Black Lives Matter And Parks
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This month, the FPA team has been thinking, learning and talking about Black Lives Matter and what it means for our work. Often race is only really spoken about in our sector in terms of inclusive community engagement and programming; but while this is one important issue, this narrow conversation often obscures the many ways this vital issue relates to all aspects of our work.
We’ve found the following articles and information helpful in understanding more about the ways racial inequalities play out in our sector:
Black and Asian people visit natural settings 60% less than White people, despite the fact that ethnic minority communities statistically value parks more than their White counterparts.
Unequal provision is a key problem: in areas where over 40% of residents are from ethnic minorities, there is 11 times less public green space than in areas where residents are largely White, and it is also likely to be of poorer quality. Meanwhile, Black people are 4 times less likely than White people to have a private garden.
Another key factor is the attitudes and behaviours of others –whether explicit racism and bullying; domination/ownership of spaces by other groups; or being viewed as ‘suspicious’ by other visitors, staff, or police.
Representation and visibility of ethnic minorities, especially Black people, is also important in how people use and experience natural settings; we found these articles by researcher-practitioners Maxwell Ayamba and Beth Collier particularly useful in understanding more about this.
The environment sector is one of the least diverse professions in the UK, and ethnic minorities are underrepresented in local government leadership. Nevertheless, there are lots of amazing practitioners are out there; we’ve found the Climate Reframe resource and the BlackInNature hash tag great places to find more of those voices.
The impacts of lockdown have exacerbated this inequality for many reasons, including the unequal impact of the virus; the relationship between deprivation and reduced greenspace use; and racial disparities in how lockdown measures are policed.
So we’ve been thinking about how we can better understand these dynamics in the provision, management, policing, staffing, decision-making, funding and usage of public spaces –and most importantly, how we can take real action to change this.
By Caroline George, June 2020