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Post by Deleted on Jul 19, 2015 18:49:51 GMT -8
Travis said: Dave Senesac said:So, in other words, the author is trolling his own readership with an "absurd parody" because he cannot rely upon that "discerning" readership to take an interest if they don't begin with a "knee-jerk" reaction to an absurd claim? Seriously?
Dave Senesac said: Sorry Dave, that doesn't make sense. Here's why:
The author is introducing one proposition with a very different proposition. To say "White people love outdoor recreation," is a very different proposition than saying, "Most outdoor recreationists are white."
So now you are claiming the author used the second proposition to disprove the first. But the second proposition says nothing to prove or disprove the first proposition. You mean "white people do not love outdoor recreation"? They are very different claims.
And the fact that the author spends most of his time trying to demonstrate the validity of the second proposition only leaves the first proposition as little more than bait in a bait-and-switch maneuver to get his "knee-jerk" readership (to use your words) to finish reading his article. And he leaves the bait still hanging like an eyesore above a discussion of a very different proposition.
Was that your purpose also when you included that "absurd parody" as the introduction to your thread? Seriously Dave, I don't think you are that kind of guy. I think the author made a very poor decision and that his poor introduction deserves the criticism I gave it in my first post of this thread.
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davesenesac
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Post by davesenesac on Jul 19, 2015 19:41:00 GMT -8
Travis, ok you don't like the way the author presented the article, don't agree with my suggested possible interpretations of what his intents may have been, think the way I opened the thread contributed to the way you responded, and apparently feel challenged to respond strongly to whatever my differing response may be per your well known style. Some of what you relate probably has some validity but is not worth discussing further and off topic. You have one of the best minds on this board and I've always had considerable respect for your well crafted inputs, so I'd like to hear what you have to say about the general subject.
David
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davesenesac
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Post by davesenesac on Jul 19, 2015 19:54:42 GMT -8
Ben, yes same here in the SF Bay Area. Fair numbers of Asians both the many native born Californians and numbers of the newly arrived are quite into outdoor recreation. Especially fishing, skiing, climbing, and hiking. Organizations like the Sierra Club have a long history in the area of welcoming people from all walks of life that decades ago set the tone of acceptance. Our area is a hotbed of Meetups.com outdoor recreation sections and as someone modestly involved in a few hiking groups, Asians are solidly represented and that includes many of the most recent hi tech Indian immigrants. In other words we all as humans have an innate desire to experience the natural world. However I would guess backpacking is one of the last bastions of recreation types for immigrants and other ethnic groups to get into because for the novice it requires a comfortable group setting and considerable trust. That is one way meetups is making a difference with not a few other ethnic groups simply because enthusiastic communication in groups like ordinary hiking draws others in.
David
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Post by Deleted on Jul 19, 2015 20:50:38 GMT -8
Dave Senesac wrote: Dave, I believe everything I've written was in fact about the "general subject" — as your first post introduced it.
Now if you'd like me to speculate on the racial makeup of backpackers I meet, I don't have an adequate sampling to make any conclusions, and I doubt that anyone here does either. I meet very few people in the backcountry. Of those people I do meet, it does not even occur to me to speculate on their genetic ancestry in arbitrary categories such as "race." And I don't even consider myself "white," so why would I label someone else such?
In life, generally speaking, I know some Native Americans, Blacks, Asians, Hispanics etc. that are whiter than I am. But then I'm not entirely white (as it is typically defined) because my ancestry includes Native Americans. "White" is commonly used in our society as a genetic marker, not merely an ethnic marker. Ethnicity in itself is not exclusively a racial descriptor.
Yet at different times in our history, Southern Europeans, Eastern Europeans, and Jews were considered a lower classification of white — if white at all. But Jewishness is not even a racial term. It's an ethnic term. Now are Ethiopian Jews white just because they are Jews?
I find the entire effort to racially profile outdoor recreationists as so fraught with poorly-conceived categories as to be hardly helpful at all. Is "Hispanic" a racial group or a language group? And why? It would not surprise me that backpackers may not be a very racially- and ethnically- diverse group. But then survey questions would have to be very carefully crafted to demonstrate that, and I have seen no such carefully-worded questions in any of the long list of questionnaires I've ever been presented with in life. They are perpetuated by stereotypes that I neither agree with nor witness in the variety of people I meet.
If we can't get our choice of words clear, we are not likely to get clear answers to our questions or clear indications of what we could do to improve the situation. In the meantime, we risk creating our own self-fulfilling prophecy. If you were black, how eager would you be to backpack if people around you are trying to prove there are very few black backpackers? That is not the kind of discouraging "welcome" I want to present.
I think the science of it all is far from conclusive — partly because it follows convenient, stereotypical groupings that are as much a product of "white" society as the problem they presume to approach and someday perhaps alleviate. We don't even know what "white" is.
