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| National Park Ranger Photograph by Brennan Linsley/AP citylab.com |
This year, the National Parks Service celebrated 100 years of being "America's best idea." Like many best ideas, it did not appear out of nowhere and was universally received. In his CityLab article, "The U.S. National Park Service Grapples With Its Racist Origins," Brentin Mock examines how the NPS deals with how to make its visitors and workforce more inclusive. Mr. Mock writes, "Looking over the National Park Service's first 100 years, we find a federal agency, like many U.S. institutions, got off to a severely rocky start in terms of racial inclusion." These public lands intended to provide refuge from the "growing courage of urbanization." Native Americans were violently removed from their sacred tribal land so Caucasians could recreate and engage in outdoor sports at their own leisurely pace. As wonderful as the national parks are, it is important to look at their origin within this context.
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| Grand Teton National Park Oxbow Bend/Autumn Wyoming Photograph by Douglas C. Ayers nationalparkstraveler.com |
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| Madison Grant (1865-1937) motherjones.com |
Grant spent his career at the center of the same energetic conservationist circle as [Theodore] Roosevelt. This band of reformers did much to create the country's national parks forests, game refuges, and other public lands-the system of environmental stewardship and public access that been called "America's best idea." (http://www.newyorker.com; date accessed Oct. 19, 2016)
Together with former President of The United States Theodore Roosevelt, he helped create the New York Zoological Society, known today as the Wildlife Conservation Society. Madison Grant also helped establish the Boone and Crockett Club, which was fundamental in developing Yellowstone National Park. At face value, Madison Grant comes off as man dedicated to the stewardship of public land. However, beneath his environmentalism, lay a virulently xenophobic and racist outlook.
Brentin Mock writes, "However, Grant's 1916 book The Passing of the Great Race, which Adolph Hitler claimed as his bible, provided a detailed account of Grant's virulently xenophobic views on immigrants, Native Americans, and black people. Racism was not just a hobby for Mr. Grant when he was not building parks. Rather, his racist and xenophobic outlook was part of his his worldview on conservation and parks.
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| Roger Pearson splinter.org |
With Madison Grant serving as secretary and later as president, the Boone and Crockett Club was largely comprised of eugenicists and eugenics sympathizers. Renowned as one of the more active members of the eugenics movement, and especially for his efforts to preserve the 'Old American' component of the American population. Grant worked just as ardently to preserve the natural heritage for future generations of Americans and should be remembered with honor as one of the nations's greatest benefactors. (http://www.mankindquarterly.org; date access Oct. 19, 2016)
Brentin Mock astutely observes, "Grant's beliefs on how immigration causes crime and disease would align neatly with Donald Trump's current platform: They became the underpinning for the highly restrictive Immigration Act of 1924." Madison Grant's conservation work was his way of "...escaping the white man's burden of dealing with an increasingly browning U.S." Our friends at the National Park Service (http://www.nps.gov) does not completely delete Mr. Grant from its history. His name comes up in a search of the site as the Madison Campground and Grant village (http://www.nps.gov/yell/planyourvisit/madisoncg.htm; date accessed Oct. 24, 2016). Richard Conniff had this to say about Mr. Grant in Mother Jones,
....Conservationists would understandably rather forget all this. But it's worth remembering because the movement has always struggled with lists and exclusionary elements in its ranks. among other things, this country invented and exported worldwide the model of uninhabited national parks-together with its ugly corollary, forced removal of indigenous populations. It's also worth remembering Grant's history because minority groups remain vastly underrepresented-just 22 percent of all visitors at last count-in our national parks, and even more so in the leadership of the environmental agencies and nonprofits. To change that, the conservation movement needs to acknowledge that the ghost of Madison Grant still haunts the natural wonders he helped protect. (http://www.motherjones.com; date accessed Oct. 24, 2016)
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| Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Park/Autumn California tripadvisor.com |
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| "National parks and monuments with a focus on diverse groups" Center for American Progress citylab.com |
Brentin Mock speculates, "It's often thought that the reason more people of color don't visit these parks is because they don't want to, or they they're just not all into the outdoors." The data and history suggest that this is not the case. Mr. Mock cites a recent survey conducted by New America Media (http://www.newamericanmedia.org; date accessed Oct. 24, 2016) regarding how voters of color feel about National Parks produced the following results:
- 70 percent of minority voters participate in types of outdoor activities commonly offered within national parks.
