Calling All Climbers of Color

If you're an African-American mountaineer with vertical ice climbing experience I have an opportunity to share. A casting agent is looking for black climbers (18 to 45) to appear in a national television commercial. Please reply to this post if you're interested or know someone who might be for details.

At the risk of starting another heated discussion in this forum on the issue of race and mountaineering I'll ask that you please first read my recent story in Alpinist Magazine: alpinist.com/doc/ALP40/40-w…
Thanks!

Passing this along to a friend of a friend in CO Springs.

James, nicely penned article!

I agree...good article. Very interesting subject and a premise I never considered before

That's a very good article Mate!
I get it!
Olaf

Thanks for posting the link to the Alpinist article. A couple of really good points to think about in there.

James,
I read your article even though I wasn't a climber of color curious about your opportunity. I found the article thought provoking. Definitely a topic I think climbers deserve to have the chance to think about.

It was eye opening for me to think about the looks I get when I stop to fill my car up with gas on the road trips I take to climb in rural communities and I wonder how much more uncomfortable I would be if I was a different race than many of the people who "notice" me.

Let's say I agree with you that there is a problem as you've outlined it in your article. Do you have any thoughts about possible solutions?

--Wannabe

Seriously. Great article. You have a fantastic way with words that is both honest and uninviting of criticism or nitpicking. The issues around racial privilege are not ignored by everyone in the climbing community, as some of us have a foot in the social activism community as well.

Cheers and thanks for this!

Great article. Thanks.

Good read, thought provoking. Who in their right mind wants to be out in the freezing cold, screaming barfies, less oxygen, risk of death/dismemberment/etc, sleeping in the cold etc? I find it fun, doesn't mean anyone else does.

"... sailed with Christopher Columbus in 1492 to discover the New World."

Wow, after all these years people still believe this lie? The ragged crew were saved from death when they landed and they paid with disease to live. Too bad the original inhabitants were not immune. Besides that line, the article was interesting. Gained new knowledge.

The more people make a big deal of their race the more it is a big deal. Who cares what colour your skin is.

Outdoor recreation as a sport is typically found in mature wealthy communities. Part of the reason it because in some aspects it forces us into discomfort of not having life's luxuries. Those that have lived in REAL poverty rarely choose to go back to living with bare necessities.

On our planet egalitarian wealth has until very recently been only found in nations of Caucasian or Mediterranean origin (ie mostly 'white' skin). The only significant exception to this is Japan. While many rich African-Americans or are around they are still shaped by a culture from a non affluent background. Since the African-American culture and race is so strong and dominant, this will take a while to change.

That said, I am increasingly seeing many more people of non 'white' backgrounds in outdoor sports. But these same people are generally far more similar to me in cultural behaviour they are to their respective racial community stereotype. I recently had a discussion with an New Zealand girl of Asian parents lamenting the fact that her parents were so boring and shared nothing in common with her. She is culturally a New Zealander. Her parents are Chinese-Taiwan. It is a culture clash between parents and children.

Anyway, enough blabber. This is all about culture. Not about race. It is only about race if you continue to choose to associate culture and race.

50.8% of the population is women. We need more women climbers at the gym, crags and mountains.

So is the main argument of the article that we should encourage folks to climb, even if they don't want to, so that they will help preserve the climbing areas that we enjoy?

I realize I'm out of the mainstream, because I don't encourage folks to take up climbing anymore. I don't discourage anyone, but I don't encourage anyone either. Climbing is a useless endeavor with a small, but non-zero risk of death.

And this line really bothers me.

"There's something wrong in a free nation where people of color feel limited by where they can and can't go. "

In the first place, it doesn't seem wrong that people don't go where they don't want to go.

In the second place, there are plenty of places where a person of no color such as myself feels like he can't go. Perilous Journey on Mickey Mouse for one. Parts of many American cities for another.

