In line with the Ramblers commitment to being an anti-racist organisation we invited writers to share their experience and views relating to rural racism, to help broaden our understanding of this complex issue.  

 

Nadia’s perspective 

I founded the Raven Network for people of colour who work in the nature conservation and environmental sector – Britain’s least ethnically diverse sector after farming. After nearly a decade involved in projects around equity in access to nature, it has become apparent to me – through working on various equality and diversity programmes – that the root of the problem with rural racism isn’t about individual racists in the countryside. Nor is it because we’re not doing enough to make people feel welcome. It is the architecture of the countryside itself.  

 

Systematic racism 

My work shines a light on how systemic racism is built into the way we view and use land; how it’s parcelled up and managed. Systemic racism is where multiple and compounding opinions, policies and structures interact to create systems that benefit some people more than others. What complex systems mean rural areas are mainly places populated and visited by white people? Or, to put it another way, why might people of colour feel they can’t visit rural areas, even if they’ve never been explicitly told ‘you don’t belong’?  

 

Belonging 

To get to the answer, let’s look at ‘belonging’, that whole and rich feeling we all need to live a fulfilled life. To belong is to feel a sense of culture and of place. Having a sense of place is about knowing the earth on which you stand. It’s about living a life where the boundaries between nature and self are blurred, because we are part of nature. But England has a default system of exclusion, and this is fundamental to my understanding and experience of rural racism.  

How can people of colour forge a sense of belonging to this earth when the architecture of the countryside is constructed on the same ideologies that underpinned the colonial project? Land ownership in England came from first clearing people from the countryside and forcing them into urban waged labour, then extending that practice in the global south, using the immense wealth made there (from tobacco, cotton, sugar, etc) to further expand estates and buy more land. This system has largely been unchallenged and unchanged for centuries. People have come to accept that it’s good enough.  

To be anti-racist is to recognise this, and to understand that it is not something ‘in the past’. When we think about England’s ‘green and pleasant land’ today, we have come to believe that the mere 8% we are allowed to walk on is good enough for the purpose of recreation. This is built into our psyche – we go ‘into’ the countryside for a break, rather than accessing the land being a right that is part of our daily lives.  

This is not belonging. It is a mere mote of dust of belonging. And because this model of access to the countryside is tied up with financial and time freedoms, representation, and geographical location, of course it is exclusive – so no wonder it’s less accessible to the most minoritised groups