Ellen Mcgirt addresses the racist roots of the American conservation movement and the glaring lack of diversity in the world of fly fishing.
This cynical girl from Harlem, USA, didn’t grow up with anyone who fished this way. But it has changed my life more than I could have thought possible. It is a transformational experience to stand in a river and join an ecosystem already in progress.
But, here’s the other thing about fly-fishing. In the now hundreds of days I’ve spent casting over the years, I’ve never met a person of color on or associated with the river. Not once. Not in a fly-shop. Not one guide, not a park ranger, nobody who works for a rafting company, nothing. Not even an expert on YouTube where I get most of my pointers.
LINK (via: Fortune)
“People of color are lonely by design.” Whose design? Define lonely. Like the author, I’ve never met a person of color who was fly fishing, tho’ I have met people of color who were park rangers and game wardens. But this means that people of color are “designed” to be lonely? My neighbors don’t seem to be lonely. My classmates did not seem to be lonely. One truth–the dearth of people of color in fly fishing, does not create another truth–“people of color are lonely by design”. This kind of thinking erodes the value of the larger point.