It's spring. That season when flowers bloom, couples fall in love and left-wingers denounce national parks as racist.
It turns out that 71 to 73 percent of "Americans who participated in outdoor activities are white". And so Alcee Hastings, an impeached judge and current member of Congress, along with Raul Grijalva and a coalition of organizational crybullies such as the Hispanic Access Foundation is demanding that national parks be made more "inclusive".
How do you make a bunch of trees more "inclusive"? According to their report, trees are racist.
No really.
"African-Americans have felt unwelcome and even fearful in federal parklands during our nation’s history because of the horrors of lynching".
What do national parks have to do with lynchings? They both have trees. Trees were used to lynch people. Trees are therefore racist. We must make national parks more inclusive by getting rid of all the trees.
Also Park Rangers are too easy to confuse with border guards.
“What we’re calling for is drastic, very scary change,” Maite Arce of the Hispanic Access Foundation said at a press conference Thursday, according to CNS News. “One example I can give you is with the Latino community, especially among the border states, but even nationwide, just the simple color of the uniforms that rangers wear.”
Conflating Latinos with illegal aliens is racist. Also the border patrol wears olive green uniforms. But sure. Let's dress the park rangers up in red. And two years from now it'll still be 71 percent white. Because Latinos are not choosing Disneyland over Yellowstone because the uniforms are scary. They're not children. The crybullies just want us to think they are.
Also most national parks focus on trees, rather than on identity politics.
An analysis by the Center for American Progress in 2014 found that less than a quarter of all national parks and monuments had a primary focus on communities of color, women, or other traditionally underrepresented groups.
How do you take a forest and make it focus on communities of color? I guess we can rename it Harriet Tubman Forest. But then there are the gay national parks.
• Identify and study potential public lands or waterways that might be suitable for conservation as part of cooperative recreational programs such as the National Wild and Scenic Rivers and the National Scenic and Historic Trails system. Specifically, identify opportunities to recognize the history of Asian Pacific Islanders, women, and LGBT Americans as well as additional Hispanic, Native American, and African-American heritage under both programs.
Hey, remember when we used to be Americans? Wasn't that really something. We could just visit national parks without worrying about whether they're reflected LGBT African-American heritage.
But the real meat of the proposals is about more diversity hiring, expanding diversity in committees and basically spreading money and influence around. None of which will change that 71 percent figure. And it's not supposed to.