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Post by Lamebeaver on Jul 20, 2015 6:29:26 GMT -8
I think socio-economic background and rural vs. urban cultural background have much more impact than the color of one's skin.
One could say the same thing about the disproportionate number of young black men who are in prison.
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GaliWalker
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Post by GaliWalker on Jul 20, 2015 7:30:54 GMT -8
I think if we look at the prevalence of backpacking in the Country that the immigrant has immigrated from (first/second/third/whatever generation), we'd be in a better position to ignore economic/social factors (if people want to make this a race issue).
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walkswithblackflies
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Post by walkswithblackflies on Jul 20, 2015 10:16:13 GMT -8
I believe it's an urban-rural thing. Minorities tend to live in urban areas, where the outdoors is a park with a perfectly groomed trail. There aren't many opportunities to be exposed to wilderness areas, so dirt trails in deep woods tend to be out of their comfort level.
Furthermore, rural Upstate NY is very white, so I don't expect to see several races on the trails, and I don't. That said, I also don't meet many inner-city white folks either. Lot's of French Canadians, though.
However, go fishing at a popular spot around here, and you'll see lots of black folks and hispanics and hear 5 different languages. There is a strong African-American fishing tradition around here. Last time I was out fishing at a local State Park, there were four other groups other than my kids and I... African-American, Korean, Croatian, and Latvian (granted, two of those are Caucasian).
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davesenesac
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Post by davesenesac on Jul 20, 2015 10:44:16 GMT -8
Travis, I can understand why you have issue with the author's use of the term "white" but he had to use some term to talk about ethnic demographics and that is something his New Republic audience could understand. In this society people need to have a way of calmly publicly discussing ethnic and racial subjects using ordinary American speaking terms without having to go off on negative tangents that are off whatever subject.
Not surprisingly using any terms that discuss ethnic differences in cultural activities sends lots of people into emotionally angry responses that in the linked article read like simple disatisfaction that a news media person brought up such issues. Many commenters below the article disliked any statistics that showed there are differences. They didn't like that fact put into public light so attacked the author and the statistics.
Its rather obvious there are ethnic demographic imbalances with outdoor recreation participation and that ought to be a starting point for calm considerate discussion without dragging in all the off topic baggage many of the article commenters brought up. I won't expand on this beyond the above further because all this focus on race and skin color or rejecting the vague numbers is off topic and poisons any discussion. What is of interest are how and why there is imbalance, what are members own experiences on trails across the US, what positive changes do we see on trails, and what we as a community of enthusiasts can do to promote changes for the better.
David
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Post by Deleted on Jul 20, 2015 12:59:21 GMT -8
I've never known this forum to give to the opening poster such tight control over a thread that he can brand anything that makes him uncomfortable as "off topic." You linked only one article in this thread — negative in its title and negative in its treatment of the topic. So as far as I am concerned, what the author of that article discussed is ON topic for this thread — however uncomfortable an opening poster may become with his own emotional attachment to a negative fiction about vague racial descriptors. Dave Senesac wrote:Want to talk about ethnic diversity? Look at The New Republic itself. It's readership is predominantly affluent white males with advanced college degrees. Perhaps that is why the author feels he can, with impunity, bad-mouth minorities with a title such as: "White People Love Hiking. Minorities Don't. Here's Why."
That is the title of the article you linked in the opening post. Anyone making such a simplistic remark and following it with a paragraph so pathetically devoid of logic as the author does — such person has abandoned the privilege of leading a rational discussion of race and ethnicity. He has abandoned rational leadership from the outset. Perhaps it is foolish titles and introductions such as that author has made that are responsible for The New Republic's near bankruptcy in the couple years since the article was published. So many of its editors quit in intervening years that it closed production of the magazine and now has a circulation about the size of a small town in rural South Dakota — composed as I said of predominantly affluent white males with advanced college degrees. If The New Republic has some bright ideas on how to appeal to minorities, maybe it had better start with its own audience — more predominantly white than it claims outdoor recreation is. Excuse the biblical metaphor, but The New Republic is like the guy proposing to take the speck out of his neighbor's eye (outdoor recreation) when he (the magazine) has a log in his own eye. Perhaps he'll see clearly to remove the speck from his neighbor's eye AFTER he takes the log out of his own eye. As you said, you found the article in a Google Search. So there is no use hanging onto so dearly what you paid so little for. Nonetheless, I've given you a logical and sober analysis of the article's shortcomings. You can take it as food for thought or you can attempt to suppress it as "off-topic" if you really have such an strong emotional attachment to the Google results list. I could provide some links for you a little later that would demonstrate that the term "white race" arose among white supremacists in academic circles going back centuries when it was quite fashionable to treat women and minorities as biologically inferior. Today, most researchers and anthropologists find the term devoid of any reasonable foundation. "White race" is a cultural myth. In reality, there is no such thing. Stay tuned. I have to go for now.
