"This sport took off in our country after World War II. It was created for affluent white soldiers who experienced it in France and Europe."
Said Daniel Krymkowski, "a sociology professor at the University of Vermont who published a book last year about African American underrepresentation in fine arts and outdoor recreation," quoted in "Who Gets to Ski? The mountains are too crowded. The sport is too expensive. Several resorts are trying to fix a number of problems. How are they doing?" (NYT).
Only 1.5% of skiers are black, so they're not the reason why the resorts are crowded, but according to Anthony Kwame Harrison, a professor of sociology and Africana studies at Virginia Tech, "if longtime skiers become frustrated because they are seeing ski areas being crowded, when you look at that crowd, who do you immediately identify as being most out of place?" It's not that skiers are racist, just that they're stressed by the crowds and in an exclusionary mood.
Meanwhile, there are efforts to bring in new skiers — beginning skiers — who are "Black and brown and Indigenous." I feel nudged to think that racial problems have arisen, but I'm not seeing anything specific in the article. There seem to be 2 different issues — crowded slopes and lack of racial diversity in the sport — and they're jammed together like an idea for a movie plot.
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113 comments:
Race hustlers typically find racism under every rock, now they're finding it under every snowflake. They are a resourceful bunch. Just not enough racism out there to meet demand. Scuba diving is next.
The diversity problem can easily be solved. Collect white folks from the ski slopes and bus them to basketball courts. Return to ski slopes with a busload of black folks. Works for the school districts. Use one of those electric powered buses.
"when you look at that crowd, who do you immediately identify as being most out of place?"
I can't tell you how many times, over my hot cocoa, amid the din of clomping ski boots, before a roaring fire, I have intensely scanned the crowd in the lodge for anybody who "looks out of place."
there are efforts to bring in new skiers — beginning skiers — who are "Black and brown and Indigenous."
You KNOW what poor black people want to do!
Spend thousands of dollars on skis/boots/bindings/poles/googles/coats/gloves/hats/pants
so that they can spend the weekend (and hundreds and hundreds more on lift/hotel/food)
falling in the snow! WHEE!!!!!
what's that? they don't have to buy equip, they can rent?
Then, it's just (and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds on ski rental/lift/hotel/food)
so they can spend the weekend falling in the snow! WHEE!!!!!
Cold injuries are more prevalent in individuals of African descent.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25081130/
You ever talk to black people? They hate the cold. They laugh when they say it so you know they mean it. Conversely, I don't do well in the heat.
Is there any concern about the lack of people of European descent in pick-up bball in August?
There should be a government agency to investigate this.
Seriously, do y'all know A LOT of blacks that like the snow?
Only norskies are so stupid as to think snow is fun (well, and sweeds too, i guess)
For the price of a weekend ski trip, you could buy a used snowmobile...
And THEN, you could spend your weekends in the garage... Working on it and Trying to get it started
It was created for affluent white soldiers who experienced it in France and Europe."
I can't even.
Now do curling…
Tank’s Dad learned to ski in France after WWII. He was poor, I mean poor. So the very first line is pure BS.
I'm just noticing the "things could have been worse" tag for the first time. That's a shame.
And here I was thinking skiing was segregated by class.
Does anyone really give a flying f**k if black/brown people aren't on the slopes? Apparently, all other societal problems have been solved and now we can finally focus on those nagging, fringe issues.
Geese, where to start? I never thought of skiing as having been started for white affluent skiers after the war. Sounds like just another way to put the words white and affluent in the same sentence. My skiing experience lasted for 15 years and ended about 25 years ago. We regularly skied on a small mountain about 1.5 hours from a major east coast city. It was not unusual to see blacks there and there was a regular black ski club that showed up multiple times a season. Is skiing segregated? That means different races not allowed, which is obviously not the case. Maybe there is a larger segment of blacks who just, you know, don’t like to be cold. Or like to do other things instead
"Black and brown and Indigenous."
In Vermont the indigenous are the Woodchuck. They tend to bitch about the skiing flatlanders then sneak off and ski when they think nobody is looking…
Massoon beat me to it at 6:23. The person who wrote that knows little about the history of skiing in this country. That line is laughable.
On a happier note, a ninth-grade classmate was from Jamaica. He’d taken up skiing only a few years earlier but was a champion racer, just a natural talent. This being 1988 we called him - fondly, and with admiration - The Jamaican Ski Team.
The same situation exists in Europe. In Switzerland 35% of the population skis, while in Turkey only 1% does. The distance from Switzerland to Turkey (1500 miles) is like the distance from Montana to Mississippi (1800 miles). In fact, in the US only about 5% of the population of any color skis, so you can see that ... well, something ...
If God wanted blacks on the ski slopes, then why did He make the snow white?
The author should take a trip to this place in NJ
https://winter4kids.org/
If we are now down to focusing on oppressed indigenous skiers, it's official, racism is over.
Wilbur:
Hates cold weather, period.
Could never see the wisdom in strapping his feet onto a couple of slick boards and shooting down some hill.
Could never see the wisdom in a) traveling to faraway places with strange-sounding names to do this, and b) paying a considerable amount of money to do so.
If you like it, knock yourself out.
The W4Kids program is directed toward inner city kids to expose them to winter sports, specifically skiing and boarding.
Crowding went from being an irritation to an actual problem for the casual skier with the introduction of all mountain passes like Epic Pass. No need to invoke anything else, much less race. Now racial underrepresentation, yes it's a fact, but why is it a problem? A normal consequence of different people doing what gives them the most enjoyment is not segregation.
