The Sierra Club is cancelling its founder, John Muir:
It’s time to take down some of our own monuments, starting with some truth-telling about the Sierra Club’s early history. That will be followed by posts on how we’ve had to evolve on issues of immigration and population control, environmental justice, and Indigenous sovereignty. We will also devote a post to a discussion of how the Sierra Club is working to center the voices of people we have historically ignored, so we can begin repairing some of the harms done.
The most monumental figure in the Sierra Club’s past is John Muir. Beloved by many of our members, his writings taught generations of people to see the sacredness of nature. But Muir maintained friendships with people like Henry Fairfield Osborn, who worked for both the conservation of nature and the conservation of the white race. Head of the New York Zoological Society and the board of trustees of the American Museum of Natural History, Osborn also helped found the American Eugenics Society in the years after Muir’s death.
And Muir was not immune to the racism peddled by many in the early conservation movement. He made derogatory comments about Black people and Indigenous peoples that drew on deeply harmful racist stereotypes, though his views evolved later in his life. As the most iconic figure in Sierra Club history, Muir’s words and actions carry an especially heavy weight. They continue to hurt and alienate Indigenous people and people of color who come into contact with the Sierra Club.
As part of their remediation of their racist history they pledge:
For all the harms the Sierra Club has caused, and continues to cause, to Black people, Indigenous people, and other people of color, I am deeply sorry. I know that apologies are empty unless accompanied by a commitment to change. I am making that commitment, publicly, right now. And I invite you to hold me and other Sierra Club leaders, staff, and volunteers accountable whenever we don’t live up to our commitment to becoming an actively anti-racist organization.
To begin with, we are redesigning our leadership structure so that Black, Indigenous, and other leaders of color at the Sierra Club make up the majority of the team making top-level organizational decisions. We will initiate similar changes to elevate the voices and experiences of staff of color across the organization. We know that the systems of power that got us here will not enable the transformational change we need.
Is environmentalism inherently racist?
“though his views evolved later in his life”
How extreme these judgments are; man is judged by his worst without chance or even need to improve himself. Seems like white people must have written this.
It is an issue that everyone should care about, but it has mostly been championed by upper middle class white people. It sometimes butts heads with issues important to poor people. Not intentionally racist but if jobs are moved elsewhere to avoid environmental regs it may disproportionately affect black people.
Steve
Environmental racism has become a lucrative field for class action attorneys and a network of advisors, advocates, etc. However, other things (violence, low paying jobs, paltry public benefits, no one listening, etc) take priority, I think.
BTW, it sounds like they bent the knee and donned kente cloth sashes.
“…but if jobs are moved elsewhere to avoid environmental regs it may disproportionately affect black people.â€
That may be true, and is probably certainly true wrt poor people. But that’s not what this about. It’s pure virtue signaling, and The Sierra Club can shove it. They have cared more about snail darters or total anti-growth hands off policy than prudent water management, brush clearing, wild fires etc.
‘Is environmentalism inherently racist?’
You betcha, by Woke standards. And I’m not being a cynical d*ck, I absolutely know this to be true from my long experience with the community. There are usually a few BIPOCs involved with the movement, but its members are overwhelmingly white and Progressive, often radically so (I’m a curmudgeonly exception).
As far as cancel culture is concerned anymore, a person’s deeds, no matter how great or small, no longer matter. If they ever did or said anything that wasn’t 100% Woke by current standards, they are evil incarnate and must be expunged from history, their names never to be mentioned again at the peril of one’s job and continued social existence. The only people exempt from that treatment of course are those who are currently useful to the movement, like Karl Marx (racist and colonialist, the proof is in his writings) or Joe Biden (against busing, Klan-adjacent, too free with his hands). The mob is A-OK with them (for now).
Be careful, all of you who still work for a living who also post on this Fascist-adjacent site (it ain’t one, but that won’t be their opinion of The Glittering Eye). The Woke mob can never get enough blood, they will never rest until everyone has bowed down to them, no matter how much you think you have been an ally to them. If you resist they will find a transgression to destroy you, or create one if they can’t find one. At my stage in life I’m probably immune from them, but you may not be. So be careful.