Nature and nation: the politics of rural/urban belonging.
| Author | Maya, Kavita |
| Position | HISTORIES OF RACE |
Soon after the June peak of the UK Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests that took place in response to the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, the BBC aired a Countryfile episode. It featured a ten-minute segment in which TV presenter and naturalist Dwayne Fields investigated the problem of how black and minority ethnic people sometimes feel unwelcome due to prejudice in rural spaces in the UK. (1) The episode stirred up swift controversy on Twitter. (2) Members of the public responded with complaints to the BBC, and unfavourable headlines followed in the UK tabloid media. (3)
In the current climate it is perhaps unsurprising to witness responses of this kind from people who only perceive racism as something exceptional, rather than as structurally embedded in British society. However, the Countryfile segment was a remarkably gentle introduction to a recognisable and well-researched problem, and it was communicated along the lines of educational activism rather than a revolutionary call to arms. Based on a 2019 DEFRA report on encouraging diversity in the National Parks, the segment begins with Fields sharing his experiences as a member of the black community who loves nature and the outdoors, and his passion for giving young people from black and minority ethnic urban communities the same positive opportunities to enjoy outdoor settings. (4) Nature has been a source of personal solace and healing for him, as it is for so many of us. He points out that most coverage of the Black Lives Matter protests has focused on UK cities, and he goes on to introduce the perspectives of young activists from Devon, as well as other black and brown ruralists who talk about their own experiences of discrimination and their involvement in projects to increase diversity in the outdoors. Finally, Fields poses the question of how the post-pandemic picture of rural diversity (or lack thereof) might change as the country emerges from lockdown. He notes that many of us have realised the importance of time spent in green spaces for our wellbeing, while the accustomed habits of urban life continue to face disruption with no return to previous norms in sight.
The episode aired three weeks after BLM protesters had pulled down the statue of slave trader Edward Colston and rolled it into Bristol Harbour. The statue had remained submerged in the harbour waters that flow out into the Atlantic, the geographic space of the Middle Passage, until curators from the Bristol museum M Shed retrieved it a few days later. (5) This was an event with historical significance, with effects that rippled outward from the moment of impact, leaving a mark on the national imagination and stirring up public emotions ranging from celebration to outrage. Protests against colonial monuments hold great symbolic resonance in the ongoing movement to decolonise the UK's national history and education systems. Public feelings surrounding these struggles circulate in response to contested narratives of the past: ultimately they are about the kind of society that people understand themselves to be inhabiting in the present, and the future directions they envision. While this partially explains the strength of feeling around what was a short Countryfile segment on diversity in the countryside, there are deeper layers to the story. The interrelationship of the urban and the rural in modern Britain has, after all, materialised alongside and through Britain's colonial heritage and the history of racialisation.
As beautiful and as deeply affecting as landscapes can be - and perhaps because the experience of being immersed 'in nature' can affect us so profoundly - rural geographies are inscribed with social and cultural meanings that signify how we understand ourselves and others in relation to the environments we inhabit. The English countryside occupies a central place in the image of the United Kingdom as an entire nation, and is inscribed with stories that invoke the past, community, tradition, and ways of life that are understood to be slipping away under the shadow of an increasingly diverse and interconnected postmodern, postcolonial metropolitan world. However, these social meanings and inscriptions attributed to the rural landscape are unstable rather than fixed, and open to contestation and change. (6) The stories we tell about nature and the countryside touch closely on contemporary British identity and the politics of (un)belonging: whose history belongs here...
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