Back decades ago, my black supervisor cleared it up for me. I'd grilled up a steak for lunch break at his request. It had a nice crust, kinda smoky and medium rare. He took me aside, thanked me, and said " black folk don't like rare meat and cold weather". I also had a long discussion with an aged army surplus store owner about my intro into skiing via military surplus clothing. To date this, on the way home we listened to news of the Cuban Revolution and Castro's rebel's movements. The store owner said he knew many of the 10th Mountain Division, and indeed skied with them in the early 50's. Nobody had much money back then, and Gore-Tex was decades away. BTW, National Lampoon once listed one of the shortest books in print as "Blacks I've Met While Yachting".
Now do Ice Boating.
Don't know about crowded slopes because I don't ski, but the lack of diversity in skiing is most likely due to the fact that 54% (and increasing) of Blacks live in the South where skiing is not really a tradition or even possible due to the climate and paucity of both ski areas and snow. Having grown up in NC I not only never learned to snow ski, I don't remember even knowing anyone (White or Black) who snow skied, but plenty who water skied. Similarly, nearly all 148 NCAA sanctioned ice hockey programs are scattered across (surprise, surprise) the Northeast and the upper Midwest where the population has fewer Blacks. Significantly, no HBCU institution has an ice hockey team or snow ski team, but neither does any SEC team.
Traditional winter sports require ice and snow, neither of which is found in sufficient naturally occurring quantities in the areas where the most Blacks live to support early, organic development of traditional winter sports among the area youth. In fact none of the ACC schools, including the professor's own Va Tech have ice hockey teams. Only a handful have snow ski teams, mostly clustered in and around the Appalachians. No matter how hard the Virginia Tech prof tries he won't be able to make this a racial discrimination issue, but I'm sure he'll keep trying.
Cleaning out my garage a few weeks ago, I found my old skis, boots and poles. I gave them to my Amish buddy's kids. They love to ski. A 50 foot rope tied to a buggy and off they go.
Are the Amish a race? Asking for friend.
Look at the people on the slopes spending the money. Don't they look like the kind of people who could be made to feel guilty about their privilege? Crowds of them.
Willie Sutton. Banks. Money.
When you heat your home with the guilt, you go to the source. The effort to find additional proven reserves is never ending.
I have been an enthusiastic skier for many years: I grew up with wooden skis (and tar bases) and rope tows. Always great fun. But only because I'm a white male. OMG, if I had ever seen a POC at the ski mountain --staining the Pure White Scene with all that melanin-- I would have absolutely called the SKKKi Patrol.
Need I add the sarc tag?
Using “segregated” to describe a situation where no one is excluded by design, but the natural choices of individual people have led to racial disparities may technically be accurate, but it is still dishonest.
How many black people live near ski areas? Colorado and Utah are famously white. Vermont? Maine? The Midwest isn't known for great skiing. Seems like a geographic problem.
The slopes don't care who skis on them. You cannot grab people out of their beds at night, kicking and screaming, and send them to the slopes for a good morning run. They have to choose to do that themselves. For God's sake, stop the madness.
Same thing goes for ice skating and then...hockey. It's there. You just have to want to do it. If you prefer to play, let's say basketball, that's a choice, not racism.
Oh FFS. And what pretty much everyone else has said.
That “journalist” needs a f/king reality check.
I broke my leg skiing ... worst pain I've ever experienced. Older brother messed up his knee snowboarding.
Sonny Bono.
Natasha Richardson.
Is it possible POC just have more common sense?
When I was growing up a young blonde white woman with blue eyes, I could not, not could my parents, afford to go skiing as it is quite expensive. I worked since I was 14. I bought my own clothing, and paid for my own schooling. I did not ski, as I was frugal, and bought only what I need to live comfortably. It's NOT a racial thing. It is a class thing.
Tried skiing in Winter Park, CO once about 20 years ago, and I was terrible at it... never had any desire to repeat the experience. Like boating, it's a very expensive hobby and (mostly) only the wealthy get to participate. It's a class thing, not a race thing.
Meanwhile, at the other end, those 1.5 percent who do ski no doubt get accused of acting white.
"This sport took off in our country after World War II. It was created for affluent white soldiers who experienced it in France and Europe."
This is a bit off. There had been some skiing going back into the 19th Century. By shortly before WW II, it was starting to get some popularity, at least in places like CO and VT. My memory is that the railroad built sun valley as a destination for its trains. Maybe the first actual ski lifts. My father started before the war, and had memories of these days in CO. WW II intervened, and the Army scooped up a large percentage of the skiers of the day into the 10th Mountain Division. They trained at Camp Hale, by Tennessee Pass, between Leadville and Minturn (next to Vail). They had a brutal fight up the Italian peninsula (where Bob Dole, a replacement 2nd LT, was permanently disabled). Those who survived, were the founders of the modern American ski industry. By the time we started skiing, in 1960, the 10th Mountain mafia had been busy building the ski industry in CO (and probably VT, etc on the east coast). All of the ski areas started after the war seemed to have 10th Mtn involvement (Aspen and Berthod Pass predated the war). The crown jewel was, of course, Vail, discovered 20 years earlier while they were on maneuvers out of Camp Hale.
Skiing really hadn’t gone mainstream when we were growing up. It was weird, because it seemed that everyone in our neighborhood grew up skiing. But I think that there was a huge amount of natural selection and sorting going on. We lived in the most western suburbs, right up by the mountains, and skiing. A lot of 10th Mountain veterans living there, and ultimately met others ski racing in HS. But it really wasn’t that expensive - our entire family of 7 would have a condo at Snowmass for Spring Break, and run into neighbors on the slopes. My senior year in HS (67-68), we raced for Arapaho Basin, and our season passes cost $35. Those with 10th Mtn connections weren’t even paying that, since a lot of them were stockholders, and had free lift tickets.
