Posted on 07/13/2015 1:52:55 PM PDT by rightistight
Glenn Nelson of the New York Times asked last week, "Why Are Our Parks So White?" Mr. Nelson believes that race plays a role in visiting national parks and not enough minorities are going to parks.
According to Nelson, "The national parks attracted a record 292.8 million visitors in 2014, but a vast majority were white and aging. The most recent survey commissioned by the park service on visitation, released in 2011, found that 22 percent of visitors were minorities, though they make up some 37 percent of the population.
"This suggests an alarming disconnect," he writes.
Nelson believes that white people are, at least in part, to blame. "Carla DeRise has been to Mount Rainier and other parks, and is game to go again," Nelson details. "She just can’t get any of her friends to come along. They are worried about unfriendly white people, hungry critters and insects, and unforgiving landscapes, said Ms. DeRise."
He then details how, as a child, Nelson joked with friends about finding "Whites Only" signs at parks "or the perils of being lynched or attacked while collecting firewood after the sun went down."
Minorities don't feel welcome in parks, Nelson continues. To that end, "We need to demolish the notion that the national parks and the rest of nature are an exclusive club where minorities are unwelcome.
"The place to start is the National Park Service," he continues. "About 80 percent of park service employees in 2014 were white. The parks’ official charity, the National Park Foundation, has four minority members on its 22-person board."
In the end, Mr. Nelson concludes, "I hope the National Park Service and its partners are listening."
Not enough color on the National Park visitor list - can you even imagine worrying about something so freaking stupid?
I believe there are some parks or national wilderness areas along our southern border that attract lots of non-white visitors. Many in fact, enter the park on foot, to better commune with nature.
Yeah, we need MORE illegal aliens in our National Parks so we can get assaulted, murdered, raped or stolen from THERE too. And every time I gaze at half dome I think to myself “That would look much more beautiful WITH GRAFFITI ALL OVER IT” /S
Wow, and I thought it would sound racist if I said black folks weren’t “outdoorsy”
How breathtakingly stupid id that?
The left seems to believe that it has the right to bash anybody who it deems White because a subhuman who it deemed White went into a church and murdered innocent people.
What the hell does that murdering POS have to do with me? The fact that he has been described as “White” and so have I? bull$h!t. Guilt does not leak off the perpetrator and spread to other people who have similar skin shades.
Here in CA, Latinos use our National Forests and parks extensively, ....... to grow dope.
Whenever minorities fall short, it’s racism.
“Whenever minorities fall short, it’s racism.”
The Supremes decreed it.
The parks are always available to everyone. It’s just that certain cultural groups prefer to stay closer to home.”
It also seems as though black people are more comfortable in areas where they are more closely packed in with their families, friends, dance buddies or even rioters. Open spaces do not allow for that all close together feeling.
Maybe the reason that whites enjoy the outdoors more is because of a lingering pioneering, exploratory spirit.
Once again it’s just the fact they have no interest in much of anything beyond their own little worlds.
It’s not our fault they don’t have wide interests.
I see this in every aspect of life. Nything remotely “cultural” really doesn’t have much participation by favored minorities.
Notice I said favored.
Cuz neither the Number 3 bus nor the Blue Line go to the woods?
Maybe Obama can get George Soros to bus some minorities in..
LOL! That’s even better!
Gee, let's see: people who are retired and get a huge discount to go to national parks actually go there. How can this be?
.
Derp.
One would think that blacks would be profoundly interested in the battlefields that resulted in their freedom and yet in my experiences less than 1% of the visitors are black.
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