As of 2003, African American skiers made up only 2% of the skiing market. The analysis presented in this paper takes a critical look at Black participation in the sport of skiing to draw larger points about how social and physical spaces in America may be exclusionary towards non-Whites. The author reviews a number of theories used to explain Black non-participation in outdoor recreation, including Elmendorf and colleagues’ (2005) “marginality hypothesis,” which assumes that the primary barriers to outdoor recreation are the high costs of participation (gear, permits, transport, etc.), which make it too expensive for the majority of African Americans. Harrison criticizes Washburne’s (1978) theory that Blacks and Whites have fundamentally different interests, but acknowledges the explanation that with few African American families being brought up in skiing families, the likelihood of individuals taking up skiing later is low.
Harrison then goes further to trace racism in environmental history and the history of the ski industry, and explains how it might contribute to the current demographics of skiing. He draws on other authors who have written on the relationship between African Americans and natural places, such as Merchant’s (2003) point that American wilderness was conceived as a “sublime” counterpoint to crowded cities filled with immigrants and people of color, and that African Americans were historically connected to the land through coercive relationships as slaves and sharecroppers; wild lands, far from being remote refuges, were instead a place where lynchings occurred. These “wildland aversions” coupled with other factors such as exclusionary planning of resort communities and the everyday discrimination toward African Americans that continues today, have led to low rates of Black participation in skiing and the development of parallel structures like Black ski clubs, which facilitate recreating within one’s own race, rather than truly integrating ski resorts.