Posted on 10/30/2011 12:22:14 PM PDT by thecodont
Reporting from Yosemite National Park— Their Yosemite Valley tour was nearing its end, and the church ladies and gents from South Los Angeles had heard enough. Almost.
"He's been telling us stories he thinks we want to hear for two hours," said Ann Hale, 70, heaving a sigh of frustration from the back of the tram.
In fact, guide William Fontana had been regaling his listeners — most of them white — with stories about John Muir and Theodore Roosevelt, about fur trappers and rock climbers.
"We're still waiting for at least a few words about Yosemite's African American Buffalo Soldiers," Hale grumbled to a fellow passenger.
After filing off the tram, some women from Grace United Methodist Church surrounded Fontana on the sidewalk outside the Yosemite Lodge.
"Questions, ladies?" he asked.
"Yes," Hale said. "We want to know why you left out Yosemite's African American story."
Fontana seemed puzzled. "I don't have enough time to talk about Buffalo Soldiers in a two-hour tour," he explained.
Hale nodded politely and walked away.
For more than 60 years, the National Park Service has been trying to reach out to African Americans and Latinos. But its 395 parks, monuments, waterways, historic places and recreational areas remain largely the province of white Americans and tourists from around the world.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Related story:
http://articles.latimes.com/2003/feb/15/local/me-buffalo15
What does that mean?
How Orwellian.
It’s a park, for crying out loud.
means “more muslins”
Not Enough Rainbow Colored People Visiting Our National Parks Alert.
I don’t think it’s the job of the Park Service to run a business. If blacks and Latinos don’t want to visit, then so what? And I would also suggest that they increase their admission until they cover their costs. It costs better than $100 to get a one day pass to Disney for one person. The Park Service can do the same, and simultaneously reduce the impact on the environment by reducing the number of visitors. There is no reason the taxpayer should be subsidizing the park-goers.
In other words they want to rewrite history. Okay how about “These black guys went and almost made the buffalo extinct. It was a crime against nature and we now need reparations for the buffalo”
I agree with everything you said 100%. Grand Canyon National Park is being “loved” to death. I grew up there. Now, I hate to go back there because the place has been destroyed. IMHO.
They need to follow the Northeastern model for park management. Let the minorities in to spraypaint “mutherf*cker” on the rocks.
That will show their involvement.
Apparently, unless blacks are mentioned more by the guides, there’s gonna be some kind of taxpayer revolt.
I have never in my life been subjected to more politically correct and outright government centered PROPAGANDA as I have when taking guided tours in National Parks. I swear that the Rangers must be almost as brainwashed as the #OWS kooks. Just MHO.
Gimme a break. This is one of the stupidest stories I have ever heard.
For one thing, most Latin Americans who come here, except for Indians from remotest Guatemala, are of European descent (Spanish, English, French and German) and thus would be considered “white.”
But this has nothing to do with ethnic groups. It’s simply an account of the foundation of national parks. Theodore Roosevelt, like him or not, was the founder of national parks, not only for the US but ultimately for Europe and the entire civilized (i.e., non-Muslim) world.
Yosemite, from what I have seen when I have been there, has an enormously diverse visitor base from virtually every country in the world. The only people who don’t travel there much, based on my purely anecdotal research, are US blacks, but that’s their problem. Maybe they should look beyond their skin color and become human beings.
We now have social engineering at our national parks.
When I read the headline to this thread, I thought it was one of those semi-satire links.
After visiting there, I would tell any tour guide to STFU. If ever there was a place so beautiful it defied description, it was Yosemite. I went there to make photos in the manner of Ansel Adams. It is hard NOT to take a good photo there-— morning noon and night.
The women in the article obviously have never met Shelton Johnson.
http://www.pbs.org/nationalparks/people/nps/johnson/
“And I can’t not think of the other kids, just like me – in Detroit, Oakland, Watts, Anacostia – today. How do I get them here? How do I let them know about the buffalo soldier history, to let them know that we, too, have a place here?”-Shelton Johnson
Shelton Johnson dreamed of mountains as a boy, living in inner city Detroit. He had never been to a mountain range in the United States and his only experiences with nature and wildlife came through television and movie screens.
Enrolled in an MFA program at the University of Michigan, Shelton applied to be a seasonal worker at Yellowstone, thinking the park would provide a quiet place to work on his writing. “I got off a bus in Gardiner, Montana,” Shelton remembers, “right outside the north entrance....And as I was stepping down onto the ground, there was a bison – a 2,000-pound animal – walking by. There was no one else around and the bison was just strolling by! I looked up at the driver and I said, ‘Does this happen all the time?’ And he looked at me and said, ‘All the time.’ And I said to myself, ‘I have arrived.’”
Shelton Johnson dressed as a Buffalo Soldier, Yosemite National Park
Shelton has been working in national parks ever since, spending time in Yellowstone, Great Basin, and as an interpreter at Fort Dupont Park in the Anacostia section of Washington, DC. There, he met students like himself and his friends who had grown up in Detroit – tough inner-city black kids whose understanding of nature was about as distant as Mars. “That’s when I first made the resolution that I had to figure out how to connect these kids with nature, to get them to have a nature experience.”
Thank God you’re not running the National Parks. People go to Disney to see the man-made crap, so you pay to create the man-made crap, and for the employees to take care of you. The National Parks could be free. Their costs are “environmental management,” which are not benefits to the people who go there. The parks which draw a crowd (acadia, Yellowstone, Yosemite, Skyline Drive, etc.) easily cover costs; the fees pay for bullying people out of their land so unwanted parks can prevent mining (Grand Staircase, etc.).
There may be some benefit to preserving as national parks certain parks which don’t draw the crowds (Denali, etc.), but why should those costs be borne by the people who are already supporting other parks? That would have the perverse effect of reducing the demand for those parks.
Now, if you’re asking whether you could wring some extra profit by raising prices instead of turning people away because there’s no room, you’d have a case, if there truly was no room. But mostly, that happens because the park won’t allow increased accomodation, not because the parks are too full. But there’s certainly an argument for preserving the parks by not allowing over-development.
“Apparently, unless blacks are mentioned more by the guides, there’s gonna be some kind of taxpayer revolt.”
The tour guide at Arlington National Cemetary gave the impression that no white person ever served in the US military.
“...And here is the grave of the first black soldier to fold his socks...”
I guess it would be too much trouble for them to crack a book open and do a little research. I mean with the internet it’s so much trouble to find out anything, we have to have a “guide” tell us what we could’ve found out on our own. This story smells of fabrication or collaboration.
Diversity is where nations go to die.
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