For many Americans during the quarantine period, spending time outside is one of the only activities that is available. As someone based in New York City, I’ve seen how the parks have served as a place for families and friends to spend time together while still distanced, and have provided much-needed space for New Yorkers who mostly live in cramped apartments.
Studies have shown that that green space can improve mental health outcomes in cities, and during a time where many people are under extreme stress, parks are as vital as ever. However, this is not the reality for all New Yorkers–People of color, especially black people, have historically been excluded from outdoor space, not only in New York, but across the country.
Recent Events Have Brought This Issue to Light
This issue was recently brought to national attention when Amy Cooper, a white woman, called the police on Christian Cooper, a black man and avid birder who asked Ms. Cooper to leash her dog. This occurred in a part of the park where dogs are required to be leashed so as to not disturb the bird habitats. Given the United States’ deep history of police violence against Black people, and the recent deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and others, Christian Cooper’s life was seriously endangered by that phone call. This blatant act of racism displays how black Americans are often excluded from and discriminated against in green and outdoor spaces.
Other forms of media have recently brought attention to how Black Americans are violently discriminated against in parks and green space, specifically Central Park. The 2019 Netflix miniseries “When they See Us” brought attention to the story of the Central Park Five, a group of five teenagers (Korey Wise, Antron McCray, Raymond Santana, and Yusef Salam) who were wrongfully convicted of the rape and assault of a white female jogger in Central Park. This miniseries brought to light the very real dangers of racial profiling and police violence for people of color, and how outdoor space can be a space of discrimination and danger for people of color.
Researchers Lincoln Larson and S. Scott Ogletree stated that parks can reduce crime because they “put more eyes on the street” and “expose criminals to constant community surveillance”, but for black Americans, this constant surveillance can be dangerous, and could potentially lead to discrimination and even violence from law enforcement.
History of Green Space and Racism
As stated by Rebecca Sanders, Senior Vice President for State Programs for the Audubon Society, ““Black Americans often face terrible daily dangers in outdoor spaces, where they are subjected to unwarranted suspicion, confrontation, and violence”. In a 2018 study of black peoples’ experience in the outdoors, 66% of participants discussed in some form how the historical trauma and violence of slavery impacted African American’s associations with the outdoors, as historical traumas such as lynching, kindnapping, and other abuses occurred outside. Both the historical trauma from outdoor spaces and segregation policies have made outdoor spaces dangerous for people of color.
This violence has existed both at the national and the city level. National Parks in states that had legal segregation, such as Virginia, were also segregated. This established National Parks in these areas as places hostile to Black Americans. Even today, roughly 78% of those who visited National Parks were white, and that over 80% of National Park Services employers are white.
In a study, scholar KangJae Lee interviewed 13 Black people who lived near Cedar Hill State Park in Texas. In this conversation, one woman discussed how racism and segregation have historically barred communities of color from entering parks, and how this impacts current generations, stating that “we have to talk about access when we talk about the history of leisure, because there was no access to it [outdoor recreation], so how do you expect me [to] appreciate these things if my parents didn’t appreciate it, my parents’ parents couldn’t appreciate it?“ Because communities of color have been blocked from visiting outdoor spaces, specifically parks, the familial ties and memories associated with parks for white families may not exist for families of color.
Racism in Urban Planning
Racism within outdoor space extends beyond the segregation of black people from parks. People of color, especially Black people, are often excluded from decisions made about green spaces in their city, signaling that these green spaces are not “for” them. Nationally, park planning efforts have actively excluded black people from park planning efforts. In Houston, a “Master Plan Parks Survey” found that a “majority” of respondents wanted parks linked to biking and walking paths in their city, prompting Houston to construct the 220 million dollar Bayou Greenways Project, which would connect city parks with bayous. However, ⅔ of the respondents to this survey were white people with incomes over $75,000. When a second study was conducted, targeting responses from Black and Latinx communities, the responses and concerns found were remarkably different–most people in this study favored improving park amenities, like restrooms, water fountains, and playgrounds, as well as installing better light fixtures to ensure that parks were safer at night. According to interviews with Houston residents, in addition to how communities of color were not involved in the planning process of the parks, the Bayou Greenways initiative was not actively marketed to communities of color either. This gap in responses, and the project that the city chose to undertake shows how the needs of communities of color are silenced in designing green space, and demonstrates the need for cities to listen to voices of color in their community if they truly want parks to be accessible and safe for all residents.
Green space projects like the Bayou Greenways Projects that are supposed to improve mental and physical health may actually worsen it for the most vulnerable communities. Atlanta’s BeltLine project, a former railway that is now a multi-use trail that provides access to greenspace, parks, and sidewalks in an extremely congested city. However, like the Bayou Greenways Project, the BeltLine was mainly designed with White Atlanta residents in mind, as the construction of the BeltLIne displaces low income, predominantly Black communities and contributes to gentrification. In an article for Rewire, Katie Mitchell comments on how Black communities in Atlanta suffer disproportionately from asthma and other negative health outcomes, and how communities of color may have benefitted from additional outdoor space if it hadn’t displaced them from their homes and communities. The very ways in which parks are designed are exclusionary to communities of color, and further establish outdoor spaces as hostile for these communities.
Resources for Taking Action
Organizations such as Outdoor Afro and The Black Outdoors are organizing events and advocating for the outdoors to be inclusive and safe for people of color. These organizations set up events around the country to connect black communities to outdoor experiences in order to “inspire Black connections and leadership in nature”. This guide from the Atlantic, with contributions from activists of color and college professors details an “action plan for change” with five ways to make the outdoors more inclusive. For those interested in learning more about this issue, I highly recommend keeping up with the website Citylab, which reports on cities and often has informative content about race and green/outdoor space, and reading through this study I mentioned earlier by Matthew Goodrid regarding “Racial Complexity of Outdoor Spaces”.
A few months ago, Emma F published a post for Novel Hand about environmental justice, which discusses the connections between environmental policies and racism. This post provides more context to how environmental planning disadvantages people of color nationwide.
News outlets have commented on how “parks are essential” during the pandemic. However, the health benefits that parks provide, especially during a pandemic, are not currently accessible or safe for all Americans. They will not be until voices of color are listened to in the planning and creation of outdoor spaces, and the forces that control and maintain parks make an effort to protect people of color within outdoor spaces.
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