NATIONAL PARKS AND AMERICAN PEOPLE OF COLOR

Hiking around any National Park, it is surprising how many people from around the world are there. The air is thick with different languages, sometimes as we walked in a line because it's so crowded, through the wonders of this Earth. Despite the amazing diversity of visitors at the national parks, there are holes in the spectrum.

 I saw very few African American families and no Native American people. Perhaps it is economic, which, in itself, is a testament to intuitional racism, but it seemed more than that. I saw one lone black man. He took in the grandeur of the desert canyons with his eyes (unlike the Asian family nearby who enjoyed the view through their phones and cameras). He seemed a solitary representative of his culture. I wanted to ask him about his story, but his focus on the landscape made me hold back. I didn’t want to interrupt his vacation. We met him on a trail later, and through panting breaths, he said, “Damn, this canyon is hell-a big.”

I laughed and encouraged him that he was almost to the top. I asked if he was all alone. His reply opened my eyes to yet another realm where racism has twisted reality into a gross morph of injustice. No one wanted to come with him because his friends and family thought parks were for white people.

I asked him to elaborate. He went on to say that his grandmother had been denied entry into a National Park when she was a girl because they didn’t have a colored section. He said the parks were set up as a place for white people by white founders who never intended to be inclusive. But he had a long-held dream of seeing the Grand Canyon from a book he had as a child. Having saved up money and determined to go, he set off by himself.

I asked him if he felt any racism in the parks. He said, “No. It’s been chill. Lots of different kinds of people here, but most everyone with dark skin seems to be from India.”

I had to agree. We parted ways, and it got me thinking. I did some research and found that, indeed, the founders of the parks were not just sort of racist; they were raging racist. The two founders of Save the Redwoods, Madison Grant and Henry Fairfield Osborn, weren’t quiet about their beliefs in preserving the wilderness for the ‘superior Nordic races.’ Together they founded the American Eugenics Society, which decreed the goal of arranging reproduction in humans to breed desirable characteristics, which was later adopted by Hitler and the Nazi party for their doctrine. (A side note here to let the fact that the Nazi doctrine actually originated in America is noteworthy as we slip into apple-pie fascism with the upcoming election.)

Teddy Roosevelt was the first president to set aside lands for National Parks. I had heard a sweet story of how Teddy and John Muir went camping for three nights. John Muir poetically lectured about the beauty of the land and its need for protection, which convinced Roosevelt to declare Yosemite as a national park. But what I didn’t know was Roosevelt also claimed that the white race had to endure the vigor of the outdoors, or else they would become too soft and hence inferior.

Like all aspects of institutional racism, it’s insidious and all-pervasive. Even though the parks don’t have a policy of racism now, the long-held beliefs still echo in their hills and are remembered by the Native and African Americans of this nation.

The long-imprisoned black activist Abdul Jamal said that to undo racism, you can’t expect the oppressed to rise but it is up to the system and the privileged to extend reverse racism by giving advantages to those who have been lacking in opportunity.

Even though there are groundbreaking groups like the Full Circle Everest Expedition, which was the first all-black expedition to climb to the summit of Everest in 2022, or the Black Girl Hike RVA, which is encouraging black women to explore the great outdoors, there should be incentives for black America to see these wonders. Unfortunately, at this time, many of the parks are overrun and maxing their capacity. Humanity is brimming over as housing, health care, and the National Parks scramble to serve the masses.

But for me, the diversity of nature should be shared with the diversity of humanity. So, on this Juneteenth, as we celebrate freedom from slavery and the rise of the human spirit from bondage, I am thinking of inviting my diversity of friends for a hike.