A great headline at The Nation... but is it deadly serious? Actually, yes:
Through military and legislative intervention, such as the Mariposa Battalion’s violent raid of the village of Ahwahneechee in 1851, which expelled the remaining Indigenous people from Yosemite, these places were cultivated primarily for white people. Early conservationists like Bowles, or the venerated John Muir or Madison Grant (who wrote one of the foundational texts of the American eugenics movement, The Passing of the Great Race: Or, The Racial Basis of European History), were not shy in advocating racial exclusivity: When they spoke of the importance of nature for our nation, they meant the white nation....
The complicated relationships that people of color in the United States have developed with the outdoors because of white violence, coupled with the fact that many local parks—and all national parks—either did not admit people of color or, in some cases, segregated them until 1964, rendered it an effectively white domain....
As many of us—myself included—are itching to be outside in the greenness of summer, it is important to recognize that these are privileges that have not been afforded to everyone. At this moment of nationwide racial justice reckoning, let’s not forget to interrogate the great outdoors. Like many of the most insidiously imbalanced institutions, it may appear neutral or “natural,” but it’s anything but. It’s a man-made construction, structured to exclude. So we must work to make it truly democratic so everyone can enjoy the physical, mental, and psychological benefits of our beautiful land. Let’s truly make it “our land.”
ADDED: Saying "White People" hides something that lefties talk about except when they don't talk about it: women. It's much harder for women to feel free to get out and about in the great outdoors.
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Lloyd writes:
We think of "modern progress" as clearing forests, draining swamps, building cities and farming land with no thought to "saving wilderness" as something precious. Many moderns were inspired by the Bible, which sees the wilderness purely as a wilderness, possibly a temptation to believe sinfully that there is no God or no natural order. Modernity has added technology so that the destruction and transformation of what was wild could happen much faster, but surely every great civilization has taken a similar approach. The Moghul Emperors were known for their great gardens (such as in Kashmir); this owes something to what is wild, but it is not wild. The word "paradise" goes back to ancient references to "forest": originally something entirely dark and frightening, with far too many bears, wolves and big cats; eventually it became a cultivated preserve, belonging to a specific tyrant or rich person, with some exotic flora and fauna, and pathways that were safe to walk. The classic Greeks thought this would more likely belong to an Asian tyrant, greedy and self-absorbed, rather than to the rich citizen of a public-spirited community.
So how does the recent idea of saving wilderness even get started? It must be a project of fairly rich people with money and leisure. They want to go to a nice remote spot. In various parts of North America there were remote resorts, accessible up to a point by train, otherwise travel dependent on horses (always expensive to care for). The idea of getting poor people there, of any race, was pretty much out of the question. The expansion of railways made the wilderness more accessible, and brought about its destruction, so to speak, in real time. The second generation John Rockefeller and his wife Abby made a great effort to assemble land for parks. To some extent there is a desire to keep out large numbers of people, aka the poor, because they will tend to trample plants, maybe cut down trees, and leave candy wrappers. Sometimes they will want to hunt and fish; sometimes not for recreation, but for food. It is likely that non-whites would be excluded, as they would be from golf courses (a kind of comical send-up of wild lands) and private clubs.
So of course the progressives will say: if experiencing the wildnerness is a good thing, there should be some kind of equal access to it. The old question about communists: would they prefer that a good thing that by definition cannot be shared widely, be destroyed?
Darleen Click writes:
How do you get suburban or even urban people comfortable with camping in the wilderness?
It used to be getting the kids into Scouting before the institutions fell to "wokeness". Scouting taught people how to handle and behave out there "in the wild".
I cannot tell you the fury I feel going up into campgrounds or along trails easily accessible by people who have no clue that are regularly choked with trash, dirty diapers, broken equipment, etc. The small mountain communities surrounding the Los Angeles basin dread both summer and the first snows of winter because the “flatlanders” seem to feel they have a license to do anything and everything they wish and “someone else” will clean up after them. They take no responsibility for the wilderness and have no respect even for private property in the mountains.
It isn't about "white men" but about the ignorant and uncaring slobs of any melanin level who shouldn't set one foot in any national or state park.
Let the author of the latest hack piece of “White People are Evil” address that studiously ignored issue.
A reader named Les writes:
"When everything is racist—icebergs, forests, mathematics, home cooking, ambition, saving money, traffic lights, not bashing a stranger’s head in for the fun of it—then nothing is racist. Now I can admit: I’m tired of thinking and caring about people of color. I don’t care about you and your problems any more. You had me on your side, but you hate me so much I’m repelled and I’m finished with you. Be off and leave me alone."
Pat writes:
The author of article in The Nation is partially correct that some of the folks who were involved in the creation of the national and local parks (Robert Moses of NYC, comes to mind) were in fact racists. And the wilderness areas in these parks where no power tools or motor vehicles are permitted, are really only usable by people with the time and physical health to trek into them and the money to get there and buy the expensive camping gear needed to stay there. These folks are mostly young, white and from upper middle class or rich families making them something like the royal parks reserved for the nobles in the past.
But here in Pittsburgh today, when my buddy and I go bike riding in Schenley Park or over to city pool and park near his house there are plenty of people using them who do not meet that description of all races and classes. In fact, a majority of the pool users are African American.
Thomas Sowell, the great economist (who happens to be black) talks about his family sleeping on the fire escapes during the summers when he lived in Harlem as a child, and of his neighbors, who did not have a roof or fire escape to sleep on, taking their blankets to the local city park.
Whatever the motivations and prejudices of the people who built them, they are open and available to all races and classes and they are a wonderful and inexpensive way for ordinary folks to relax and get some fresh air away from their apartments and work.
The Oliver Bath House in our South Side neighborhood was built by the City of Pittsburgh to provide a place for the Eastern European mill workers who lived in tenements with no running water, to have a place to wash up after work. And it also has an indoor swimming pool that is open all winter. It now serves a mostly African American clientele (if it is still open, I am speaking from memory of the last time I visited it some years ago). My local pool in the borough of Crafton is built almost literally across the street from public housing developments and serves everyone from older white folks like me, who go there to swim laps, to kids of every race and class who go there for swimming lessons and their families who go there to cool off during the summer. There is a little park with picnic benches where families can eat their packed lunches or use the grill for dinner.
Is there no nit these people will not pick in their quest for victimhood and a reason to be angry and to have an opportunity to display their virtue by criticizing it?
Thankfully, I do not read The Nation or watch network TV and so I mostly don’t have to read or listen to such BS.
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