Eliot Jackson Launches Grow Cycling Foundation to Promote Diversity in Cycling

leitch said:
Objectively what you've written is "true", but if you even scratch the surface it's clearly not realistic. Yes, "anyone" can "just pick up a bike" and "start riding off road", but that actually still relies on a few key assumptions, and also doesn't accurately describe what really any of us would consider to be the world of MTB that we seek to share.
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Back to what I said about cost being the key factor. When I was a kid everyone at lysterfield rode BSO (had a bigW huffy myself) on the trails. A beginner could take almost any bike out and start riding for relatively cheap, but if they truly commit to the sport (like most of us here) then it's a steep cost curve. Soon you are paying for forks that cost twice as much as your first bicycle. It's this normalization that really starts filtering out the regulars.
 
Calvin27 said:
Back to what I said about cost being the key factor. When I was a kid everyone at lysterfield rode BSO (had a bigW huffy myself) on the trails. A beginner could take almost any bike out and start riding for relatively cheap, but if they truly commit to the sport (like most of us here) then it's a steep cost curve. Soon you are paying for forks that cost twice as much as your first bicycle. It's this normalization that really starts filtering out the regulars.
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Cost of equipment is definitely a huge barrier to many but it's also part of a tapestry, and people writing off initiatives like Eliot's program as "diversity for diversity's sake" or suggesting that it'd be unnecessary if bikes were just cheaper is a very narrow view of the issues. Counter to @SummitFever's painfully reductive "If anyone is not mountain biking it may be just because they don't want to", lots of people are unable to access, or are not made to feel welcome in accessing, the kinds of experiences that would allow them to decide whether they want to or not.

Like you, my first off-road riding experience was on a $200 "Cheetah" MTB as a ~10 year old, and it wasn't til years later I got anything I'd call a MTB now. But we still come at this from the perspective of people who've grown up in the suburbs of wealthy Australian cities where Lysty (or in my case Mt Cootha) is just down the road and it's safe and easy for lots of kids to ride unsupervised out the front gate and into the bush for half a day. We're very lucky to have grown up that way.
 
leitch said:
But we still come at this from the perspective of people who've grown up in the suburbs of wealthy Australian cities where Lysty (or in my case Mt Cootha) is just down the road and it's safe and easy for lots of kids to ride unsupervised out the front gate and into the bush for half a day. We're very lucky to have grown up that way.
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That's true but it doesn't really answer why there is disproportionate representation. Around the lysty area that is migrant central, lots of asians, indians, middle eastern etc. But you go to lysty and up until recently it's mostly white aussies. In fact I'd almost say I have never seen a non white kid under 12 on the trails. A few pottering around the bbq areas and those bloody afghans put on a good spread mind you, but no mountain bikes. That's race. On gender same thing applies.

Mean I completely get the cause and how an initiative like this can help. But from my personal experience, it's the other way around. MTB is mostly not inherently a white persons sport because of discrimination whether this is deliberate or not, but it is this way because in fact other cultures simply do not give a crap about it. I rode mtbs because my dad liked getting out bush. Culturally there was never the drive to get good at it or take it even half seriously, I mean if we actually got to choose we would have persued mountain biking, but instead it was the typical asian stuff: badminton, table tennis and martial arts. My mates all the same. A few got to do basketball (there was a myth basketball makes you tall lol) and the eastern europeans stuck exclusively to football. The point is though, that you really have to apportion a lot more of why there isn't more diversity in mtb to cultural reasons from 'minorities' (hate that term there are like a billion Chinese lol) as opposed to sinister reasons. Maybe I just have rose tinted vision...? Simply put MTB is not popular in a Chinese household (for example). You can have all the role models as you like but it's not going to be anywhere near some of the support I've seen RBrs dish out for their kids.
 
Calvin27 said:
The point is though, that you really have to apportion a lot more of why there isn't more diversity in mtb to cultural reasons from 'minorities' (hate that term there are like a billion Chinese lol) as opposed to sinister reasons.
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Yeah look of course there are going to be intra-cultural barriers at play also - evidently there are even within the dominant culture or MTB would be a mainstream sport which it is not - but 1) you kind of have to take those as fixed variables when talking about how to improve diversity/accessibility (you change the things you can change), and 2) they are only entrenched further by limited access.

There's plenty of evidence for this in the successes of various women's programs which have, among other things, disproven attitudes like your initial assertion that "Females generally do not care for the techy stuff and so it gets expensive for someone to do the servicing for them", and shown that women are just as capable of being great bike mechanics as anyone else, they just haven't historically really enjoyed doing it/learning to do it in a shop full of dudebros constantly talking about the size of their dropper post and 'chix m8'.

These things always exist as spectra. I was lucky because my dad raced MTB and had the means to introduce me to it and support my interest in it - it sounds like your parents maybe didn't understand the interest but you were lucky in that they had the means to support it nevertheless. Shouldn't we do what we can to make it as easy as possible for people who have the interest but neither the means nor the community/cultural validation to still get into the sport and want to waste their life talking about it on the internet? :p
 
oliosky said:
Shock horror. White middle aged bloke from the northern beaches who thinks he's really important turns out to be a bit of a flog.
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There’s a lot of that surfer localism/macho/bravado lingering around down there. Sometimes it’s a can be a bit of a bro-down snag fest.

