Nature Needs Greater Diversity—In Its Human Visitors
Drawing More Non-Whites Into Parks and Natural Areas Requires Changes in Access, Staffing, Recruitment—and Narratives
“Is nature only for white people?” was the deliberately provocative query that framed a Zócalo/Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County panel discussion. It was quickly dispensed with by the evening’s moderator, Rahawa Haile, a hiker and writer whose work has appeared in The New Yorker and other venues.
“I’m going to start out by saying a resounding ‘no,’” Haile said, opening the discussion at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, in Exposition Park. “We are all on occupied indigenous lands.”
And yet ethnicity and economics, power and privilege, do …
