'synopsis' may belong to another edition of this title. Looking toward the future, she also highlights the work of African Americans who are opening doors to greater participation in environmental and conservation concerns. A new first-of-its-kind resource, Black Faces in Green Spaces: The Journeys of Black Professionals in Green Careers, has just been released by the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI). Bridging the fields of environmental history, cultural studies, critical race studies, and geography, Finney argues that the legacies of slavery, Jim Crow, and racial violence have shaped cultural understandings of the 'great outdoors' and determined who should and can have access to natural spaces.ĭrawing on a variety of sources from film, literature, and popular culture, and analyzing different historical moments, including the establishment of the Wilderness Act in 1964 and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Finney reveals the perceived and real ways in which nature and the environment are racialized in America.

Fish & Wildlife Service-New York Field Office, and the Finger Lakes Land Trust.Why are African Americans so underrepresented when it comes to interest in nature, outdoor recreation, and environmentalism? In this thought-provoking study, Carolyn Finney looks beyond the discourse of the environmental justice movement to examine how the natural environment has been understood, commodified, and represented by both white and black Americans. The lecture was presented by Cornell Botanic Gardens’ Class of 1945 in partnership with Ithaca Children’s Garden, The Learning Farm, U.S. Finney considers the power of resistance and resilience in the emergence of creative responses to environmental and social challenges in our cities and beyond.

By engaging in “green” conversations with black people from around the country, Dr. Finney explores the complexities and contradictions of American history as it relates to green space, race and the power to shape the places we live in our own image.

John Muir? What does “environment” have to do with it? How do we meet this moment? Drawing from her book, her relationships “in the field”, her lived experience, and this moment of reckoning, Dr. Carolyn Finney, shares her work on African Americans and environmental issues to consider this moment of racial reckoning and the creative responses to environmental and social challenges that are emerging.Ĭhristian Cooper. Author of “Black Faces, White Spaces: Reimagining the Relationship of African Americans to the Great Outdoors,” Dr.

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