Within environmental groups, diversity is lacking

Fred Tutman was a lonely man when he picked up the telephone last May. He was the tough-talking protector of Maryland’s Patuxent River, a courtroom brawler who took on anyone who contaminated water. But he couldn’t shake a nagging hurt that he was nearly invisible within his own profession. He called Marc Yaggi, director of the Waterkeeper Alliance in New York: “Am I the only African-American riverkeeper?” The answer was yes. Of at least 200 riverkeepers in the nation, Tutman is the only one who is black.

 One in 200?  Merely random chance, I'm sure.

In fact, they say, the level of diversity, both in leadership and staff, of such groups as the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Sierra Club and the Chesapeake Bay Foundation is more like that of the Republican Party, which they so often criticize for its positions on the environment. “I think that the concerns are absolutely well-founded,” said Adrianna Quintero, a lawyer for the NRDC. “It’s taken too long for environmental groups to work closely enough with minority communities.”

It's a game played often enough in the press/web complex.  The left wing makes some accusation about how the right is insufficiently sensitive to racism (lets take Salon Magazine as an example), and the right responds by showing how the left wing institution in question appears to be almost entirely entitle white people (note "Voices" along the right hand margin).  It's a lot of fun.

“The environmental movement has a bit of reputation as being a wealthy white community, and the Chesapeake Bay Foundation works hard to counteract that,” Coble said.

The reputation is deserved, said Norris McDonald, president of the African American Environmentalist Association. “This goes back a long way,” McDonald said. “It’s why I founded the association in 1985. … White groups weren’t hiring black professionals and, when they did, it was a hostile atmosphere. There were a handful of black professionals in the environmental groups then, and there are a handful now.”

Around the time that Tutman, now 54, was certified as a riverkeeper, the African American Environmentalist Association issued a report card for 26 environmental groups based on their diversity for 2003-04. Eighteen declined to respond to the request for the makeup of their staffs, and most of the others received poor scores.

My experience from a long career in the environmental sciences, is that negroes, blacks, African Americans, and latins, Mexicans, hispanics are extremely poorly represented in the whole affair, from undergraduate education up through tenured professors.

Why is this?  I think there certainly is a large fraction of the minority community that grows up with an aversion to the math and science necessary to succeed in the field, and there's a perception, and probably a justifiable perception, that the field is not as remunerative as some other worthwhile fields that require similar levels of preparation, for example, medicine.