The sport seemed to take off when it moved from locals (like us) driving to the ski areas for the day, to those making ski areas their vacation destination. Sun Valley and Aspen in the west from before the war, then Vail almost 20 years later. But then things seemed to explode in the late 1960s, with condos springing up all over the place, along with more ski areas that ultimately became destination resorts. I was on trail crew cutting runs at Keystone in the summer of 1970, and had a racing buddy/roommate doing similar at Copper Mountain that opened the next year, a year late, due to financing. Parents bought a condo around there in 1971, and then, the next year built a bunch of them in Steamboat. Boom and Bust - the condo market promptly collapsed, not rebounding for most of the 1970s. Still, the sport has continued to grow to this day.
Looking back at the original quote - the ski boom in this country wasn’t started by rich soldiers who had experienced it in Europe, but rather by a cadre of skiers, from places like VT and CO, who had learned to ski before the war, at places like Aspen and Berthod Pass in CO, and became the core of the 10th Mountain Division, being formed and trained, not far from where Vail is now. That is the military connection - the non skiers in that division came back as skiers. Though they trained as ski troops, they just used their mountaineering skills as they fought their way up the mountainous Italian peninsula, memorialized by many of the original trails at Vail.
What crap. The crowds last year were because of the social distancing requirements on the lifts--only one or two riders on 4 and 6 person lifts.
Nobody--absolutely nobody--objects to people skiing because of the color of their skin. In fact the demographic that skis--primarily white, wealthy, educated--actively encourages and welcomes "diversity".
"Black and brown and Indigenous."
That approach to capitalization creates a mal de mer effect.
In fact none of the ACC schools, including the professor's own Va Tech have ice hockey teams
The University of Louisville has a Men's Ice Hockey team.
FYI - Last week Jason Calacanis started this amusing twitter thread about what legitimately irks skiiers:
https://twitter.com/Jason/status/1487921830102913025
“ How many black people live near ski areas? Colorado and Utah are famously white. Vermont? Maine? The Midwest isn't known for great skiing. Seems like a geographic problem.“
Yet a surprising number good skiers come out of there. I never could understand it, growing up in CO and skiing both Aspen and Vail by the time I was in Jr. High. But they turn out good skiers on those ant sized ski hills. Even as of 5 years ago, Buck Hill, by Minneapolis/St Paul, had one of the premier training programs in the country. A friend of mine in Spokane had mis middle kid, when she was in HS, train with them at Mt Hood a couple summers. They were on the lifts by 7, while the other race groups would be there by 10. Then just gates, gates, gates. He had connections to the ski team there from when he was in HS, and his father had taken his sabbatical at the U of M one year.
I was surprised at how many mid west skiers I met in college. My freshman year roommate and his best friend from HS, living a couple doors down, were from the Twin Cities, and one of the reasons they picked a school in CO for college was the skiing. They both returned to MN for grad school, raised their families there, but came out west once a year for a ski trip. I was in a back country ski group with them into our 60s.
Skiing is an activity done while covered head to toe, in hats, hoods, gloves, masks and goggles. It might be the sport where it is literally the least possible to visually identify the race of other participants. What a race-baiting clown.
I'm a little surprised that America's sociologists have yet to discover the overwhelmingly white participation rate in driveway basketball.
Heh.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mptT4YDAsZg
Cross country skiing, on the other hand, is much cheaper and therefore more diversity potential.
Wait until they find out what snow looks like, and the term "the Great White North", or 'Beware of a Whiteout", and a clothing line named "North Face".
The opportunities to be offended and concerned are endless.
Here we go again.
The left throws out some outrageous accusation of racism, then all the good people rush to the battle field to defend their honor.
Attack them with "I'd love for black people to join us on the slopes. The hiking trails, the swimming holes, the golf course, etc. It's show them how diverse we are, then they'll leave us alone."
Watch them reel, licking their wounds after a panicked retreat.
"I'm not seeing anything specific in the article. There seem to be 2 different issues — crowded slopes and lack of racial diversity in the sport — and they're jammed together"
What, jamming is not specific enough? The whole prog racial hustle consists of such jamming.
Anyway, next they'll be saying blacks hardly visit the almost-free national parks because of racism.
There seem to be 2 different issues — crowded slopes and lack of racial diversity in the sport — and they're jammed together like an idea for a movie plot.
And a Hallmark movie at that.
Blogger wendybar said...
“When I was growing up a young blonde white woman with blue eyes, I could not, not could my parents, afford to go skiing as it is quite expensive. I worked since I was 14. I bought my own clothing, and paid for my own schooling. I did not ski, as I was frugal, and bought only what I need to live comfortably. It's NOT a racial thing. It is a class thing”
And, yet, we bought our own ski equipment, lift tickets, etc, from the time we were in middle school on up. So, it could be done, at least back in the 1960s. And even back then, if you were racing, you needed several pairs of higher end skis.
That said, we were spoiled. So it was very much a class thing. It’s a place where you can spend a lot of money and flaunt it. Grew up around it, so thought that a lot of that was pretty phony. Esp all the shop keepers in Vail practicing their German on each other. But it has only gotten worse. That girl I mentioned earlier, who trained summers at MT Hood, with the Buck Hill team, is now a senior in college, and teaches skiing at the Yellowstone Club. Gorgeous skier. Suffice it to say that pretty much every client of hers has a Wikipedia entry. She is routinely hailed in the lift line by A List actors and top hedge fund managers. It’s a private ski area, only open to members and guests. She made $1k in tips one day over Christmas break this year. Far better way to make college money than waiting tables. Oh, and the racist part - supposedly Oprah has a place there.