A few of these guys have been instrumental in trail advocacy and building though so people would likely be hard pressed to call them out without being put on the outs.


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hifiandmtb said:
As long as we've got Christina, we're doing ok:

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Whistler seems (never been but just what I see) to be the true mtb Mecca. Anyone who gets remotely into mtb would see that as the place to dream of riding one day regardless of age, sex or nationality. And the skills you could build off the trail network and riding crew would be phenomenal.

Love of Mtb can be started young or be the long way round or a mix of both. My younger sisters childhood Besty lives in whistler now. She grew up in south western Qld with no trails at all but a moto-x mad dad and rode moto from a young age but not into her teens. Left home and travelled to NZ and got into snowboarding, then instructing kids snowboarding. Some of the staff where she worked there were Canadian and invited her to live and work when the season ended in whistler. She planned to do the NOHE/SOHE winter thing but after the first season she saw the bikes in the park and hired one out for a try and got the bug hard. Hasn’t left there since and is now married to a local. She now races in the Garbanzo DH etc as an amateur but if you look on Strava she will be in the top ten on lots of well known sections up against the pro women.



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leitch said:
There's plenty of evidence for this in the successes of various women's programs which have, among other things, disproven attitudes like your initial assertion that "Females generally do not care for the techy stuff and so it gets expensive for someone to do the servicing for them", and shown that women are just as capable of being great bike mechanics as anyone else, '.
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You are mistaking aggregated reality with individual truths. Sure some women are perfectly competent mecs. But overwhelmingly women on aggregate do not show much interest. Case in point Engineers Australia had a target of 50% enrolled female engineers and they realised what a folly that was - ended up munting their female completion rates, while pissing off a lot of actual female engineers who thought quotas just devalued their worth. As much as we live in a society where equality is a core value, fundamental differences still play a part.

I think you are forgetting that for the majority of folks, mtb is a recreational sport. An overwhelming majority do not race, do competitions or events and they simply ride. There are literally no barriers they face that everyone else doesn't. Proximity and location is probably a valid one, and courses like the Fottscray mtb park are a great inititive - looks like the program is supporting some of that so that's good. However, chasing diversity especially in sports is a mugs game. To put into context, it is like saying why Asians are under represented in cricket, must be because the Indians and Sri Lankans are racist? It's a foolish statement and the cultural stuff plays a huge role.
 
@Calvin27 I’d argue that what we are talking about is individual experience not aggregate statistics/generalisations. The important thing is an individual’s experience and if they’re dissuaded from participating or trying to participate by the culture of the sport or by a lack of people they identify with in the cohort then what’s wrong with suggesting it’d be good to see that change?

No one is arguing for diversity quotas so your engineering example is not really relevant (and the cricket one is just bizarre tbh), nor even necessarily about “chasing” diversity - there’s no recruitment drive.

People just want to see others enjoy the opportunities that they themselves have had, or to not have to go through the shit they themselves have had to. There are communities who have fewer of those opportunities, and have to go through more of that shit, because of entrenched and structural/systemic barriers. What’s wrong with wanting to mitigate the impact of that?

Anyway, I’ve said my piece. Power to Eliot, he’s a great ambassador for the sport and seems like a lovely dude.
 
Good points and discussion. I moved to Narrabeen from Blacktown as a 20yo, the bro down was real, my flatmate a classic example. I moved on by 21 to the Central Coast with my partner who I'm still with. Gosford and surrounds are as white but a bit more bogan than the northern beaches in my experience.

Funnily there was a strong mtb club on the coast in the early 90's which is how I got into it more seriously, I already had my Repco Sierra, not a cheap bike in 1990, my 18th b'day present which I chipped in for, $990 on run out special from memory. DH didn't exist in the club scene at that stage.

Anyway I had no idea about the skin suit thing and now want to enter a DH race in a skin suit just to be dq'd ;) I assume I can race an Enduro in a skin suit?

Plenty of blokes ride who wouldn't know how to turn a barrel adjuster too, just not many here it seems.

I might have been a source of diversity, and mentioned before I was told all my life there was Aboriginal ancestry in my family. But I recently did the DNA test and turns out that was a myth perpetuated by a gene in my family causing a disease that darkened the skin due to high iron levels. I'm actually white as a sheet with 99% British, 1% Jewish.

Involving people who otherwise wouldn't for whatever reason can only be a good thing for everyone and I'm glad to see it.
 
Scotty T said:
Good points and discussion. I moved to Narrabeen from Blacktown as a 20yo, the bro down was real, my flatmate a classic example.
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Narrabeen... that’s ground zero! My first Narra experience was a doozy. I’d moved to Sydney from the far North coast having spent a childhood growing up in the coastal stretch from Byron to Ballina. Localism was kind of present but nothing like the northern beaches. Went for a surfcheck with a mate and decided Narra looked ok. (Normally would head further north from newport to palmy) Went out got a few waves nothing spectacular and no bad interactions. But in the carpark while getting changed a few guys proceeded to walk up and drag our boards by the leashes across the gravel ranting about us being lost. I was a plumbing apprentice at the time I had a MAPP gas in the Ute and gave chase with it blazing and set fire to one guys boardies he had dropped and left smoldering in the road. Couldn’t say I went back again for quite a few years.


