William Cronon The Trouble With Wilderness Summary

In his critique, “The Trouble with Wilderness or Getting Back to the Wrong Nature,” William Cronon argues against the romantic conceptualization of nature that a great portion of the environmentalist movement has embraced. Subsequently, Cronon revokes the Romantic and even quasi-religious notion that wilderness spaces are separate from those inhabited by man. He argues that by eliminating the divide in perception between the human constructs of the natural world and the civilized world, man will be encouraged to take more responsibility for his actions that negatively impact the environment. In prefacing his conclusion, he writes, “Home, after all, is the place where finally we make our living. It is the place for which we take responsibility,
Carolyn Finney contends that the African American community has not widely embraced the environmental movement because of a divergence in its cultural perception of nature from that of the European American community. This divergence, Finney argues, is rooted in a long history of institutionalized racism which portrayed Black people as primitive and closer to animals. Such was evident in the eugenics movement and other historic avenues of racism. This fact has resulted in a negative perception of what some consider “natural” which exists on a cultural and personal level among African Americans. These ideas are perpetuated by a Caucasian dominated outdoor culture which existence is evidenced by a lack of equal black representation and participation in outdoor industrial advertisement and outdoor activities. They are also reinforced by depictions of African Americans as or invoking animals. Finney cited a recent cover image of Lebron James which mimicked a racially charged 20th century depiction of King Kong as well as a political cartoon that depicted President Obama as a monkey. Ultimately in the presence of so much underlying negativity around African Americans in nature many may be unwilling to embrace Cronon’s idea that humanity should be classified as inseparable from the natural