Motherless Boards Check out what all the fucked up fucks on Motherless are talking about.

Put the unemployment line, food stamp pick up, welfare enrollment, & free abortion clinics in public parks. The colored folk will come-a-runnin' then!

Gay and Lame.

You guys have too much time on your hands.

Whatever difference you see, they're all still American.

Americans are all scum. Period!

Urban blacks, anyway, tend not to travel far from their neighborhoods. There are thousands of blacks on the West and South sides of Chicago who have never traveled the two or three miles downtown, to say nothing of a national park hundreds or thousands of miles away.

Free Watermelon and fried chicken might attract the minorities.

We don't need or want blacks in the parks. They would just mess it up by pissing and shitting everywhere but the restrooms, leaving used needles on the trails, and spray painting everything that does not move.

I fail to see how this matters? The parks are there for anyone that wants to go see them. If black people, or anyone else, don't want to go see the parks thats their choice, its their lose for missing it.

Plus I fail to see how these numbers are showing anything other then population. I don't have the numbers on hand, but isn't the country roughly 70% white and black people are around 10% of the population? The majority of blacks live in cities anyway, city people always have a far less appreciation for nature then people that have a lawn. That goes for people of every color.

^10% of the population and 80% of the crime. Niggers are a disease and need to die!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

They aren't 80% of the crime. They MIGHT, and you would need to provide a source proving it, be 80% of the convicted crime. People are still fairly racist, at least most of the babyboomer and up generations are, so they like to blame black people for all of their problems and the media caters to this reporting of the big scary black man that committed a crime that a 100 white guys before him did and it was never mentioned.

The majority of people who commit a crime in this country never arrested. A huge example would be drug users of all the drugs. Most never get arrested. The vast majority of drug users in this country are also white. Yes this is true incase you are going to try to whine its not. Theirs 200+ million white people and only 14 million black people. Its a simple numbers game. So as I said, they MIGHT be most of the convicted crime, but not the majority of the crime committed.

We already have such a park of sorts, it's called well fair.

I actually know a little bit about this topic.

First, you have to look at your premise. You stated "National Parks." The figures for minorities visiting State and Local Parks is significantly higher. The main reason for this is both economical and geographical.

The cold hard reality is that the predominance of racial minorities live in urban areas and National Parks tend to be quite a distance from urban centers. And because of that, getting there, and staying there, can be expensive. And comparatively, whites,on the average, have more discretionary income than racial minorities.

And, as someone else stated, you need to factor in the overall racial make-up of the country. And when you do the numbers move towards the middle a bit.

In the city I live in, which has a population of about 3.5M, there are a great many programs intended to provide access to nature to inner-city youths and organizations. And the reality is that once people are exposed to nature they not only become more connected with something vital to us all but they carry their experience back to their day to day lives. It's proven that when people connect or reconnect to nature they become less apt to litter, more apt to recycle and have an better overall understanding and appreciation for our environment.

But these programs take money. And when certain States are forced to greatly cut back on Park Services, in addition to paying to wage defenses against private entities intent on raping nature for their own capitalistic gains, it's a big hurdle to overcome.

So it's about awareness and access much more than it is about some type of cultural deficiency about what nature can provide.

My advice? Take a hike. As often as possible. Don't litter...pack out what you pack in...find some stillness and connect. (And then spread the word.)

^*Yawn*^