Sharing the Mic: Patagonia’s Work to Advance BIPOC Efforts

This is the last in the three-part series co-authored with Dr. Veronica Dawson on Patagonia’s recent CSR efforts (Part 1; Part 2).

Since Patagonia released its original statement about working to become an anti-racist company, it has come to adopt a tactic suited for this type of work — yielding the floor. In this piece, we explore the different ways they are attempting to raise the voices of others.

The first thing Patagonia has done is to recognize that racist practices and policies, including those written decades ago, are impacting communities of color today. As of January 2022, their statement on environmental justice is as follows:

“Pollution is also racial violence. Race, income, zip code — these determine if you have access to clean air and water and a healthy environment, as well as who suffers most from the climate crisis. People of color and low-income communities throughout the United States are more likely to live near polluters and are also more often impacted by heatwaves and floods intensified by climate change. In California alone, people of color make up nearly 92 percent of the 1.8 million people living within a mile of oil and gas development. Pollution from oil wells and facilities puts them at greater risk for chronic headaches, asthma and other respiratory illnesses, and cancer. But there are leaders trying to stop this and to establish a livable future as a human right. Learn more about this work and donate to environmental justice groups near you.”

Patagonia then lists organizations engaged in helping and supporting these communities.

This statement addresses some of the challenges facing BIPOC communities by highlighting the lack of access these groups have to healthy environments — an issue that has been repeatedly brought to the fore by activists and scholars alike for decades (see The Color of Law, The Rise of the American Conservation Movement, and Clean and White: A History of Environmental Racism in the United States just to name a few).

Yes, polluting factories, power plants, and nuclear waste are more often than not located adjacent to historically marginalized communities, including BIPOC.

The inequity of the situation is highlighted by the extreme polarity of our contemporary situation. On the other side is extreme wealth. Those who can afford to do so live in communities where such dangers are absent. And the multimillionaires and billionaires live in places where they can buy enough land to provide them the luxury of largely unobstructed views of sublime landscapes, as is discussed in-depth in Justin Farrell’s Billionaire Wilderness.

After Patagonia’s succinct statement that merely begins to paint a picture of the challenges facing certain communities, Patagonia passes the baton to the organizations who are on the front lines of doing this important work. They beckon readers to check out and support organizations like the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, Communities for a Better Environment, and Appalachian Citizens Law Center by signing petitions and/or visiting their websites.

While this move — to step back and let “boots on the ground” organizations shine — is the right thing to do, the route by which visitors get to this page is somewhat convoluted and does not truly pass the mic to those engaging in on-the-ground work. Rather, it buries the baton-passing with a non-intuitive set of clicks wherein users can find environmental justice issues if they are both dedicated and patient.

This may be indicative of the remnants of top-level lead CSR strategy (vs. more grassroots) that has long been recognized by publics and scholars alike, as at least insincere and more likely, financial gain driven. An example here is of course the Do Not Buy This Jacket campaign from 2011, which along with good intentions of reducing consumerism, jettisoned Patagonia to the financial gains stratosphere.

This is not to say Patagonia isn’t taking other effective steps. For example, they have passed the megaphone to historically underrepresented groups via their recent films, including Raised from Earth, Be Visible, They/Them, Salvar Una Cuenca, Remothering the Land, and Hasta la Raiz. Each of these offers a platform for new perspectives, practices, and cultures to be seen, heard, and better understood.

While this particular move is a marked departure from their earlier film strategy, which inspired the start of the present thread of posts, the company has yet to strongly embrace another important opportunity: individual social media influencers representing BIPOC populations. A recent study demonstrates that aligning brands’ CSR efforts with black BLM influencers (vs. non-black) makes those efforts more genuine and impactful with corporate publics.

A step in the right direction is Patagonia’s recent association with The Outdoorist Oath, a non-profit by the queer environmentalist, BIPOC community activist, and Instagram influencer, Pattie Gonia, whose social media personality clearly is a play on the brand’s name and years-long standing invitation to collaborate.

We hope that Patagonia will continue to work to foreground underrepresented voices in a manner that bucks the system and redefines what CSR looks like. If, as we argued in our previous post, corporations have the power to create more significant people than grassroots organizations, then we really need businesses like Patagonia to step up and take meaningful action.