Making the Chesapeake for everyone: My justification for affirmative action programs in Norfolk, Virginia

Please note:  This blog post is in a draft stage and is intended to outline my thoughts and feelings on an important environmental issue in a certain region.  I have yet to include proper citations or to double-check my facts.  Please feel free to comment if you feel I have made some extra-erroneous remarks or overly belligerence errors, and I will work promptly to correct them.  

Introduction

Norfolk, Virginia is located in a region referred to as the "Tidewater area" and upon first glance of a satellite image of the region (see Figure 1) the name readily becomes apparent.  Long and narrow stretches of tidal "rivers" are woven throughout an otherwise highly urbanized area.  

Figure 1:  Satellite image of Norfolk, VA and surrounding areas.

           Imagery ©2013 TerraMetrics

  

Those tidal waters are directly connected to the Chesapeake Bay, America's largest marine estuary.  This off-shoot of the Atlantic Ocean is one of the most ecologically diverse estuaries in the world, and it provides a vital source of wildlife habitat, fish habitat, seafood, recreation, and transportation for the United States.  

Norfolk has seen long and harsh periods of economic decay and urban blight.  While the city has passed major milestones in recent years in terms of economic redevelopment, there remains the problem of socioeconomic inequality.  Waterside areas are usually occupied by higher income white residents, while more interior sections of the city are dominated by poorer Black and Latino communities.  

The advances in environmental sustainability and ecological restoration around Norfolk and surrounding areas in the last 10 years has been profound.  The tidal basin that my parents live along, for example, has gone from being an open sewer pit (at least in terms of overall water quality) to a salt marsh abound with bird life and a developing oyster reef in less than two decades.  In fact, a local watershed group claims that at the current rate of progression, the water will be swimmable and fishable within 5 years!  

That same local watershed group has also spear-headed a program, coined "Riverstar Homes" that involves private home and business owners take a voluntary pledge to use sustainable landscaping practices (such as planting native plants and avoided pesticides).  Land owners that make the pledge get to hang a flag out on their front lawn touting their home or business as a "Riverstar" property (Elizabeth River Project, 2013).  

Wealthy people with large, manicured waterside properties have been willing to put their ten cents in to restoration efforts of Norfolk's urban tidal basins by restoring their own shoreline to a natural state or following recommended land management guidelines.  Yet anyone who takes an afternoon stroll in the neighborhood readily sees an array of trash strewn about the shorelines (Figure 2) or sometimes a plastic bag floating in the water.  Drains and culverts emptying storm water into the bays and coves also spit out a mix of sand, silt, and trash (see Figure 3).  

The presence of trash anywhere (at least in the United States) is a sign that there's a lack of care for a neighborhood somewhere.  I can recall driving around inner-city Baltimore with my brother, and a person driving an old rusty car in front of us tossed a handful of trash out the window.  As I watched the cluster of plastic bags, bottles, cigarette butts, and whatever else that person chucked blow into the wind, I exclaimed to my brother, "People just treat this place like a trash dump!"  My brother sternly replied, "Alex, that's because it is a trash dump." 

Figure 2:  Trash accumulates on an urban shoreline
near Baltimore, MD.  Photo source:  National Aquarium, 2010.

   

Figure 3:  Trash and debris spewing out of a storm drain outlet

In Norfolk, the areas in which neighborhoods are treated as homeland and ones that are treated as landfills are readily visible.  For example, a small playground park in a wealthy waterfront area has a brand new playground surrounded by large tall trees and flowers.  A similar sized park in a poorer interior neighborhood has an old rusty playground, some overflowing trash cans, and only a few scraggly bushes.  

Urban communities who are disenfranchised with their own homes and yards and who care little about the environment is problematic as these are the same people that can do a great deal of good for our environment when provided with the proper resources.  The natural resources profession is currently dominated by white, often middle to upper class people, and finding qualified Black or Latino applicants is often difficult if not impossible.  In Norfolk, for example, there are few well-managed open spaces and natural areas in close proximity to urban interior neighborhoods, and the small tidal marshes that do exist nearby go unappreciated or are looted with litter and outcasts. 

Norfolk (or any city in America for that matter) cannot go on seeing environmental activism as an "elitist" agenda of white middle class families planting a tree or picking up trash.  We must have an empowered minority population that is ready to start restoring the environment they forget they actually live in, and we need minorities that are trained professionals in both the political and natural resources management arenas must take charge.  

Yet the question remains: why haven't urban, lower income minority groups in Norfolk taken more action to improve their neighborhood and restore their slice of the Chesapeake Bay?

Perhaps one answer is that Black people in Norfolk are lazy, stupid, and don't work hard and don't care about the environment.  This could very well be the case.  

I'd like to offer an alternative answer, though.  What if it's because all of the educational resources, government programs, civic leagues, and politicians are directing their attention in richer, wealthier  whiter communities that have lots of money and have lots of political and social influence?  Maybe their kids can go ahead and get a science degree in ecology or natural history because their parents can pay for it. Perhaps the schools upper-class, white children have attended offered comprehensive and more hands-on environmental programs, with the thought of funding cuts for such activities as being an unlikely scenario.    

