National Parks Try to Appeal to Minorities
8th September 2013
The hills are alive … with the sounds of raaaaaaacism.
“We’ve been here for two days, walking around, and I can’t think of any brown person that I’ve seen,” said Carol Cain, 42, a New Jersey resident of Dominican and Puerto Rican roots, who was zipped up tight in her hooded, dripping rain jacket.
The National Park Service knows all too well what Ms. Cain is talking about. In a soul-searching, head-scratching journey of its own, the agency that manages some of the most awe-inspiring public places is scrambling to rethink and redefine itself to the growing number of Americans who do not use the parks in the way that previous — mostly white — generations did.
Only about one in five visitors to a national park site is nonwhite, according to a 2011 University of Wyoming report commissioned by the Park Service, and only about 1 in 10 is Hispanic — a particularly lackluster embrace by the nation’s fastest-growing demographic group.
Well, if you reject white culture, you reject the things that come with white culture, and wandering around in the woods appears to be part of the mix.
The New Republic, of course, has the answer — or thinks it does: White People Love Hiking. Minorities Don’t. Here’s Why.
This strikes me as the truest line in the piece—and the biggest hurdle to diversifying outdoor participation. Yes, there are economic barriers, but the cultural ramifications of those economic barriers are more devastating, as they ripple across generations. Say you’re a black teenager in Washington, D.C., or a Hispanic teenager in Denver. Statistically, there’s a good chance you have never been to Shenandoah National Park or Rocky Mountain National Park, respectively, because your parents had neither the means nor the interest. Then you grow up, get a good job, and enter a higher income bracket. Why on Earth would you use your hard-earned vacation time to spend a week eating freeze-dried food in the woods—rather than, say, reclining at a seaside hotel on Miami Beach, frozen margarita in hand?
Apparently the reason minorities don’t like camping is because they aren’t enough like white people, and that is apparently a tragedy. (Talk about your Freudian slips….)