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."
Gee, the way this author thinks we should FORCE “minorities” to go to the parks.
Just as they don’t worry how many are in NBA, or even NFL, FTM.
“Blacks keeping whites from playing basketball”, went the headline.
ping
They also need to install vending machines for Crack, Heroin, Pot, and Mad Dog 20 20.
As the idiocy of articles like this prove, America is essentially a Balkanized state now. Its disintegration can't be postponed much longer.
Is someone else’s paranoia my responsibility? If you are afraid of ‘unforgiving landscapes’ ... isn’t that one of the rationales of creating National Parks?
Does this writer even consider that this problem is owned within the society that has created it? The majority of Afro-American culture is urban and celebrates that selection. What attraction do the non-urban ‘unforgiving landscapes’ have to such people?
As for older white attendees, I am still limited in my travel while taking care of a family member, BUT in 2013 while carrying out a family duty I was heading for a one-day visit to the Grand Canyon - until I heard about the shutdown. I will be going to these places as I have the interest and means from a lifetime of interest and work.
What an IDIOT!
Blacks regard going to such places as “acting too white”.
I await the future idiot articles explaining how whites prevent blacks from going bowling, playing hockey, swimming, and wearing plaid.
The last poll I saw said that blacks fear three things:
1) Ghosts.
2) Forests.
3) Registered mail.
No. 2 explains why blacks don’t head out into the national parks and explore nature.
Good grief! did this guy fall out of the stupid tree and hit every branch on the way down?
That cannot be blamed on whites. Go to Six Flags or Disney World. Plenty of both races there.
Actually, you might try doing without the costume this year. I think the thought that the real Yogi Bear might take a nibble on ‘em will be enough to keep them away.
That’s right. We keep them out because all the national parks have become right wing terrorist training camps for bears. We’re teaching them that soul brothers are made of chocolate.
Don’t tell no one now, shhh. The South shall rahhhz agin ;)
Going to national parks and museums is educational, same as going to the lie-berry. Black peoples who do that be actin’ all white and stuff.
Minorities don’t go because they don’t care. Now, an amusement park, that’s a different story...
This is the worst type of racism. Too suggest that those of us who aren’t white are this weak-minded and scared is insulting at best...putrid racism at worst.
It is really getting silly now..
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