"This sport took off in our country after World War II. It was created for affluent white soldiers who experienced it in France and Europe."
Said Daniel Krymkowski, "a sociology professor at the University of Vermont
We all loved White Christmas with Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, Rosemary Clooney, Vera-Ellen and Dean Jagger, but most of us never thought of basing a thesis, a career, a world view and a movement on it. I always liked to point out that Dean Jagger, who seemed like the oldest man in the world in White Christmas, was 20 or 30 years younger then than Mick Jagger is now. Maybe more relevant is that it was Irving Berlin who wrote the famous title song. I'm dreaming of that marvelous cultural appropriation, just like the ones we used to know.
This is the way to get a job in academia, though. You can be whiter than white, but after years of graduate school, race, racism, White supremacism are all you can talk about if you want a job in the social sciences or humanities -- if you can't go the gender, sexual orientation, or sexual identity route. Curiously, African-Americans either don't patrol their turf well enough or aren't numerous enough to keep out straight White male interlopers, the way that feminists and the LGBTQQ community are. Or maybe it's racism.
When I was in high school, I was looking through college catalogues and American Studies seemed like the most fascinating department -- The Great American Story. I didn't pick that field, but when I finally got to graduate school I couldn't help noticing that most people in the field seemed to be hostile to The Great American Story and maybe hostile to the country itself. At every turn, their impulse was to break the country up conceptually into racial categories. I guess older students had become sick of too much American triumphalism and exceptionalism, but students now haven't been exposed to that old narrative.
Let me join in the chorus of those lambasting this ridiculous statement: "This sport took off in our country after World War II. It was created for affluent white soldiers who experienced it in France and Europe." See Bruce Hayden's comment for the real story. I started skiing in the mid-sixties when I was in 6th grade, thanks to the Green Bay Press Gazette ski school and the 200 ft vertical Baird's Creek hill. Never stopped. Going out to Utah in a week to ski on a real mountain or two. It has gotten more expensive over the decades and that is the main exclusionary factor. But if you want to do it, it's doable. And in over 50 years of skiing, I've never once heard any skier make any comment about race. At the end of the day skiers talk about the mountain, the snow conditions, where to ski tomorrow, and the epic crash they either saw or had (colloquially known as a yard sale). On the weekend you might throw in a complaint or two about the lift lines.
Skiing is strictly a white person sport and for people who act white, the latter probably did their homework and did well in school and ignored the mockery aimed at them and their pulled up pants.
Face it, black people don’t love cold weather, they don’t like skiing or ice hockey or curling some Jamaicans like to bobsled. Skiing is expensive, very.
I learned to ski in the San Fernando Valley on one of those moving-carpet ski machines under the bright Southern California sun. This qualified as a P.E. class for Caltech. This was ca. 1973/1974. We'd snow plow from side to side with a safety bar running across the carpet. Eventually we learned how to parallel ski. Wow, what an expert I had become!
Snow didn't fall very often in the San Bernardino Mountains. When it did, every skier headed for the slopes. We'd leave at oh-dark:30 and take I-210/I-10 to Redlands then state highways to the Big Bear ski areas. The state highways were two-lanes, and traffic was bumper to bumper. Once we got there, we'd have to cruise the parking lots to find a space.
My first run of the day was way too advanced for me. I got part way down with much falling, then gave up and walked back to the lodge. Moving-carpet skiing is nothing like the real thing.
The lift lines are always crowded. It seemed like a good day would be one run an hour. Five minutes skiing downhill and 50 minutes waiting in line and 5 minutes riding the chair.
I eventually gave up downhill because the expense/run wasn't worth it. That was around 1979. I took up cross country for a while. I haven't skied in about 25 years and got rid of the equipment about 3 years ago.
Skiing is an expensive sport. Stand in line for hours for a few minutes of fun. Inner city Blacks are making rational decisions with playing basket ball and football, instead of spending money they don't have on a luxury activity. Very rational.
"...who do you immediately identify as being most out of place?"
Once upon a time (during the Obama admin, when the race hustling hit 11), I used to wish that black people could know how little white people think about race, and that we (most of us, anyway) do not upon seeing a crowd of people immediately identity the darker faces and go, "Uh-huh, there they are." I thought that that knowledge might improve things.
But now it's obvious that the feelings of "They hate me 'cause I'm black" are aspirational.
Reminds me of a 4th season Twilight Zone episode, "On Thursday We Leave for Home." The captain of a spaceship had kept all his people together during the long years they were marooned on an asteroid. Then rescuers suddenly arrive to take everyone back to Earth. Good news, right? Well, not for the captain. Seeing he's no longer needed, he chooses to stay behind alone.
“I broke my leg skiing ... worst pain I've ever experienced. Older brother messed up his knee snowboarding.”
“Sonny Bono.”
“Natasha Richardson.”
Next brother, who turns 70 this year, is still ski racing. Well, except for the COVID-19 idiocy, which greatly destroyed the 2020-21 season, for no good reason (seriously, you aren’t going to catch the virus riding a lift with someone, esp in CO, with it’s blue skies, and a lot of virus killing UV). Broke his leg skiing in Jr High, but no real injuries since then of note.
