National Geographic: Colorful World of Birding Has Conspicuous Lack of People of Color (Racist bird-watchers! The manufactured race crisis of the day. Could it be that Blacks are just less into birding? No, they’re afraid the Klan will grab them out in the woods. Militias are “thriving”? If only. White liberals have a strangely racist faith that if societal conditions were perfectly fine-tuned, everyone of every race and religion would become just like White liberals.)

Colorful World of Birding Has Conspicuous Lack of People of Color



If you're a black bird-watcher, "be prepared to be confused with the other black birder." That's what J. Drew Lanham, a wildlife ecology professor at Clemson University in South Carolina, wrote last year in his list of nine race-related "rules."

"Yes, there are only two of you at the bird festival," he wrote in the pages of Orion magazine. "Yes, you're wearing a name tag and are six inches taller than he is. Yes, you will be called by his name at least half a dozen times by supposedly observant people who can distinguish gull molts in a blizzard."

Lanham's sarcasm is warranted. Minorities have always seemed to be underrepresented in U.S. environmental groups. Now there's new data to support that old anecdotal observation.

According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, in 2011, 93 percent of American birders were white ...

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/09/140923-bird-watching-diversity-environment-science/