunately for them what they discovered was not the ability to progress and be accepted as "modern" men and women with "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," but rather, they were given specific neighborhoods where they could live with specific tasks and jobs to prevent them from progressing as individuals with the same abilities and opportunities as white Americans. This is yet another example of redlining in the United States. Redlining is the act of denying any individual services by openly or selectively raising prices for residents due to the ethnic or racial makeup within those areas.
As Fanon writes in The Wretched of the Earth, "the claim to a national culture in the past does not only rehabilitate that nation and serve as a justification for the hope of a future national culture. In the sphere of psycho-affective equilibrium it is responsible for an important change in the native. Perhaps we haven't sufficiently demonstrated that colonialism is not satisfied merely with holding a people in its grip and emptying the native's brain of all form and content. By a kind of perverted logic, it turns to the past of the oppressed people, and distorts, disfigures, and destroys it. This work of devaluing pre-colonial history takes on a dialectical significance today."
Most of our understandings of the world and of our gender, race, and class in our culture are socially constructed. When a specific, local population is not allowed to progress or better their social and economic situation because of the power attributed to a social construction of their identity, they are being oppressed. Our brothers and sisters of color are still fighting this inability to progress, to be seen as a human being worthy of progress, modernization, and support. In the United States, we care more about developing and supporting schools in Africa than we do changing the lives of Black youth in our very own communities right where we are. Strangely, it’s historically been considered a higher priority to make these provisions for those who are not in our space.
There has never been a more important time to address this problem as we now face devastating environmental consequences for the massive consumption in which we have been active participants. What message are we communicating to other countries and their respective cultures? Do we honestly not care about our own citizens' lives and uplifting them? Do we not care about our land that feeds and waters us, sustaining our resources to nurture each other and giving us affordable access to better health, thereby affording everyone in future generations greater longevity?
By still designating which spaces are accessible to whom based on the middle or upper class or designating where we plan to put those pretty trees or nicer housing developments, we continue to perpetuate racism and reinforce inequality in the United States.
Sources of Inspiration:
“538: Is this Working?” This American Life. Chicago Public Media & Ira Glass. 17 Oct. 2014. Radio.
“550: Three Miles.” This American Life. Chicago Public Media & Ira Glass. 13 Mar. 2014. Radio.
Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched Of The Earth. New York: Grove Press, 1963. Print.
Heckert, M. (2013), Access and Equity in Greenspace Provision: A Comparison of Methods to Assess the Impacts of Greening Vacant Land. Transactions in GIS, 17: 808–827. doi: 10.1111/tgis.12000
Jarecki, Eugene, Joslyn Barnes, Nicholas Fraser, Danny Glover, John Legend, Brad Pitt, Russell Simmons, Melinda Shopsin, Roy Ackerman, David Alcaro, Sam Cullman, John C. St, Nannie Jeter, David Simon, Derek Hallquist, Robert Miller, Paul Frost, and Joe Posner. The House I Live in, 2013.
Viniece Jennings, Cassandra Johnson Gaither, and Richard Schulterbrandt Gragg. Environmental Justice. February 2012, 5(1): 1-7. doi:10.1089/env.2011.0007.
McLain, R.J.; MacFarland, K.; Brody, L; Hebert, J.; Hurley, P.; Poe, M.; Buttolph, L.P.; Gabriel, N; Dzuna, M.; Emery, M.R.; Charnley, S. 2012. Gathering in the city: an annotated bibliography and review of the literature about human-plant interactions in urban ecosystems. Gen. Tech. Rep. PNW-GTR-849. Portland, OR: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station. 107 p.
Morris, N. 2003. Health, well-being, and open space. Literature review.
Pounder, C C. H, Larry Adelman, Jean Cheng, Christine Herbes-Sommers, Tracy H. Strain, Llewellyn Smith, and Claudio Ragazzi. Race: The Power of an Illusion. San Francisco, Calif: California Newsreel, 2003.
Santiago, L. E., J. C. Verdejo Ortiz, R. Santiago-Bartolomei, E. J. Melendez-Ackerman, and D. C. Garcia-Montiel. 2014. Uneven access and underuse of ecological amenities in urban parks of the Río Piedras watershed. Ecology and Society 19(1): 26.
Yuko Tsunetsugu, Juyoung Lee, Bum-Jin Park, Liisa Tyrväinen, Takahide Kagawa, Yoshifumi Miyazaki, Physiological and psychological effects of viewing urban forest landscapes assessed by multiple measurements, Landscape and Urban Planning, Volume 113, May 2013, Pages 90-93, ISSN 0169-2046, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2013.01.014.