When I was living in NW NV, not far from Tahoe, we could see Heavenly Valley from the office. It was great. I had a seasons pass there (ultimately expanded to include Keystone, Breck, and A Basin (the dreaded VR Epic Pass mentioned above), so I could ski with my kid on weekends back in CO). So, I would be on the lift by 8:30 when it opened, do laps for maybe an hour and a half, then be at my desk, in the valley below, by 11. In any case, Bono apparently died over in the area where I would do that (but he was skiing off the packed slopes at the time). I always liked him as a Congressman - he was one of the very few who understood IP (mostly C/R on his part). Friend had been an attorney working for him as a staffer, and then after his death moved to the House Judiciary IP subcommittee, where, among other things, he wrote the Sonny Bono(/Mickey Mouse) C/R Term Extension Act.
I always found something compelling about Richardson. The difference between the two is that Bono was a fairly good skier, and she was a rank novice.
I spent much of my life at the periphery of ski injuries. Knew two guys in HS/college who broke their backs skiing, ending up permanently disabled. First death I saw were 3 guys skiing around the 7 Sisters avalanche shoots on the way to Loveland Pass. They had, stupidly, gotten wiped by an avalanche down one of those shoots. Duh. I was working in the Patrol Room at Loveland Basin as a Jr Ski Patrol, when they brought them in. One died somewhere around then, a second lasted a week, and the third maybe a year, but without all of his mental facilities. During the mid 2000s, I worked with the Keystone Ski Patrol as a volunteer. We dealt with injuries on a routine basis. Do you know why you never see blood on the slopes? Because we all carried biohazard bags to clean it up. In any case, most injuries were pretty benign. But I remember one epic Sunday when a guy had a heart attack out back, fell out of the lift, and would have died, if a guy in the next chair, who had recently returned from fighting in the Middle East, hadn’t jumped out of his chair, and started CPR. A Flight For Life chopper was called in for him. Then some idiot in the Terrain Park landed on his neck. A second chopper was called. Then a teenager hit a tree on the front. Needed another chopper. Whoops, there are only two of them. Just as they were getting ready to load the heart attack victim on the first one, it was diverted to the front of the mountain for the guy who had hit the tree. The heart attack guy was stable, and they just continued with the snow cat down the mountain, to the clinic there. He survived. The Terrain Park idiot was lifted to Vail, and being young, recovered completely. Meanwhile, on the front of the mountain, the run was shut down, everyone moved off it, and the chopper landed on the slope. They loaded him in, and headed towards Denver (the Level 1 Trauma Center at St Anthony’s, west of Denver). He didn’t survive. One of the interesting things about working around it, is that you learn to tell where the choppers are headed, when coming out of that ski area. If they are flying west fairly low, they are heading to Frisco. That’s where that heart attack ended up. Higher, to the east, means Vail. And circling several times to gain altitude means Denver. A lot of those don’t survive.
Hmm, there's a ski industry advertising angle here:
Tired of murder, mayhem, rape and theft? Go skiing!
It would be helpful to have the top-rated comment included with this post. The criticisms and the necessary mockery of this article are pretty obvious, so for efficiency sake, why make twenty of your commenters write responses?
Howleson Hill, the US's oldest ski resort, was opened in 1914. Bousquet Mountain in Massachusetts opened in 1932. Wildcat in New Hampshire opened in 1933 and Attitash in 1934, both built through Roosevelt's New Deal agencies. Cranmore in NH opened in 1937. Stowe in Vermont was built by the CCC in 1933, and the nation's first ski patrol was established there in 1934. Lake Placid in NY not only opened in the winter of 1904/1905, it hosted the Winter Olympics in 1932. Sun Valley in Idaho installed the world's first chairlifts in 1936.
Vail wasn't established until 1962, well after WWII. Steamboat in 1963, Telluride in 1964. It seems as though there were a significant number of places open prior to WWII and a significant number that opened long enough after WWII as to make it unlikely that they were "created for affluent white soldiers who experienced it in France and Europe."
Despite this readily-findable information, a UVM professor and a NYT "journalist" both got this wrong, and the layers and layers of fact checkers at the Times failed to note this. Bear this in mind before you accept anything else in this article (or in the NYT) as true.
I happen to be in Breckenridge, CO, right now, as my spouse is attending a Continuing Medical Education conference that is also a ski vacay. The conference is almost exclusively white, with a few Asian physician families.
On the ski lifts, my wife met an English couple, a Thai pilot, and lots of American kids. She reports fewer potheads actively smoking or vaping while skiing here, than were in Keystone last year. Do with such data as you will.
She commented on the gear, the ski outfits, and the behavior of people much more than their
country of origin or anything to do with skin color. That might be due to the 100% skin coverage of skiers in cold weather on the slopes. I'd argue that skin color means less on a ski slope than on a sandy beach.
I’ve never seen a POC on the U.S. Equestrian Team. Maybe Bill Gates, Bruce Springsteen, Michael Bloomberg could sponsor a black kid and pay his/her way to train and compete in this sport. Oh, and don’t forget to buy the $$$ horses for them to learn to ride. All the daughters of the above mentioned are elite riders. They win because they have the best horses = most expensive. Let’s equal the playing field in this very segregated, elitist sport.
My father in law made his own wooden skis in the late 1930s as a kid in Buffalo, Ne said lots of kids did that, pre WWII.
"This sport took off in our country after World War II. It was created for affluent white soldiers who experienced it in France and Europe."
Isn't this the plot of "Holiday Inn"?
well, the headline writer convinced you to click on it, and that's what really matters
We've mentioned the huge under-representation of Euro-Americans in basketball, and of Afro-Americans in dressage. But we haven't talked about sports that seem better. Do teams, local/amateur or national/professional, display a good harmonious sexual racial balance that "looks like America" in :
Bowling?
Croquet?
Frisbee?
Olympic bi-athalons?
