On the Unbearable Whiteness of Green

I recently read an editorial about the "Unbearable Whiteness of Green".... how the green movement is plastered with only upperlcass white people. I was excited to find a valid point- I hadn't thought of such a thing (I'm a white 20-something design student in Portland; sometimes it takes me a minute to remember the rest of the world isn't as pastey, booky, or as Indie as we are.), but I totally agreed before reading the article- I couldn't remember any uber green articles that featured people that I couldn't directly identify with. So I start reading.... his main example: Vanity Fair.

The author writes "just flip through the pages of Vanity Fair's recent green issue (the one with Leo DiCaprio and that cute polar bear cub on the cover). ...Now, count the non-white Americans in the whole magazine. Okay. Now try to find the working-class environmentalists, the ones trying to protect their kids from pollution at the fence-line? Go ahead. Keep looking. See what I mean?"

I went through a few more Vanity Fair issues, after reading this part, and found that the magazine covers all its topics in the same way: predominantly white and wealthy. At this point, the author lost credibility in my eyes, and I had a hard time following his link to California's Prop 87. I couldn't stop thinking about his main point, so I did a little research of my own and found that Paul Mohai, associate professor at the University of Michigan's School of Natural Resources and Environment authored the first African-American centered study on Sustainability.

Apparently, in 2003, African Americans are more likely than white Americans to make sustainable lifestyle choices like buying pesticide-free foods , consuming less meat , and driving less. However, African Americans were less likely than whites to recycle. Also, African Americans were more concerned about their local environment (23% more!).

Had I read anything like this, which took me minutes to pull up, I'd be a happier, more convinced reader. What ever happened to establishing validity before jumping into an argument?