Liberal, progressive -- and racist? The Sierra Club faces its white-supremacist history.

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: Washington Post




No one is more important to the history of environmental conservation than John Muir — the “wilderness prophet,” “patron saint of the American wilderness,” and “father of the national parks” who founded the nation’s oldest conservation organization, the Sierra Club. But on Wednesday, citing the current racial reckoning, the group announced it will end its blind reverence to a figure who was also racist.

As Confederate statues fall across the country, the club’s leadership said in an early morning post on its website, “It’s time to take down some of our own monuments, starting with some truth-telling about the Sierra Club’s early history.”

Muir, who fought to preserve Yosemite Valley and Sequoia National Forest, once referred to African Americans as lazy “Sambos,” a racist pejorative that many black people consider to be even more offensive than the n-word.

While recounting a legendary walk from the Midwest to the Gulf of Mexico, Muir described Native Americans he encountered as “dirty.”

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2020/07/22/liberal-progressive-racist-sierra-club-faces-its-white-supremacist-history/

---

Short article.

It's all part of what we call "institutionalized racism". It is baked in everywhere, across all aspects of U.S. life.

[Budi]

1. It is. And yes liberal & progressives own a part of that thru history & currently.

Yup.

[IronLionZion]

2. We've seen it from some of the people calling cops on minorities

They think of themselves as progressive liberals protecting the environment from nonwhites. It's just another way of thinking they own the earth and others don't belong in nature. There have been racist incidents at parks and campgrounds and other public places in nature where black people were assumed to be up to no good or not belonging there. Things get really dumb when whites do this to Native Americans.

[beachbumbob]

3. I tire of of judging any one from the past base on contemporary values, its clear intellectual

revisionism and bullshit

[BumRushDaShow]

5. It's the first stage of reconciliation

Strategy: Just admit it, maybe discuss it for a bit, and then move on.

Problem is, there's a lot of denial and finger-pointing at "others" going on and that is why the problem never gets resolved.

[still_one]

6. The racism being exposed from the past, is still racism. I think things like this need to be

compartmentalized. In other words separate the bad from the good. In most cases a broad based paint brush doesn't cut it

Richard Wagner was a virulent anti-semitic. Does that mean his music should be ignored?

[HotTeaBag]

17. It depends (re: Wagner), some would say yes.

.

[still_one]

18. I know, and that same logic would apply to buying German or Japanese cars among some

[IronLionZion]

7. The article lists a lot of current issues with the culture of green organizations

with specific examples of bias in management towards workers and a persistent lack of diversity

[Devil Child]

10. Agreed n/t

[brush]

13. Weak sauce. Even Jefferson and Washington knew enslavement was evil...

and that they were both hypocrites. Truths from the past are still truths, and truths now were truths then.

And true enough, this nation was a cesspool of white supremacy then that viewed itself above all of those others, and in many ways still does. Of course the current president has put that lie into its highest relief since perhaps the virulent racist Wilson.

[Cal Carpenter]

26. Revisionism is acting like there weren't people in that same time and place

calling out racism, and arguing against stereotypes like 'lazy' black people or 'dirty' indigenous people.

There were antiracists. There always were. And while we can forgive certain problems in language and even ideas, racist ideas were NOT universal, and recognizing that racism was at the foundation of institutions that still exist is vital to making progress and improving those institutions.

Writing it all off as though the past was all racism, all the time, is denial and it is dangerous, and it's why we never get anywhere.

Nothing is sacred but the TRUTH. Just because you didn't learn it in school doesn't mean it wasn't the truth. Women's suffrage, the environmental movement, the labor movement, all have some very, very racist ugly moments in history. We HAVE to recognize this to learn how to do it better.

[bluedye33139]

4. They've discussed this before

They discussed it using the "is/is not a racist" formulation, which I always find to be particularly useless. He opposed the extermination of native people, but he had problematic and dismissive views of native people. Some conclude that he cannot be racist because he was opposed to the 100% extermination of all native life. That just feels like a clunky analysis.
https://vault.sierraclub.org/john_muir_exhibit/life/racist-or-admirer-of-native-americans-raymond-bennett.aspx

One of my research projects long ago looked at Mark Twain and his racial views, and the horrific things that Mark Twain says about people of color in general and native Americans in particular. Twain was profoundly skeptical of the humanity of native Americans. It's appalling, and a frightening reminder that many of our heroes soaked up terrible attitudes from their culture.