Olympic "modern pentathalon"?
Which sport does it right? And if NO sport can be identified as a good example, perhaps singling out one for condemnation is a bad thing, eh?
When all you got is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. That sums up the NYT.
Let me get this straight: Minority people are not skiing in sufficient numbers to mirror the population demographic, therefore, skiing must be implicitly racist?
Side question: Did the person who formed these conclusions have to take an SAT to gain admittance to the university they attended?
There is also a definite lack of black sailors in sailing and sail racing. Probably economic but 90% of the people in big time sailboat racing are crew, not owners. Some of the most well known professional sailors are black. Skiing is a more amateur sport which probably explains the difference.
I recall seeing several articles in the spring/summer lamenting the very same thing about national parks. No POC to be seen. Obviously due to segregation.
Same must be true for museums -- I rarely see any non-whites in any type of museum, natural history, art, etc. I must have missed the "WHITES ONLY" signs at the entrances.
tommyesq, 10:10:
Not to mention, the Thunderbolt Train, on Massachusetts' Mount Greylock, was built by the CCC and in 1936 was the site of the United States Eastern Alpine Ski Championships.
It had fallen into some disuse, but in the late '90s enjoyed a comeback. You need a lot of snow cover to ski it. It's unmaintained, and you have to earn your turns the hard way. At the top, just below the actual summit of Greylock, is a hut with a fireplace, and a plaque in honor of the original 10th Mountain Division ski troops.
Our mountain is full- still in a Covid yr- of flatlanders. It used to be full of Canadians- but the closing of the Border put a dent in that.
I'm at Camelback for the weekend, hard to tell who is what with everyone being all bundled up but there are POC here and Asian and Indian. A day lift ticket is $99 today. That's a pretty pricey day for a family of four and that's before you throw in food and parking.
That might have something to do with lack of participation by minorities.
And there are no lines.
Poor white people don't ski either; and they don't race yachts and they don't play polo. But no one gives a damn about poor white people.
White people who talk about "white" privilege are pampered people who have no idea what it's like to grow up poor. Poor white people know that there is no "white" privilege, but there is plenty of "wealth" privilege.
Wealthy race mongers love to segregate and pit the middle class and working class against each other by race. Because they fear a class war in which they would be out numbered.
Which is why the leftists shills in the media are working hard to label the Canadian truckers' freedom protest as racist. It's a worn out, ridiculous narrative, but it's worked so well for so long that they can't help but reflexibly use it.
Didn't Lake Placid host the winter Olympics in 1932, well before WW2? Anyone who is willing and able to afford it can ski, which is why I rarely go skiing anymore.
I have never seen a black person buy tanning products. Damn racists tanning product makers!
How many Moslems or Jews downhill Ski? Not many. Is someone keeping them from skiing? Could be antisemitism or Islamophobia at work.
Maybe we should give blacks free lift tickets. Or provide "Black only" ski runs so they can feel comfortable. And we could do the same thing for whites with basketball. Start white only teams so whites can get comfortable and overcome the hostile "black dominated" game.
A more important issue, is that I've read the sport has become absurdly expensive, because a few mega-corporations have bought most of the USA ski runs and hotels. No competition. Rising prices.
I stopped skiing 30 years ago. Too many people on the slopes. too many bad skiiers. I stopped fearing a wipeout and started to fear the other skiers and their running into me.
BTW, do the brits still use the dash? As in Ski-ing.
Dean Jagger. Yeah, he's "old man" in WHite Christmas. Actually the same age as Bing, or maybe even younger by a year or two. Danny Kaye was 8 years younger. But he was one of those guys who always looked middle-aged/old, like Lee Marvin or Gene Hackman.
I have never seen or heard of any resentment against black people on the slopes. Like in the gun community black people are usually welcomed with open arms. If anything they get an automatic pass from the resentment people feel towards other whites regarding all the crowding. They have a Black Privilege Card and this idiot can’t even see it.
“Brown” people in the form of Uber wealthy middle easterners breezing in with their entitled attitudes, scarily subservient women and incredibly rude behavior towards staff and female guests do get some side eye but they rarely bother skiing in the US so that’s not really an issue. Besides that is all about their behavior. Not their skin tone.
Black people don’t ski for the same reason they don’t camp. Because they don’t want to. Blacks who went to college and want to experience all the things they think are “White Privilege” like skiing and eating tiny portions at overpriced restaurants get mad because they are welcomed with open arms but there are few other black people there.
What I have learned over a long life of living with black people is that the idea of prejudice in their minds comes from the fact they only feel comfortable and happy surrounded by “people who look like them”. Read any of their screeds and that is what you will find at the bottom of it. After decades long friendships with blacks that is what I have found. They are fine with me hanging out with them and theirs but feel uncomfortable when hanging out with whites. No matter how welcoming and inclusive the whites are. This is not only a problem with American blacks. I have seen it in African and Carib blacks too. BLACK PEOPLE WANT TO BE WITH BLACK PEOPLE. They segregate themselves. When they say they want a more inclusive world what they mean is get rid of whitey, Asians and even middle easterners. Black people in general are the least accepting of other races as true friends. The only ones who are worse are Muslims and that is a cultural thing.
Not all black people realize they feel this way but even the ones who are married to a white person have their “black people getaways” where they go hang out with only their black friends. Even if their friends circle growing up included whites, Hispanics or Asians. Black people will always have “black gatherings” that whites would never even think of. I have thought about this for a while but have no idea why this is. Because they are so obviously “different” at first glance they feel different? Why would that make them so exclusionary though? You know there were ad men who targeted blacks starting in the fifties or sixties and created the illusion they had a separate culture than other Americans. I wonder if that plays into it? If so why do foreign blacks coming here want to congregate with other blacks? Just because that is what they are used to? This is the real problem. Not that whites are inherently prejudice, but that blacks are.