- 57 percent of minority voters have visited national public lands in the past, of which more than 2/3 have visited within the past 3 years.
- 4 in 5 minority voters support a range of proposals to increase visitor access to public lands, such as increasing the number of urban arks and the creation of new parks, monuments, and historic and cultural sites that focus on the contributions of minorities to the United States.
- 93 percent of minority voters believe it is important for the next president to continue to show a commitment to protecting national public lands and the histories they represent. (Ibid)
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| "Diversity Categories" Department of Interior citylab.com |
The survey also concludes that "95 percent of minority voters believe it it important for young people to see their cultures and histories reflected in the national park system." For now, the problem is finding national park staff that reflect minority voters. Admittedly, the National Park Service has never been great about diversity within its workforce and has not taken steps to improve over the past few years. Mr. Mock reports, "Less than 10 percent of park workers over the part five years have been African Americans. Compare that with white workers, who've made up close to 80 percent of the total National Park Service workforce over the dame period." Just how badly does the NPS lag in workplace diversity? In the Partnership for Public Service's annual rankings of best places to work in the federal government, the NPS has consistently ranked near the bottom of in a number of categories, including support for diversity.
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| Bear Lake Rocky Mountain National Park/Autumn southwestdesertlover.wordpress,com |
It is not just the lack of workplace diversity that has plagued the NPS, it also does not have a strong record of attracting people of color. Brentin Mock also points out, "Additionally, the history of discrimination and racial violence within the park system is real enough to keep some African Americans away altogether." Therefore, the question for the next 100 years is "...how exactly should the NPS settle that history in a way that would make more people feel invited and accommodated?
These are precisely the questions and actions currently being studied by environmental organizations, like the Sierra Club (http://www.sierraclub.org), whose original mission somewhat dovetailed with the NPS. Both agencies were established by people whose goal was the preservation of public land and wildlife. John Muir, the founder of the Sierra Club, also travelled in the same energetic conservationist circle as Madison Grant but without the same white supremacist agenda.
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| Stained Navajo Sandston Canyon Walls Zion National Park/Autumn Photograph by Dan Violette danviolette.com |
Sierra Club executive director Michael Brune told Mr. Mock,
The way we navigate that history is by not flinching...It is true that there were a lot of individuals who were white supremacists or eugenicists or who were making raciest comments who were part of the beginning of the conservation movement, or who fought successfully to create national parks. So it's important to understand history as a movement, and as a country learn from it.
Blogger agrees with this sentiment.
However, how does this thought turn into action? Some of it should resemble what Bryan Stevenson, of the Equal Justice Initiative, wants to build in Montgomery, Alabama. Mr. Stevenson is planning to build the Memorial to Peace and Justice, a reminder of the United States's violent history of lynching African American men. The scheme calls for a six-acre parcel of land that will display about 800 dangling column, symbolizing each of the counties where the lynchings took place and the names of the people inscribed on them. Representatives of each of the lynching sites are expected to take copies of the columns back to their respective counties of public display, as a reminder to the residents of the racial terrorism that took place on their soil.
Brentin Mocks quotes part of speech, given by Mr. Stevenson, about the memorial,
I continue to believe that we're not free in this country, that we're not free at birth by a history of racial injustice.
According to a recent article on the project in The New Yorker (http://www.newyorker.com; date accessed Oct. 24, 2016) he continued,
And there are spaces that are occupied by the legacy of that history that weigh on us.
The challenge for the National Park Service, in the next 100 years, is to address these issues of inclusion both in the workplace and in its public lands.
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