Muir did wonderful things for conservancy and our appreciation of the land, but he had some problematic racial views. To some extent these were normative in his time, but that doesn't make them good.

[BumRushDaShow]

8. What has happened over the past century

is that certain significant historical figures, have evolved into a completely OTT myth of "greatness and perfection". Knocking down the "myth" but acknowledging their contributions, seems more prudent.

But unfortunately, when people try to show the flaws and start questioning the "myths", they are immediately dismissed with the RW concept and term of being "politically correct". There's nothing "political" about historical fact.

Humanity is deeply flawed and that should be accepted as the way things are without the insistence that a myth of unwavering greatness should be the default and unquestionable. Celebrate what these people brought to the table without the paternalistic view that they were somehow "perfect" and beyond criticism.

[Bayard]

14. Well said,

And agree.

We have evolved from what was commonplace over the past couple hundred years. Thank goodness!

NAACP stands for, "National Association for the Advancement of Colored People". Founded in 1909. Would it be named that today? Of course not. Has anyone brought up changing the organization's name? I've never heard that. Just like today, situations are a sign of the times.

[BumRushDaShow]

23. Actually people have brought up changing the NAACP's name numerous times over the decades

particularly after one of its most famous founders, W.E.B. DuBois eventually left because he felt it should be more focused on black issues vs how the organization's thrust evolved more and more into advocating for any non-white/minority, since the group was founded by both black and whites looking to bring about societal change more broadly.

It is no different from groups like the National Council of Negro Women, which has a similar issue.

I expect given what is happening now, the young who are out in the streets are going to start demanding change from groups like them too - with the caveat that since those organizations are insisting they want to recruit a new generation yet still cling to the old, obscure/deprecated terms for self-identification, then they will never be able to bring about fundamental change, which needs to include "from within" as well.

[brush]

15. "A man of his time" is a frequent fall back defense, but how does that...

account for the abolitionists of their time?

[Bayard]

24. They were more enlightened.

[lunasun]

9. Sierra club. Was also invovlved in anti immigration waves for a long time . Big time in the 1980s ..

Yeah you know what was changing around that time with immigration ?
They experienced a backlash when some of their hardcore anti immigration chapters became the face of the Sireea club and have done some reform as far as what they and their policies represents now as a group
But they need to keep moving forward with correcting all the institutional racism inside their ranks, not just what they are putting out in front to the public for donations or tweeting .

The arc of Sierra Club’s evolution starts with a dubious if not hostile perspective on immigration that the Club carried in the 1960s. The theory was that immigration drives unsustainable population growth, which then drains resources and harms the environment. That perspective shifted to a hard line against immigration in the 1980s, then to a neutral position in the ’90s, before finally coming around in the 21st century to advocating on behalf of immigrants.

https://www.colorlines.com/articles/how-sierra-club-learned-love-immigration

A lot of the wave thought imo is that whites collectively know better what is best for the land
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/08/anti-immigration-white-supremacy-has-deep-roots-in-the-environmental-movement/
Anti-immigrant ideology has been part and parcel of the whole of American conservationism since the first national park was founded, in part to protect wild yet white-owned nature from Mexicans and Native Americans. National purity and natural purity were inextricably linked.

[pazzyanne]

11. As a person involved in conservation and environmental issues all my adult life,

I chose to support Defenders of Wildlife and not the Sierra Club for the reasons that you posted above and more. The Sierra Club left me feeling cold and alienated from active participation in improving the world's environments.

[dalton99a]

12. +1. The Mother Jones article is a must read

[Lulu KC]

20. Please explain what you mean

I don't want to make assumptions about your assumptions.

