Fitness Industry and Anti-Racism Movement
Pilates instructor and activist Sonja R Price Herbert talked to us about Anti-Racism Fitness.
When asked to introduce herself, Sonja R. Price Herbert smiles. The list is long. Writer. Activist. Disruptor. Antiracism Catalyst.
She’s also a classically trained Pilates instructor and the founder of blackgirlpilates, a space that she thought “specifically for and centered around Black/Afro Latina women who teach Pilates to share ideas, successes, and struggles as instructors and teachers within the business of the method”.
Starting pilates and the black fitness question
“I started black girl pilates because I couldn’t see black people in pilates. They aren’t represented, and that’s the whole issue. You don’t see them in luxury fitness. Or you see a small amount. And then at the manager level, even fewer. At the top of the food chain, no one” Sonja regrets.
She remembers her very first lesson. She started with black people, a black instructor, in a black school. And yet, she’d never heard of it before. Her first question once the lesson was over was “This is awesome! Why don’t black people know about this?”. From this first time all the way to her certification, she was asking herself the same question. She was the only black apprentice in her class. “Once I started asking, those things became very important to me, all throughout my 13 years career”. She researched it, observed it, and now talks about it.
For her, it has a lot to do with who’s important to the fitness industry, and she thinks so far, black people are not. “Gyms are not in our communities. The assumption is that black or brown don’t have the money for these kinds of things, even if we do, even if some white people don’t have the money either”. For her, the whole system is made to the benefit of the white communities, and therefore all the money goes there as well. “The people who make these decisions do not look like me. That’s why I want to change a system that was not created for us”.
Fitness Redlining
When asked about the link between her industry, wellness, and pilate, with the anti-racism movement, Sonja is adamant “Racism is linked to everything. It’s there within all of the industries, and all the layers”. She dismisses what she calls the “white savior way”, where the black communities can access those luxury gyms through discounts and special programs. “We don’t have adequate medical care, we have the worse hospitals, the worse supermarkets with the worse products. Until our neighborhood is “gentrified”, by white people. Just like Harlem”, she sighed, looking out her window to her beloved neighborhood which has changed so very much in the last 20 years.
A while back, writing a piece for the Washington Post, Sonja came up with the term “fitness redlining” to explain her point. “Redlining is drawing a line between two things. Two communities, here black and white. Black people can only go that far. Fitness redlining is the fact that fitness, exercise, luxury gyms, are not brought to our communities”.
She takes the example of New York. “Luxury gyms are not going to come above 96 street, because they want and need a certain level of revenue to support their institution, and the assumption is that farther from that, there’s no money,” she says while shaking her head. “They don’t even TRY to market us anyway. I’m not going to go to a place where I am not represented. Am I going to feel safe in that space as a black person, or am I going to be treated as “an other”?” she asks.
Hopes for the future: it all starts from the inside
When asked about solutions, Sonja points to the very first step: “it all starts with the person. It’s a heart issue. If you don’t deal with what’s in your heart, whether you believe it or not, know it or not, then nothing is going to change on the outside. The first step is to deal with yourself. If it’s not on the inside, then all that stuff is performative. You must first acknowledge that there is a problem before you can start fixing it”.
She links this with her beloved pilates. “Pilates is an inside out thing, not a outside in thing. You have to connect your mind to your body, you have to connect inside those muscles into your bones, all of that, beyond the superficial skin, and then you can connect to the outside; it all starts first with the inside”.
Sonja asks first for acknowledgment. Of the lack of black people in the luxury fitness world. The lack of marketing, of representation. She points to the problem. Starting with yourself, starting from acknowledgment. From there, we can only hope to create solutions. Space from all kinds of communities, better inclusion, and pilates for all.
