Park ranger asks: Where are the black visitors? [View All]

[Blue_Tires]

Nothing would make Shelton Johnson happier than the sight of Snoop Dogg singing by a campfire or Oprah hiking to the top of Yosemite Falls.

Johnson, one of a scarce few African American park rangers in the United States, said a black American celebrity publicly frolicking in the woods would do more to help people of color embrace their heritage than all the money in Hollywood.

Johnson, a musician, storyteller and interpretive specialist at Yosemite National Park, is determined to inspire young inner-city African Americans to experience what he says transformed his life. Less than 1 percent of the visitors to Yosemite are African American, a number he's eager to improve.

"It's bigger than just African Americans not visiting national parks. It's a disassociation from the natural world," said Johnson, who has worked in Yosemite for the past 15 of his 22 years in the Park Service. "I think it is, in part, a memory of the horrible things that were done to us in rural America."

The rejection of the natural world by the black community, he said, is a scar left over from slavery.



Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/08/08/MNF31926R7.DTL#ixzz0NniRtUNT