“Condemn neutrality. Being neutral is exclusionary. Most people in these spaces are white — hold them accountable if they’re neutral or censoring the experiences of black people,” says BlackBirdersWeek organizer Corina Newsome (hood_naturalist)
Photo: Katherine Arntzen, Georgia Southern University No one has a specific claim to “the Great Outdoors,” but it’s clear that in America, being in nature isn’t equally safe for everybody. It was only last week — though it might feel longer ago — that a white woman in Central Park lied to police that black birder Christian Cooper was threatening her. A few months earlier, Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old black man, was shot while jogging outdoors in Georgia.
I’m in southern Georgia now for graduate school, studying sparrows. My research takes place on the coast. Ahmaud Arbery was killed down the road from our field site. I’m overwhelmed with grief for my people in the space that I’m studying. I’m in the marsh, just weeping. It’s a disorienting feeling that detracts from the joy of doing what I’ve always wanted to do.
In the past two days, the number of comments I’ve gotten from white men about Black Birders Week is astounding. Some said we were being divisive. Some were telling us we were being racist by having this. One of my friends wanted to post about it on the Tennessee Naturalist’s page. They rejected it with all sorts of different excuses that seemed like they were protecting white comfort. They claimed that it had racist undertones, or that it fell under the category of being religious.
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