Piling on, my brain immediately dismissed the remainder of the article when it hit the “affluent white soldiers” phrase. ‘Cause really, that’s the most interesting thing about it. The desperate need to preen about race, regardless of the absurdity of the premise, has become so common that it provides sort of an instant tell about whether that person has anything intelligent or worthwhile to say. Stylistically and functionally identical to some Grand Kleagle winding up for a rant about racial purity.
Everybody's a whiner.
I didn't ski growing up because we were poor.
The same reason I didn't play golf or play polo for that matter.
Get a job, make money, and ski your ass off.
Nobody owes you anything in life...you've got to earn it.
Well, that used to be the case anyways.
These days it seems that bitching and moaning will get other people to fund your lifestyle for you.
It's not just skiing that is short of POC. Outdoor sports such as hiking, climbing, etc. are lacking them too. Outdoors organizations are trying to raise interest. So it's not just "POC don't like the cold."
Howard said...
Cross country skiing, on the other hand, is much cheaper and therefore more diversity potential.
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Too late. Lesbians have already taken over the trails.
“Howleson Hill, the US's oldest ski resort, was opened in 1914.”
Ah! Memories. When I was in HS in the 1960s, we would race in the Steamboat Winter Carnival every year. Friend I knew from college lived (and ski raced) there. Not a horse person, but he enjoyed the skijorring (horses with riders dragging skiers down the street, over jumps, etc). The slalom races were on Howleson Hill, as was the ski jumping. I can’t remember if you rode a poma or a t-bar lift up the hill. It was always horrid. Then over to the ski area for the GS race the next day.
A 78-year-old friend who is still skiing told me last year of one resort that required masks on everyone---in the lodge, in the lift lines, on the lifts and while skiing downhill.
In clear, cold mountain air and bright sunlight.
Idiocy to the nth power!
A model of segregation by choice. That said, diversity [dogma] breeds adversity with "benefits" for politicians, corporations, clinics, and publishers, alike.
When are we going to address the racial imbalances in basketball and football? That's what your non-skiing African-Americans are doing: Playing basketball and football. The Latinos are playing soccer. People choose how they want to spend their leisure time, and a lot of it comes down to cultural differences, rather than some racist scheme to prevent athletes of certain backgrounds from competing in certain sports. This is akin to bemoaning the lack of women in STEM fields; they simply choose to do something else that interests them more.
rehajm said...
Now do curling…
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Curling's obviously got "Diversity" and "Inclusion" covered:
https://youtu.be/Jb6bfZFDECU
I wonder if any of these racial theorists have actually asked non-skiers why they don't take up skiing?
(Sorry if this is a duplicate comment. First one said "Sorry, we had a problem.")
1. Welcome to the legal world of disparate impact discrimination. Are the mostly-white hills a product of racial discrimination? According to present US law, yes, the very fact of a difference is the proof. All that's left is to prove damages.
2. Skiing is actually cheap. I bought my first three sets of equipment at garage sales. Many people buy nice equipment, try it out once, and give up. You can get some great equipment for little money. And, priced per-hour-of-fun, a lift ticket is cheaper than many other forms of entertainment.
I just got back from a week of skiing at Sun Peaks Resort in Kamloops, BC (you know, the site of the supposed mass graves of indigenous from yesteryear).
We arrived on a Monday and left the following Saturday. Until Saturday, the mountain was essentially empty and I could ski from the top of the lift to the bottom and onto the chair without more than 1 minute wait.
And, what did I see there? People dressed in ski outfits and wearing helmuts and goggles. Given that, it is now virtually impossible to tell what skin color a skier has, and couldn't care less.
As for cost, skiing is like playing golf. Do black people golf? I don't. It's too expensive for me (and it bores me).
and no capitalists to develop more slippery sloping areas and occasions
rehaim said....
"Black and brown and Indigenous
In Vermont the indigenous are the Woodchuck. They tend to bitch about the skiing flatlanders then sneak off and ski when they think nobody's looking. "
LOL guilty as charged, but we bitched about flatlanders, period.
I didn't learn to ski, despite living in Vermont. My family couldn't afford it. But we got skates every few years, and owned snowshoes which we used a lot, having dogs. A great excuse to get out on a bright winter day.
I was in Park City at Christmas and the resort attendees were pretty mixed. (At least from my vantage point at the rink) but I didn't go out of my way to take a scientific poll. But it depends on the resort. Heavenly in South Lake Tahoe is going to have a much different demographic from Stowe or Smugglers' Notch. Tahoe is generally an easy drive from the Bay Area and Heavenly is smack in the center of town.
And yes, courtesy of the facts provided by @tommyesq, this UVM 'professor' is full of crap. But then, he's likely a flatlander.
Is there any subject - any subject at all - that you leftists won't turn into a racial issue?
Give it a fucking rest, already.
Is the term “ski bum” utterly foreign to some people?
Just got back to the slopes after a seven year layoff due to some life changing health problems. I've skied since I was 10, and it was refreshing, yet challenging.
We could eliminate much of the overcrowding by sending the snowboarders back to the skate parks, where they belong.
FWIW, I am Asian. My life long pursuit of skiing is the result of having a father who was in SAC (USAF). All the SAC bases had cold climates.
"This sport took off in our country after World War II. It was created for affluent white soldiers who experienced it in France and Europe." Yet if you compare the price of a lift ticket then and now, the inflation-adjusted price is much higher than it was then.
