What I learned from the Black Outdoors

The Black Outdoors Los Angeles Group is what you are looking for when you, happy few, get sick of me writing shit like these posts (limited to 2017):

• “How talking directly with @BreakingBrown would go…”
• “Black men improving your life—with just words?”
• “How to Be over 40 and Single in Los Angeles”
• “a word on creative connection « @PamelaCouncil”These posts are chock full of generalizations that do not appear to be reinforced with actual data/experience. When I keep whining over and over again about how isolated I am, there is the American, extremist temptation to turn my whining into a political cartoon where I am drawn living in a cave in an inner-city garbage dump with a bone through my oversized, caricatured nose. What may be devastating for the urban novice that is barely 30 years old is to discover that my definition of ‘isolation’ is her definition of every day “life” in the big city. I am whining for something more than what many (who implicitly consider themselves my superior) actually have.

And I am not writing here to “attack” this meetup.com group. I am here to share with you what it offered when I was an active member years ago.

When I first imagined “the Black Outdoors,” I saw a group of self-described “black” people who were first and foremost coming together to express their “love” for nature. The closest living thing to my vision is OutDoorAfro.com which apparently was founded around 2009. To make a long story longer, let it be known that OutDoorAfro has no Southern California group. This fact alone should make my shitty point(s).

And, speaking of points for the sake of brevity, here are a few highlights from my real-life experience with “the Black Outdoors”:

• most of the Black Outdoors were young women who largely grouped together with other young women, high-school-lunch-table style
• one of those young women I actually managed to speak to was, during that entire conversation, indistinguishable (to me) from a white girl
• the one mature woman I met at a subsequent meeting was, of course, not from Los Angeles and was, in my opinion, not particularly interested in (my) Black subject matter
• the white women who started to show up in increasing numbers were by far finding me approachable compared to the sisters which (to me) nullified the whole point of having a “Black Outdoors” groupThe Black Outdoors did not really do outdoor things beyond what children on a class field trip would do (lots of co-ed, adult kick ball). By the time I lost interest, the group was gentrifying itself even more by having joint meet-ups with other (essentially white) meetup.com groups and continuing to not express an interest in nature by playing even more kick ball.

So I just wanted to point out one of the few, real-world examples of “How to Be over 40 and Single in Los Angeles” that any brother/sister is free to experiment with—the group is still going strong so knock yourself out.

rasx()