Mie Evans's Essay On Nature And Environmental Justice

876 Words4 Pages

The essay Nature and Environmental Justice, opens up the different dimensions of Nature. It touches the hegemonic concept of Nature and also disclose the masculinist, racist, and heterosexual side of nature. The popular American cultural space is always in favour of some members of society while simultaneously disempowering others. In the context of U.S cultural production Nature does not have a neutral meaning. Idea of Nature is like the representation of race, gender, sexuality and class. The U.S cultural scenario proves that the Nature is a cultural fabrication designed to serve an ideological function, which is hegemonic in nature.
Mie Mie Evans opens her essay by tagging of Nature as space for heterosexual white manhood. She says, “the heterosexual white manhood (ie real man) is constructed as the most “natural” social identity in the United States: the “true American,” the identity most deserving of social …show more content…

It also describes the issues of black’s exclusion from the “unproblematic recreational enjoyment of nature” (189). She is looking at the problems of black in general and black women in particular. Her autobiographical touch unveil the historical legacy of institutionalized racial oppression. She says, she was afraid of going out and experience of being in nature. She feels unsafe because there are chances of getting raped. Her every attempts to enjoy nature was in vain. When she was with a group of white women from a writers workshop to rent a rowboat, due to her skin colour the boatman was refused to give the boat. It is unfortunate that White did not mentioned the attitude of white women and her fellow writer’s positions on the supremacy of white men over Nature. White suggests that Black women have to situate themselves without fear in U.S wilderness in order to realize full liberation from racial and gender based