For years, Atlanta Rocks indoor climbing gym has noticed a lack of diversity both in its staff and in its clientele. That’s started to change in the last year, though. And it’s all thanks to “The Real Housewives of Atlanta.”
How could a Bravo reality show increase racial diversity in Atlanta’s rock climbing community? During the Housewives premiere this season, cast member Kandi Burruss went on a date with Baltimore Ravens running back Willis McGahee, and their destination was Atlanta Rocks.
After the episode aired, says gym manager David Turrentine, Atlanta Rocks saw a sharp increase in new students and members, many of whom were African American. “We got so many phone calls and so many new visitors,” he recalls. “And thankfully, Bravo still runs re-runs of the show, so every time it re-airs, we get more interest.” The episode gave the gym an opportunity to reach a wider audience, since “Housewives” regularly rakes in around three million viewers nationally. But there’s more to it than that, Turrentine insists. “All these people who watched the show, they were like, ‘This woman does it. We can do it too!’”
African Americans, Latino Americans, and Asian Americans are “significantly underrepresented” in outdoor recreation relative to their populations in the U.S., reports The Outdoor Foundation, a nonprofit organization seeking to boost participation in outdoor activities. This trend has been changing in recent years, but only slightly. The foundation’s 2011 Outdoor Recreation Participation Report found that 30 percent of outdoor participants are minorities—up from 25 percent in 2007.
“It’s something that we’ve noticed for years now,” says Turrentine, “so it was always a question of, what’s going on? A lot of it is a comfort zone issue, because kids who are minorities see [the outdoors] as a white-based world — that’s their impression.”
Nationally, grassroots organizations such as the Center for Diversity and the Environment, Outdoor Afro, the National Hispanic Environmental Council, and the Outdoor Foundation are trying to get more minorities connected with the natural environment. These outreach efforts seem to be working, says Christine Fanning, executive director of the Outdoor Foundation. At the foundation’s second annual youth summit this summer, a majority of the young leaders who attended were minorities. “40 percent [were] African American, 30 percent Caucasian, and 30 percent [were] from other ethnicities,” Fanning reported.
The Outdoor Industry Association, the trade association which runs The Outdoor Foundation, also applauds federal efforts such as the America’s Great Outdoors program. “There’s a real societal benefit to increasing participation,” says Outdoor Industry Association spokeswoman I Ling Thompson. “Healthy people cost less.”
In the private sector, the minority-owned company Earthwise Productions Inc. tackles this issue by getting minorities involved directly. In the mid-90s, outdoor enthusiasts Audrey and Frank Peterman realized that no black magazines or newspapers printed any coverage of the outdoors or the environment. So they started their own publishing company and put out their own outdoors newsletter.
Right after launching Earthwise, the Petermans embarked on an eight-week trip around the country to visit such landmarks as the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, and the Badlands. “When we told our relatives we were going to hike and camp all over the country, they freaked out,” Audrey recalls, laughing.
The couple had an incredible time traveling to some of the country’s most beautiful destinations. But they noticed something. “This was in 1995, and we were really stunned and amazed that out of all the hundreds of people we were seeing, we weren’t seeing any people of color,” Audrey said. They met one black woman in Acadia National Park and one black couple in Olympic National Park, but that was about it. “We didn’t see any Native Americans, we didn’t see any Hispanic people, we didn’t see any Asians. There were some [international tourists] from Japan, but no [minorities] who seemed to be from America.”
There’s a good reason for that, says Fanning of The Outdoor Foundation. “I believe the outdoor community has not been as inclusive or welcoming as we should be,” she asserts. “The outdoor lifestyle is not culturally relevant to many minorities. We need to redefine the outdoors so that it is more relevant to everyone.” Fanning would like to see “the outdoors” expand beyond the notion of “wilderness” to include outdoor urban spaces as well. “Activities that require gear or travel do not attract minorities as much as those like walking and running that can be done in urban environments,” she explains.
What’s more, when minorities are absent from activities like hiking, running, swimming, biking, camping, climbing, surfing, skiing, snowboarding, kayaking, canoeing, rafting, and backpacking, non-white newcomers are more likely to feel alienated and less likely to participate.
To combat this problem, Audrey Peterman advocates for more representation in the mainstream media. And it’s important that ads and programming don’t come across as inauthentic or contrived. The “Real Housewives of Atlanta” episode made waves because it portrayed an authentic black experience—and did so through media already being consumed by black Americans.
Connecting with the outdoors means connecting with the history of a place. As Audrey and her husband have continued to travel around the country over the years, they’ve been struck by how much they have learned about American and African- American history. In 2009, they released a book chronicling their experiences called “Legacy on the Land: A Black Couple Discovers Our National Inheritance and Tells Why Every American Should Care.”
“National parks are part of our collective national heritage,” Audrey says. “They belong to all Americans.”