I want to thank everyone for their kind and thoughtful consideration of this post. It's remarkable how different the responses and discussion are here compared to the identical post that went up on rockclimbing.com. The anger and hostility I experienced there was disappointing and a bit heart breaking. So I sincerely appreciate the rational discussion we are having here.

To speak to the point of culture I agree that there are issues that go far beyond race when exploring the adventure gap. But specifically in own case the color of one's skin has everything to do with why African-Americans may or may not spend time outdoors and it's not for the reasons you might think. From the time I was a young man in certain circles I was ostracized by my own peers for not being "black enough".

After a successful high school football career I opted for rowing in college to expand my athletic experience. I was part of the aquatics community at Berkeley splitting my time between the Cal Crew boathouse and the pools on campus where I was a lifeguard and swim instructor. From there through graduation I worked at the campus sports facility teaching CPR and First Aid and ultimately became a backpacking trip leader and rock climbing instructor. I was on the staff of one of the first commercial indoor climbing gyms in the country. After working at REI managing the rental department I took a job working customer service at the North Face until I was promoted to a position as a sales rep managing a six state territory in the Midwest.

Despite steady progress through a career that now spans 20 years I still have to explain to my friends and family back home why I do what do, those crazy things that white people do. During Christmas years ago I once did a slide show of a two week kayak adventure in Bolivia. Pictures of me paddling on alpine lake at 10,000 feet were met not with gasps of awe but incredulous head shakes. "You've heard of the Bahama's, right?" said one cousin.

This speaks to the point in my article regarding those things we're "supposed" to do as black people in America. When you grow up being told that black people don't camp, don't ski, don't swim there's an amazing amount of social pressure to overcome. That's especially true when the broad media spectrum on television, in magazines and in films reenforces that idea by failing show images of people who look like you doing the same things you enjoy or might like to try one day.

As Sophia Danenburg points out in the article her story and mine shouldn't necessarily matter to climbers or outdoor professionals to whom our accomplishments are unexceptional. Our stories though will hopefully impact those people of color who conform to social pressure and self-select themselves out of activities they have every right to participate in but simply don't because they tell themselves it's not something they're supposed to do.

I believe that the only real solution to this issue is to continue to create positive role models that demonstrate the options that are available to anyone willing to put in the effort and try. I hope that this upcoming beer commercial featuring African-American climbers will help with that and later this year a group working with the National Outdoor Leadership School aims to put the first majority black team on the summit of Denali ( expeditiondenali.nols.edu/) I hope that though this and other initiatives we can achieve a cultural change that will ultimately make a person's race or ethnicity completely irrelevant in the near future.

Again, thanks to everyone for participating in this discussion

James Mills wrote:I want to thank everyone for their kind and thoughtful consideration of this post. It's remarkable how different the responses and discussion are here compared to the identical post that went up on rockclimbing.com. The anger and hostility I experienced there was disappointing and a bit heart breaking. So I sincerely appreciate the rational discussion we are having here.

Yeah James, the rc.com thread was miserable from the get-go. Though, perhaps I contributed to it; sorry. As much as I like to make fun of the "don't be a jerk" attitude around here, a simple comparison of this thread on each site speaks for itself.

Going further into the conversation on the intersection of race and outdoor rec, I think that one of the most valid points you made in your article was the fact that non-white cultures in America have very different views on the value of outdoor recreation, and going beyond that, wilderness preservation of public lands as a whole. As the last presidential election showed, more pluralistic populations (I hate to use the term "majority minority") are now the norm in US democracy, and it is quite possible that wilderness preservation could take a backseat in future elections.

(ok, here's where I'm going to go off the analytical deep end) The problem is that, historically, most outdoor recreation in our nation has been inextricably tied to white privilege and dominance.

