Social Justice Warriors need to get over their delusions that everybody else should echo their particular preferences, from Nina Revoyr, Los Angeles Times:
Last month, two friends and I backpacked for a week in the Sierra Nevada. We hiked through meadows dotted with wildflowers, slept beneath snow-draped peaks and met plenty of other hikers: the dad and son whose Green Bay Packers caps sparked a conversation about our mutual ties to Wisconsin; scientists from UC Santa Cruz studying flowers and rock formations; five recent college grads from Kentucky who were hiking the John Muir Trail before they scattered to begin their adult lives.
[…]
This near-total absence of people of color — which I’ve noticed on past trips as well — was particularly striking because it was such a contrast to my everyday life. I live and work in Los Angeles. The majority of people in my working life are Latino, African American or Asian, and the people in my personal life, including my Mexican American spouse, are reflective of the city’s population. And yet, a few hours’ drive from Los Angeles, there was hardly a person of color to be found. We were on public lands — including Kings Canyon National Park — but the people enjoying them weren’t representative of the public.
Racism is making assumptions based on race. Nina Revoyr is a racist. She assumes that as persons of pallor like to hike therefore so should persons of color. Revoyr should look closer to her home for answers. I live outside, just barely, Rochester, NY, a city with a significant population of color and oh by the way, a mayor of color.
You can have a diverse population in the same park, but they are not engaged in the same activities. Hiking it helps to be exposed to, but if is not in your nature to hike you won’t. I hike with plenty of grandparents you expose their grandchildren to hiking but fail to get them interesting in the activity.
I see plenty of blacks, especially in our more urban parks, but I see very few on the hiking trails. I take as an indication that while blacks are perfectly willing to do to particular park, they not inclined to go for a hike.
Revoyr should not take his a sign of some nefarious oppression but rather as evidence that free people are free do make their own choices, even if Revoyr doesn’t particularly care for them.
