>>564648“Why are our parks so white?” columnist Glenn Nelson asked in a recent op-ed in The New York Times. Nelson, who runs Trail Posse, an online platform that promotes diversity in the outdoors, explains that people of color are only about half as likely to visit national parks as whites. He offers two reasons for this disparity: People of color are less familiar with parks and therefore hesitant to go, and there is a lack of racial diversity among the nation’s park employees.
However, it is not just unfamiliarity with the parks that keeps people of color away. Many prospective visitors worry about disparate treatment by and implicit racial bias of park staffers. Nelson refers to jokes made by his road trip companions, including one in which they expected whites-only signs at the national park entrances. Unfortunately, those jokes are not that far from the truth. African-Americans are less likely to visit parks for fear of racist treatment by mostly white park rangers, gate agents and other park staffers. It is therefore critical to assess and eliminate these inherent biases that exclude people of color from outdoor public spaces.
According to a 2009 survey by the University of Wyoming and the National Park Service (NPS), whites accounted for 78 percent of the national parks’ visitors from 2008 to 2009; Hispanics, 9 percent; African-Americans, 7 percent; and Asian-Americans, 3 percent.
When compared with their share of the U.S. population, white park visitors are overrepresented by 14 percentage points, whereas African-Americans were underrepresented by 6 percentage points. Whites are overrepresented not only as visitors but also as park employees. According to a 2013 report by the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service, 80 percent of NPS employees were white. And the National Park Foundation’s 22-member board, whose mission is to support the NPS through fundraising, has only four minorities.