The city of Norfolk (and other cities) are obligated to restore and maintain it's natural resources to the best of their ability and to also include urban landscapes as places to protect the environment.  And Norfolk cannot just rely on donations from rich people and enthusiasm from upper-class majority citizens.  They must harness much more effort from minority and lower-income peoples, and as Table 1 shows, minorities in Norfolk are the majority of people living in the city.  

Table 1:  Racial/ethnic demographic data for Norfolk, Virginia and nearby areas.
Source: Department of Development, 2012

One such method that has been in effect in the United States in order to encourage minorities into science, education, and other career-oriented fields is that of affirmative action (referred to more literally as positive discrimination in the United Kingdom).  Affirmative action allows for minority candidates for a job or admission to a school to be moved to the front of a list or a line, even if they are not as qualified as their Caucasian running mate.  This is done in hopes of increasing the odds that a minority will take on a new career or education pathway, say as a field biologist for the National Park Service or a nature education program coordinator at an environmental outreach center.  

Proponents

Proponents of affirmative action (such as myself) believe minority groups deserve an easier foot-in-the-door because of these assumptions:

• Poor, urban minorities are economically disadvantaged.  Poor urban black communities often lack the funds to send their kids to college or to sign them up for summer nature education programs.  Cities like Norfolk often don't have the money or the political will to offer high quality services to urban youth, such as clean parks, extra-curricular programs, and other public services.  In contrast, wealthier white communities and richer suburbs do have the means of providing such programs (such as hands-on outdoor education classes or easily accessible job training).    
• Poor, urban minorities are socially disadvantaged.  Parents of young Black, Latino, or other racial/ethnic groups in Norfolk are often preoccupied with finding a job or trying to make ends meet and do not have time to take kids out into the woods or for a boat ride out on the bay.  Also, Norfolk has a high rate of teen pregnancies and single Moms, and often the "role models" of these children are teens and young adults selling drugs, engaging in gang violence, throwing trash down a street drain, and other deviant activities.  Because experiences like a walk through the woods or developing a sense of community and belonging are not easily instilled into youngsters caught in this living situation, there must be external resources that can provide (or attempt to provide) a quality growing-up experience (such as youth stewardship programs in a nearby marsh or a community-oriented planting of flowers and tress in a neighborhood).
• Racism, although quieter, still exists.  With respect to the environment, lower income minorities typically live in areas with higher rates of pollution, more traffic, and less open parks and space.  This results in a problem concerning environmental justice, which examines the discrepancy between the environmental conditions in one populous versus another (such as white, upper-class neighborhoods versus minority neighborhoods).  

Opponents

Opponents to affirmative action argue that race should not be a factor and that every human being deserves an equal chance at being selected for a job or other opportunity (such as a free ride to a nature education camp).  They often feel that by giving resources to less-qualified individuals or groups is like giving "free hand-outs" at the expense of otherwise qualified people.  Also, most opponents of affirmative action tend to be white, as indicated by a recent study on young people's opinions on this issue (see Richey, 2012).  

Conclusion

With respect to environmental problems in Norfolk, minorities are needed in the environmental conservation profession to help steward a new generation of environmentally-conscious people.  Black and Latino families in Norfolk, for example, don't have the privileged lifestyle of their upper-class counterparts, and we need do more to make opportunities in the environmental field more accessible to them when their community can't or won't provide that to them.  The goal here is not to throw qualified white people into the dirt and let less-fortunate and less qualified minorities to take over, but rather to strive to increase equality in the environmental conservation field in order to better manage our environment and our communities, including poor urban areas.  

The mere fact that most opponents of affirmative action are white should also give leeway to some suspicion.  Is their opposition really about their "modest" desire for an equal change at special programs or jobs for all, or is there a general notion that poor minorities "don't deserve" any "special treatment"?  

We need to see beyond our idealistic hopes of a wonder-world of equality and fairness and start thinking practically about our environmental efforts in urban communities such as Norfolk.  We need to focus on the demographic data of Norfolk that shows us where and in what conditions minorities are living in, take environmental justice seriously, and finally we need to work towards a sustainable future for Blacks, Latinos, and other minorities living within the Chesapeake Bay watershed.  

References

Department of Development, (2012). Demographic profile for Norfolk and the Hampton Roads region. Retrieved from website: http://www.norfolk.gov/planning/PDFFiles/fact_sheet.pdf

Make your home a star -a cleaner river starts with you. (2013, January 28). Elizabeth River Project.  Retrieved from http://www.elizabethriver.org/RiverStars/default.aspx

National Aquarium. (2010, February 23).   Retrieved from http://nationalaquarium.wordpress.com/2010/02/23/green-tip-say-no-to-styrofoam/

Richey, W. (2012, October 4). Poll: 57 percent of millennials oppose racial preferences for college, hiring. Christian Science Monitor. Retrieved from http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2012/1004/Poll-57-percent-of-Millennials-oppose-racial-preferences-for-college-hiring

Youth from urban parts of Chicago explore a marsh