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 cant 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."
That's what started the whole fracas to begin with.
Agreed. Most of the black people I knew in California were afraid of animals (yet they paradoxically seemed to all have pit bulls and Rottweilers). They liked the urban parks but you didn’t see them so much in the rural parks in the area.
The Mexicans were much the same favoring urban parks for family events but you almost never saw them at the rural parks.
Blame global warming.
Whites would let minorities in the parks if truckloads of them didn’t go into the parks and steal all the toilet paper.
They have it all wrong. Most if not all park rangers, etc. are F’n liberal environmentalists! So it is white liberals who don’t want them in their parks!
I was riding my bike around Lake Tahoe with some friends a couple of summers ago. On the west shore there are lots of coves with parking areas where you can see the rocks below the surface of the crystal clear waters and we were talking of stopping for a swim.
At one spot we heard the distinctive BOOM, BOOM, BOOM back beat of mindless hip hop ghetto noise blasting from quivering stereo speakers. As we rounded the curve we came a upon a parking turn out where six or seven wildly painted low rider cars were parked with doors and trunks open. The people I saw were tattooed top to bottom, wearing low hitched baggy pants, chain necklaces, headbands pulled down to their eye brows or ball caps skewed sideways on their heads as they drank from beverages wrapped in brown paper bags. I have never seen anything so out of place. That image comes back to me now and then.
I still can't imagine why they would drive all the way to the mountains to act like they were in an alley in Oakland. I can't imagine they were enjoying the beautiful surroundings.
They are worried about unfriendly white people, hungry critters and insects, and unforgiving landscapes, said Ms. DeRise.”
Lions and Whitey and Bears, Oh my!....Lions and Whitey and Bears, Oh my!
Like worrying about how many minority drivers and crew chiefs in NASCAR. Only they dream up this nonsense. Nobody else cares or notices.
I didn’t know it went back that far.
I do remember when the Bullwinkle Show got cancelled, Simon left The Chipmunks and joined up with Bullwinkle to form the supergroup Simon and Bullwinkle.
I would like to know who the h*ll is keeping count of who goes where.
3 adults 2 children, would that be 2 blacks 1 white and 2 multi racial kids. 1 black is actually white/Hispanic light skinned. Where do they come up with this garbage.
It’s because bears are racist!
And ghosts. Don't forget the haunted Indian caves full of ghosts.
"Oooh, girl! Look like a Klan ghost in there!"
(*Cartoon sound effect of skeedaddling running*)
Partisan Media Shills ping.
Now that I want to see. I don't believe it at all.
Mr. Nelson is 58, meaning he was born circa 1957-58.
Not sure where, if in the South he possibly remembers 'Whites' bathrooms and drinking fountains everywhere. He would have been around 6 or 7 when that came to an end.
I think he's full of it.
The idea that National Parks discourage A-A people from visiting is complete BS.
This is alarming! /s
Many years ago, I applied to work at a state park. Was hired and went through all the hoopla. Then HQ called to say they must hire a minority so I was out. The job listing was never filled because no minority ever applied. Decades later, as far as I know, there still isn’t a minority in the office or the store.
A few years before that, a black family moved into our white neighborhood. The father went around asking the neighbors if it was ok with them that they move in. No one cared. The next year, blacks were bussed into our white school which resulted in white flight. That one black family took flight, too, proving it isn’t skin pigmentation.
Whites are not responsible for where minorities live, shop, work or vacation.
From reading Ann Coulter’s book, I’d say minorities aren’t going to national parks because Mexicans are trashing them and seeding them with pot farms, to the point they have to be closed down.
Who is that?
When a group of Muslims commit atrocities, we aren’t supposed to blame all Muslims.
One white guy commits one atrocity, all whites are blamed.
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