[Marthe48]

19. Removing statues, admitting racism

We all have to go back a long way, not just a few generations. It seems no matter how far back you go, it was okay to take labor and other services from other races, other cultures, other sexes. Whites and privileged people have also lifted culture, such as music, art and dance and education, such as higher math. But when it came to socializing, joining together, being friends, boundaries came up, and people back in the day and now, observe invisible boundaries, because somehow or another, white people think they are better. As my life goes on, I realize more and more, that as aware I am of my outlook and work I need to do, I discover things about myself that I want to be rid of. Like the statues, like the awareness that people in the past were not only products of their time, but also products of an ingrained culture, which they passed along generation after generation until we, in our time, try to end some of the elitism and apologize for some of the harm.

My husband and I mentored a Japanese student beginning in 2000 and staying in touch all this time. She and I had a conversation which ended up being about Nagasaki and Hiroshima. I have always thought that using nuclear weapons on people was a horrible event, so we didn't disagree that it was horrible. Her grandmother survived being near one of the cities, a fact that came up in the conversation. A generational survivor telling me, a generational oppressor her family history. The conversation ended in silence, because neither of us knew what else to say. As time goes on, I understand better that the only way I can atone for things that happened in my parents' generation or even further back, is to change myself to obliterate any mental or emotional sense that I am better than anyone else. That is turning out to be a lifetime job.

In astrology, we are supposed to be entering the Age of Aquarius, which was going to bring harmony and understanding. This age is supposed to last 2160 years, but I think I have seen a glimmer in the generations coming along of some relaxing of those strict cultural boundaries that allow white or privileged people to take, but not to give. Taking down statues, admitting that most of the oppressive culture we attain to is racist are good public steps. I won't live to see the end of the story, but I hope that all of us can look within and admit that if we are part of the problem, we can be part of the solution.

[not_the_one]

21. Call me cynical but the timing of this is suspect... even if it is from the Sierra Club.

Yes, things were different, attitudes were different, but this, at this time, is nothing more than "bothsiderism" being trotted out to Putin's game plan.

Yes, both sides DID do it. But "they are all just as guilty, it won't make a damn bit of difference, so why even vote" is NOT a meme we want out there. Because that IS NOT TRUE.

We should deal with this and can deal with this, AFTER the election. Getting rid of the turd is WAY more important than going through a self-discovery therapy session, right NOW. We are already starting to address it with BLM and the police. Let's not throw so much fuel on THAT fire that we lose the whole war.

Priorities. If we don't get rid of the turd, addressing PROGRESSIVE institutional racism of the past will be the least of our worries.

[BumRushDaShow]

25. The headline looks like "bothsiderism"

but it IS a fact.

Just like many like to trot out FDR as the paradigm of all things the Democratic Party stands for, while ignoring that it WAS Roosevelt who kept my father in a segregated army unit in WW2, where that whole system wasn't put to an end until Harry Truman's terms in office.

The problem has been acknowledging that YES this was done "by our side" and accepting it without the continual, "but they were worse" excuse.

Racism has no political bent. It is promulgated by some people who go about doing things that will benefit themselves in a tribal/racial way, whether it's done overtly, covertly, or subconsciously, and having the power to enforce their actions. But it hurts those who are on the receiving end just as much.

[moose65]

22. You are correct

It is SO ingrained in our culture that we don't even recognize it most of the time.

I'm a white Southern gay man. I try to be as sensitive as I can be and try to educate myself in every possible way, but there are things that I will never understand about how society treats African Americans, women, and Hispanic people.

My niece passed away from cancer last year at age 31. Her father was from Mexico and her mother was a white woman who was mentally challenged and gave my niece up for adoption. My sister and BIL adopted her when she was 7 years old. My niece married a man who was brought here from Mexico when he was 10 years old. He's brilliant, speaks perfect English and has a good job (he is one of the DACA kids). They have a daughter, my great-niece, who just turned 9 and is a beautiful little girl. Every attack I hear about Mexicans or Latinos hits me in the gut, because I imagine that attack being directed toward my great-niece, who is an American citizen and doesn't understand any of this yet, thankfully. My nephew has told me that they get dirty looks from people when they go into a local restaurant that's a few miles away from their home. As a white man, I would never experience that.

Well-meaning white people who claim to "not see color" or who say "All lives matter" are full of shit.

Even members of the KKK claimed that they weren't racist.

[llashram]

27. true, everywhere

systemic and institutionalized. We got trump didn't we?