Mistakes Will be Made Progress can be messy. If you’re just tuning into the discussion of diversity in the outdoor industry, you’ve missed some false starts, wasted opportunities, and abysmal failures. Six months ago, Camber Outdoors, a nonprofit whose mission is to promote equity for women and underrepresented communities in the workplace, announced a CEO Equity Pledge. Problem was, then-Executive Director Deanne Buck, a white woman, described the pledge as “the first of its kind.” It wasn’t. The pledge, intended to help bring more people of color into the industry, captured much of the spirit and language of a nearly identical enterprise called the CEO Diversity Pledge, initiated several months earlier by Teresa Baker, an African-American environmental justice activist. In the aftermath of an online uproar— with claims of cultural misappropriation, theft of intellectual property, and the attempt to erase the accomplishments of a black woman—Buck stepped down from her leadership position. To Camber’s credit, it has aimed to learn from this incident and taken steps to make amends. Under the guidance of interim Executive Director Diana Seung, an Asian-American woman, the organization has suspended its DEI initiatives pending the review and participation of outside consultants with training, expertise, and lived experience in addressing these very complex issues. They opened a dialogue with Baker to incorporate her vision into their plans for the future. Still, Camber has no expectation of getting off the hook anytime soon. “I don’t know if we should be forgiven,
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898,800
This is the number of people* who make up the Facebook and Instagram audiences of these organizations (right) which promote justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion in the outdoors. Engaging with diverse affinity groups in their own spaces is a positive step for your business for many reasons. *AS OF MAY 14, 2019
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“There can be no path forward if we fail to communicate.”
to be quite honest,” says Seung. “We made a pretty big mistake and we need to own that. We recognize how emotionally impactful that was to the community of people of color and why. And it’s unacceptable.” That’s a remarkable statement considering where we’ve come from. Back in the mid-’90s, most organizations didn’t acknowledge that the lack of diversity in the outdoors—both in terms of participation and employment—was even a problem. I personally tried for years, to no avail, to convince the clothing brands I represented to more directly market our products to underrepresented minorities. Today, many of those same companies are now scrambling to acknowledge the changing demographics of the U.S. population. Indeed, this whole episode came about because we have not just one CEO pledge, but two.
Diversity is … Diverse In recent years, with the expansion of social media, grassroots DEI advocates and other passionate individuals have made an impact across the outdoor industry. It doesn’t take long scrolling through Instagram to find evidence of a new generation of avid enthusiasts climbing, skiing, mountain biking, backpacking, and paddling all over the planet. That’s great, and so is the social and political influence that comes with the growing visibility. Activists have drawn attention to the lack of diversity in
Brothers of Climbing, Brown Environmentalist, Brown Girls Climb, Brown People Camping, Color Outside, Fat Girls Hiking, Flash Foxy, Girl Trek, Indigenous Women Hike, Latino Outdoors, Latinx Hikers, Melanin Base Camp, Native Women Wilderness, NativesOutdoors, Out There Adventures, Outdoor Afro, Outdoor Asian, Queer Nature, She Explores, Unlikely Hikers
mainstream media, as well as the limited number of black and brown folks who work in retail stores, as backcountry guides, on nonprofit boards, and as corporate executives. And of course, they can help find flaws in well-intentioned but ill-conceived diversity initiatives, as with the Camber CEO Equity Pledge. But as with any thriving, dynamic community, diversity also means diverse opinions. And this can lead to conflict, even among people who are working toward the same goal. Such was the case in November of last year, during the 2018 SHIFT Festival in Jackson, Wyoming. At the event, which “explores issues at the intersection of outdoor recreation, conservation, public health, and cultural relevancy,” several members of the Emerging Leaders Program alleged to have experienced racial discrimination, tokenism, and emotional trauma. The program is intended to train culturally diverse leaders to support SHIFT’s mission, but Executive Director Christian Beckwith, a white man, was accused by a group of participants of creating an environment that was unsafe and insensitive to the needs of marginalized minorities. “It is clear that Mr. Beckwith is underprepared and ill-equipped to lead an organization that seeks to center equity work in the outdoors,” the group declared in an open letter on the website Medium. A social media campaign was launched to demand Beckwith’s resignation from SHIFT and the Emerging Leaders Program. Beckwith acknowledged his errors but rejected the idea that he should step down from the organization he created. “I would also like to express that the depth of my remorse is matched by my commitment to ELP alumni and future participants to create a better, safer program, one that helps us develop a movement of people working in concert to protect these places we all love and need so dearly,” Beckwith wrote on the SHIFT website. To that end, he turned the management of the Emerging Leaders Program over to Morgan Green, an African-American pediatrician with experience in social justice and conflict resolution. Though well short of a resignation, Beckwith was effectively removed from the position where, by his own admission, he did more harm than good.