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leitch said:
People just want to see others enjoy the opportunities that they themselves have had, or to not have to go through the shit they themselves have had to. There are communities who have fewer of those opportunities, and have to go through more of that shit, because of entrenched and structural/systemic barriers. What’s wrong with wanting to mitigate the impact of that?
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What structural and systematic barriers would you say exist in Australia aside from income levels?

leitch said:
I’d argue that what we are talking about is individual experience not aggregate statistics/generalisations. The important thing is an individual’s experience and if they’re dissuaded from participating or trying to participate by the culture of the sport or by a lack of people they identify with in the cohort then what’s wrong with suggesting it’d be good to see that change?
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When people talk of 'diversity', they are talking about aggregate statistics, not sure how you can argue around that. People can be ambiguous in their intent, but saying they want more diversity = means we more a higher percentage of X demographic. It's not individual at all.

In addition, individuals' experiences are terribly unreliable. Like I said, I really can't see barriers that exist for one minority group that aren't there for another. Even the related Race and Accessibility article decides to focus on socioeconomic disadvantages that I have mentioned is at the crux of all this. In USA this generally means black/hispanics vs whites income disparity. In Australia, the situation is very different. We are relatively wealthy and do not have a systematic poor class of one specific race.

As a non white person who rides with other people of colour as part of my regular crew (Indian, Swaziland, Indonesian, Vietnamese, Cambodian -plus two anglo aussies and an irishman) I honestly cannot think of one single time when me or anyone else has had an issue in mtb because of race. I like that and I dislike that initiatives discredit my positive experience with the sport and the people associated with it.
 
foxpuppet said:
Narrabeen... that’s ground zero! My first Narra experience was a doozy. I’d moved to Sydney from the far North coast having spent a childhood growing up in the coastal stretch from Byron to Ballina. Localism was kind of present but nothing like the northern beaches. Went for a surfcheck with a mate and decided Narra looked ok. (Normally would head further north from newport to palmy) Went out got a few waves nothing spectacular and no bad interactions. But in the carpark while getting changed a few guys proceeded to walk up and drag our boards by the leashes across the gravel ranting about us being lost. I was a plumbing apprentice at the time I had a MAPP gas in the Ute and gave chase with it blazing and set fire to one guys boardies he had dropped and left smoldering in the road. Couldn’t say I went back again for quite a few years.
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Man that is a doozy. I was a boogie boarder trying to get good at stand up, never got good after a year of solid sessions trying, so stuck to skating instead. Luckily my flatmate was beefcake central, a stone mason of all things but also a gym junkie, so I went surfing mostly with him and a couple of his equally well built buddies and didn't cop any flack.

When I moved to the CC I had one guy try to mow me down at Avoca Point on the boogie board, he actually turned and ditched it on a shit wave pointing his board directly at me as I was paddling over the wave and leaving quite an indent as I raised my board to stop me copping the pointy end in the face. That firmly cemented me into skateys and snowboards from then on. I also hated waiting for fucking waves, who's got time for that shit when the half pipe is there all the time? :D
 
Calvin27 said:
I like that and I dislike that initiatives discredit my positive experience with the sport and the people associated with it.
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I don't think it discredits your experience, which sounds like a great experience most of us haven't had doing this MTB thing.
 
A lot of us on here are of an age that we grew up in a time where kids rode bikes to get places (school, friends etc) and families had less cars. The world is not like that any more. Christmas morning the streets aren't filled with kids with new bikes, skateboards, roller skates etc.
It is a small change from riding to transport to ridding for fun compared to starting on a screen or a ball sport to riding for fun..
In my eastern suburbs bubble I would guess that more people teach their kids to swim than bike ride.
My Lysterfield and Jells Park experience is that "new" Australian's act like families of my 70's child hood. They go to the park with groups of other families, have a picnic or bbq, walk the trails, play games and have a ball. Mostly low cost, low equipment activities.
 
leitch said:
...As much as I hate to give them credit for anything, Specialized has actually made some moves in this space, sponsoring various "bike life" riders in the US and the UK, and starting to recast a lot of their imagery away from just white dudes in Colorado. It's small steps and yes people will make all the same arguments about cynical "virtue signalling" for profit, but you can't be what you can't see...
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I see this as really 'talking down' to people of colour. So everyone that isn't white is so dumb that we need to see a picture of someone with our skin colour riding before we realise "Hey! I can do that!" ???

We've got to stop treating different races, skin colours or genders like idiots. That's my definition of racism and sexism right there.
 
This is what I see when I’m out on the trails.

366211


Not that I give a shit.

also
Calvin27 said:
We are relatively wealthy and do not have a systematic poor class of one specific race.
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Wut?
 
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