The Politics of Niceness in the Environmental Sector

Black Outdoors

Sep 22

Canadians are polite - we say 'sorry,' 'excuse me' or 'please' whenever we get the chance. It's a kind of verbal tic that we seem to add to every sentence. Our politeness is so normal that it has become the butt of internet jokes.

Politeness makes daily life easier. It's a social rule that makes things smooth, and gets us through the day by minimising hassle and potential conflicts.

Our politeness means that we mostly don't like to talk about differences, in my case meaning race. Some people don't see race at all and are quite proud of seeing the world through colour-blind lens. For them race and racism is endemic to our neighbours to the south, and is definitely not endemic to this, our land of snow.

Colour-blindness is usually expressed as 'I see people as people, and treat everyone the same.' This is always hard to swallow in the environmentalism conferences that I attend in Toronto. When I look around those rooms, about 90 per cent of the people are White, in a city where White people are about 45 per cent of the population. It's the same White over-representation at academic conferences.

There are many issues with this colour-blind approach and the refusal to talk about differences. For instance, when the conversations are about the negative incidents that too often are part of the Black experience in nature, there will inevitably be a question or comment, that the incidents were unfortunate, but one should not generalise from them. To me, these kinds of comments do three key things. First, they re-centre whiteness as the norm, and on centre stage, in environmentalism conversations. Second, the comments point to the unwillingness to hear that there are other perspectives and experiences in nature. Third, under the guise of colour-blindness lurks the old racism.

People who use the colour-blind approach tend to see conversations on race as a personal affront or attack. Some are heavily invested in being seen as nice, polite and liberal. It seems that talking about racism upsets this image of the self and of the goodness of the environmental movement. Some become angry and upset, others feel guilty or cry, some simply tune out. These emotions function to shut down the conversation on racism in the environmentalism sector. And not talking about racism means restoring the equilibrium of the White status quo.

Niceness, in the form of manners, has its place at environmentalism conferences. Niceness, when used as a blanket to muffle conversations on race and racism in the sector, has no place.