Our definition of "wilderness" is twofold: "unsettled," and "land as it must have been before settlement and modern development." But both of those definitions only worked historically after white American culture had displaced Indian inhabitants from future "wilderness." (read this essay for more context: tinyurl.com/d699p5)

Same with early national parks and federal hunting preserves; Park and forest services went out of their way to remove peripheralized populations (Indians, Hispanos, and poor rural whites) from parks, and to label their means of sustenance as "poaching," while simultaneously securing the legal right of elite whites to hunt on these same lands. (See Karl Jacoby's "Crimes Against Nature" for more info)

Going even further, the entire context of outdoor recreation as it came together around the turn of the century under Roosevelt was based upon the larger fear that dominant white culture was becoming too weak and civilized in its modernized state, and that some sort of patronizing reclamation of primitive "barbarian virtues" was essential, whether by way of living like Indians in the wilderness, or by having "splendid little wars" against Mexicans and Filipinos, or even going "slumming" and listening to jazz a few decades later. (see Jacobson, "Barbarian Virtues")

Tying it into the modern day, I think that the environmental movement has really dropped the ball lately by not really tying concerns of outdoor recreation and wilderness preservation (largely seen as bastions of upper middle class white culture), and environmental concerns that more directly affect lower class and largely non-white populations (skyrocketing cancer rates among poor blacks living along lower Mississippi River oil refineries, for example). I dunno, fascinating topic.

All this historical baggage may be a bit overly abstract, but I think it might shed a bit of light on the issues that your essay lays out.

Oh, and one minor addition to your article: when laying out the history of African Americans in early American exploration, you neglected to mention Esteban, who in the 1520s was one of 4 men to walk from Florida to Mexico, the first non-Indians to do so.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estev…

(apologies for the lengthy post)

Mike Belu wrote:50.8% of the population is women. We need more women climbers at the gym, crags and mountains.

Especially any hotties from Bama

Mike Belu wrote:50.8% of the population is women. We need more women climbers at the gym, crags and mountains.

Yes, agree this is my concern, much more than reaching some kind of imaginary racial equality' on the cliffs. Let's get the gender balance going!
I personally don't live for playing basketball every day of the week, or ruling over the streets of my neighborhood with some kind of authority. I just see no purpose or interest in it. Thus there may be people who see nothing interesting about climbing a mountain, even if given the opportunity to do so. To each his own....as so many other articles point out, don't over advertise the cliffs to the point of overuse. Access is tough enough, so don't try to increase the numbers by 19% just to reach some ethnic balance in the outdoors.

camhead wrote: The problem is that, historically, most outdoor recreation in our nation has been inextricably tied to white privilege and dominance.

Didn't the whole idea of wilderness as beautiful and uplifting start with Ruskin and other white, mostly British, Europeans?

James Mills wrote:I still have to explain to my friends and family back home why I do what do, those crazy things that white people do.

Back in the day, all of us had to explain why we do those crazy climbing things we do.

Mark E Dixon wrote: Didn't the whole idea of wilderness as beautiful and uplifting start with Ruskin and other white, mostly British, Europeans?

Yeah, a lot of that was Anglo-American in origin (Ruskin, all the transcendentalists, George Catlin, the Hudson River School of art). There was a significant cadre of Teutonic/German nature enthusiasm as well, both from the more scientific perspective (Humboldt), and the more romantic, beautiful perspective (what would a Wagnerian opera be with the Alps?). You could probably trace a lot of this back to forestation projects in the late Middle Ages by folks such as Henry VIII who (once again from a perspective of privilege), wanted wilderness to hunt in. And of course, there is the more scrappy, subversive view of wilderness as a place for more egalitarian camaraderie (Robin Hood) in British culture, too.

But, I also think that the southern European perspective of nature reverence has long been under-emphasized, and it arguably had deeper roots in some ways. Rousseau and other later enlightenment views of wilderness as a place for "noble savages," of course. But, if you dig even deeper, you'll find that the southern European Catholic worldview was a bit friendlier to wilderness as a place for spiritual rejuvenation that was not all that different from Muir or Thoreau. Think St. Francis; his view of talking to animals and living in the wilds was very different from later Lutheran and Puritan views of the wilderness as a dark and evil place.

Damn, way more I could write on this, but I should probably actually get some real work done today.