Which is not surprising, as many early ski areas consisted of a couple of rope tows (often powered by an engine from an old car) and a few badly groomed ski runs. Skiers expect a good deal more now, and they get it. At an appropriate price.
Cross-country skiing is far less costly than downhill, yet somehow I suspect there's no less racial imbalance?
(Yes, the root of the "problem" is in the insistence of the Woke that any racial imbalance anywhere can only be evidence of white supremacy. Whereas a more rational attitude might note that different ethnicities have always been interested in different things, with "things" encompassing pretty much everything from entertainment to food to commercial sports activities.
Which is as one would expect, in a world in which we are free to so what it pleases us to do.)
Maybe, it'd be better, if black people of color DID spend their free time skiing...
Instead of MURDERING people
Police said three people are dead – including the suspect – after a shooting at an apartment complex near Brown Deer Road and Park Plaza Court Saturday morning, Feb. 5.
It is believed that the suspect, who lived at the apartment complex, died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, according to authorities.
"I feel nudged to think that racial problems have arisen, but I'm not seeing anything specific in the article."
No, you aren't going to have racial problems at 1.5% blacks. You'll maybe get a little theft, but it won't be attributed to them.
Joe Bar said...
is the result of having a father who was in SAC (USAF). All the SAC bases had cold climates.
All of them?
Mather? March? Castle? Barksdale? Carswell? Dyess?
Just took a look at this guy's bio on the UVM website. I cannot roll my eyes hard enough.
https://www.uvm.edu/cas/sociology/profiles/daniel-h-krymkowski
Skiing is actually cheap.
... followed by comments on buying used gear and how a lift ticket is good fun-value per hour.
All well and good, unless you live in Houston. Then you have to factor in the plane tickets, lodging for the family of 5, rental car, rental equipment if you can't get a rental car big enough to hold the mountain of gear for said family of 5, food... And this is assuming you already know how to ski and don't need a lesson in order to be safe and courteous skiers.
When we lived outside Philadelphia, my neighbor and I used to pull the kids out of school for half a day sometimes to drive up to our nearest mountain, just over an hour, and ski for the afternoon - like $20 a half-day lift ticket, midweek. But this is not an option I have now.
Money AND location matter, for skiing and water sports particularly. Hell, surfing is free once you've bought a board - if you live near a shoreline that makes good waves.
Hannes Schneider brought skiing to the Mt. Washington Valley in New Hampshire (specifically, to Mt. Cranmore, which is about a mile down a backroad from my house in Kearsarge) in the mid-30s or so. I think there may have been some Nazi-stuff involved: Anschluss anyone?
I skied for the first time at Sugarloaf in Maine during semester break my first year in law school in January of 1976. Had a nice trip with one of my undergrad roommates in SLC in the early 80s, when he was attending a conference as a biochem grad student at Berkeley, before later settling in as a distinguished biochem prof at UCSF. Saw the Utah version of the Rocky Horror Picture Show (the line "Hello, Oblivion" was replaced by "Hello, Utah").
Started skiing a bit more, mostly at Wildcat and, later, Cranmore, after buying the aforesaid house in 1984, but I never was an all-day skier. Used to to out around 11, ski for a couple hours while everybody else went in for lunch, then left (for maybe a late lunch at the now-closed Scarecrow Pub on the way home).
Quit skiing about 15 years ago when I had eye problems. Eye problems now fixed, but I don't have the motive to go out in the freezing cold the way I used to do and, by the time things warm up around March, the spring skiing is too much of a pain.
--gpm
Given that black college students self-segregate while on campus, I am not a whole lot concerned that they self-segregate from various sports. Still, perhaps we could put Prof. Anthony Kwame Harrison in charge of rounding up random black teenagers and 20-somethings, drive them out to ski areas, strap skis on their feet, and send them down a black diamond trail or two to get them turned on to the sport.
I assume a black diamond means suitable for black people, right?
Snoqualmie pass in the Cascades is the closest ski area to Seattle - about an hour east on I-90. Damp, heavy snow. About as far away from powder as you can get. Skiing began there in the 20s, and the first official recreational area was established in 1933.
The Left fervently believes that ANY deviation from the approved racial percentages is by definition evidence of (white) racism. As opposed to the results of individual choice, cultural predilections, or (Cthulu help us) biological traits.
In college, fifty-plus years ago, I tried skiing. When does the adrenalin kick in? Doesn't? Forget it. I supposed I could assign myself the task of getting good at it because, I'd be getting good at something. There were other options, some of which I've used and in no case has my lack of ski equipment been an inconvenience.
I heard about a woman who made good money as a "ski action model", which apparently means great teeth while going over a mogul for the camera. Which leads me to believe the actual experience includes a rictus of fear
.
A basketball is cheaper.
"This sport took off in our country after World War II. It was created for affluent white soldiers who experienced it in France and Europe."Said Daniel Krymkowski, "a sociology professor at the University of Vermont
So speaks and ignoramus who knows nothing about skiing in the 20th Century.
These days skiing is something pretty much reserved for the well to do. But that's because lift ticket prices have soared far ahead of inflation.
Last I checked, "black people" were "sun people", which is to say they weren't huge fans of being out in the cold.
Which is a bit of a problem , if you actually want to ski
"affluent white soldiers" A soldier's pay in the ETO waiting transfer home or to the Pacific was enough to get him into the Alps?
Sociology and Africana studies must be really high demand courses at Virginia Tech with such high level scholarship in the fields taking place there.
Only skiers I disdained were Germans. Rude, pushy, and jumped lines. Are West Coast resorts still heavily Japanese?
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