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davesenesac
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Post by davesenesac on Jul 20, 2015 15:22:34 GMT -8
Travis, ok you don't like the way the author presented the article, don't agree with my suggested possible interpretations of what his intents may have been, think the way I opened the thread contributed to the way you responded, apparently feel challenged to respond strongly to whatever my differing response may be per your style, and now have launched a strong attack on the New Republic magazine website. None of that is going anywhere except to poison discussion. If that is your goal then you succeeded.
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bass
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Post by bass on Jul 21, 2015 5:46:23 GMT -8
Zeke posted: Thankfully, the more people we get interested in the wild, the better the chances of keeping legislation to preserve it.
This is a great thread and a great link. Many thanks to those of you who posted. I feel that I have gotten lot of good insights from the discussion.
Like Zeke, I feel that it is very important that our community involve as many demographics as possible in order to improve the chances that governments will continue their support. Anything that we can do to market the outdoors to minorities and lower income people seems like a great idea to me.
One topic that I have posted on in the TPA in the past is about hiking fees and entrance fees to state and federal parks and recreation areas. I feel that keeping these fees very low and eliminating many of them will help expose to lower income families - and their children - to hiking and the outdoors. It just seems that the younger demographic with children in today's economy have the poorer paying jobs and must watch every dollar carefully. So in the parks that I frequent I see a lot of gray hairs ( who get free entrance passes and senior discounts on fees ) in expensive RV's and very few young couples introducing their children ( future voters ) to the outdoors.
For example, the $25 entrance fee and $20 nightly camping fee in Yellowstone may seem like small potatoes when compared to the $100 in gasoline to get there, but it can be a big deal to some younger couples who are working poor paying contract or low paying temp jobs as so many are. The $5 per day trailhead parking fee to day hike at Gifford Pinchot seems like a minor expense too. The problem is that these fees add a lot to the cost and discourage some people from participating. That is why the parks and recreation areas are viewed as "playgrounds for the rich" by many younger people today.
It follows that many of the young voters who never experienced the outdoors will more and more advocate reducing taxpayer support and raising fees even more. This will make "user fees" climb even more in the future and cause even more struggling young voters to avoid introducing their children to our parks. So I see taxpayer support eroding even more than it already has.
I do not feel that this will be a good thing for those of us who enjoy the outdoors.
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walkswithblackflies
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Post by walkswithblackflies on Jul 21, 2015 5:55:41 GMT -8
It just seems that the younger demographic with children in today's economy have the poorer paying jobs and must watch every dollar carefully. So in the parks that I frequent I see a lot of gray hairs ( who get free entrance passes and senior discounts on fees ) in expensive RV's and very few young couples introducing their children ( future voters ) to the outdoors. Or they just don't have as much time on their hands as retirees.
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Post by jay on Jul 21, 2015 6:49:50 GMT -8
I made my views plain concerning the article at the beginning of the thread and am not going to comment on that further. Zeke just brought up a point that I would like to discuss concerning kids. Many of us growing up spent our times outdoors much more than the average kids these days. Smart phones, gaming systems and on demand television seem to be the entertainment staple of many kids now. My daughter is a teenager and I spent a lot of time outdoors with her as she was growing up; she has been camping with my wife and I since she was able to walk. Several of her friends have camped with us over the years and have told me it was the only time they have ever done anything like that.
Generally, they loved the experience, I am happy to say.
I would also point out that I do not live in a big city but in a town of about 35,000. In my opinion, the lack of exposure to the outdoors is related more to the fact that parents get their kids game consoles and smartphones and social media becomes the center of their attention. Getting people, both kids and adults, to unplug and actually look around is more the challenge, I think.
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Post by BigLoad on Jul 21, 2015 7:41:06 GMT -8
I've seen every kind of person I can think of out on the trail. A few years back, on the Comanche-Venable loop in Colorado, I found myself camped next to a large group from a Boulder hiking club. It included several black and hispanic kids (late teens or early 20s) on their first backpacking trip. Although I usually prefer solitude, I really enjoyed the time with them because they were so fired up about this new experience. Opportunities are not as good everywhere. There are organizations that promote and enable outdoor experiences for the disadvantaged. An important one in my area is www.freshair.org/
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bass
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Post by bass on Jul 21, 2015 7:51:39 GMT -8
walkswithblackflies posted: Or they just don't have as much time on their hands as retirees.
Good point! But a lot of twenty-somethings where I live are only able to get "part-time" and contract "jobs" that limit them to 28 hours per week and they are periodically fired for a few weeks each year so that the employer can meet the government requirements that they aren't classified as "full-time" employees. I also know that a lot of twenty-something are professional students because it is so hard to get a good job in today's economy.
So there may be a lot more younger people with time - but not money - to enjoy the state and federal parks and recreation areas.
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