“Do the rangers shoot boys who look like me?” The boy and his classmates sat silent, waiting to hear my response.
I was speaking at a middle school career day, dressed in my US National Park Service green and gray uniform. I had been giving my usual speech about the different kinds of park rangers. Interpretation rangers like me, maintenance workers, scientists, historians.
When I began to describe how law enforcement rangers keep parks and their visitors safe, a boy raised his hand, a skeptical look on his face.
He was thin, wearing glasses, maybe twelve years old. He was also African American, as were most of the students in the audience. And he wanted to know if the rangers at my park would shoot him.
I realized then how I must look to these kids, a white woman in uniform explaining that they could grow up to be something they feared: cops. It wasn’t a winning argument.
I tried to assure the children that they would be safe in national parks, but I’m not sure they believed me. I’m not sure I believed me.
US national parks, like most American institutions, suffer from a complicated history intertwined with racism. Many national parks in the southern United States were racially segregated until the late 1940’s, when the practice was terminated agency-wide following a directive from the federal government.
National parks have kept many Native Americans from occupying or accessing their ancestral lands. Some Native Americans were even evicted to make room for national parks–the Yosemite people pushed out of Yosemite, the Blackfeet from Glacier.
Not far from the middle school these children attended, there is a state park I wrote a paper on for a grad class. It’s a southern park, near where I myself grew up. I had intended to write a staid history of the park’s origins–which bureaucrat had signed the paperwork to set the place aside for public enjoyment.
Instead, when I delved deeper, I learned about historic violence, lynchings, the massacre of an entire black family–a baby shot in its mother’s arms. The state had taken over the land to prevent further atrocities, to stop more bodies from hanging from its trees.
These middle school children may not have known this particular story about the nearby park. But their ancestors knew stories like these, countless stories, and their fears have been passed down through generations.
In a focus group conducted by former park ranger turned professor Nina Roberts, when asked about visiting nature one African American nineteen-year-old announced, “My granddaddy told me the K.K.K. hangs out up in the mountains. Why would I want to go?”
Government data released in 2020 shows that in the previous ten years only 23% of US national park visitors were people of color. 42%–nearly half–of the U.S. population are minorities, but most national park visitors are white.
According to internal stats, most national park staff are also white, a fact supported by my experience. At my eight national parks, I worked with hundreds of other park employees, but I can count my black colleagues on one hand. If you don’t feel safe even visiting a national park, you probably won’t want to work at one.
And it’s not just African Americans who fear being out of their own communities and in the wild spaces of America. People of color, LGBTQ+ folks, immigrants, religious minorities–many people feel out of place and uncomfortable in national parks or other natural spaces.
I am by no means implying that today’s national parks are filled with racist staff who don’t want to hire or welcome minorities to their parks. What I am saying is that fears of racial discrimination or violence in parks are justified by the past and linger on in the present.
According to Bryan Stevenson, Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative and author of the popular book Just Mercy, American slavery didn’t end with the Civil War. Stevenson believes slavery is a mindset of racial difference that remains ingrained American culture.
That mindset of racial difference is what prevents black children from seeing parks as places for them and park ranger as a job that they could grow up to have.
As a white woman, I am able to move freely across my country, working and living in national parks, without the burden of fears passed down to me by my ancestors. There were no stories of terror, forced removal, lynchings, or countless other traumas taught to me as a child when I wanted to play in the woods.
I wasn’t told “people like us don’t visit places like that.” I was encouraged to be outdoors, to explore nature, from an early age. I visited national parks with my family, and I saw rangers who looked like me (maybe not many women back then, but white like me) working at them.
My white privilege allowed me an opportunity not afforded to all children: to dream of being a park ranger.
Today, there are ways that some national parks are trying to combat intergenerational fears and attract a more diverse clientele. I hope they succeed.
My hope is that the systems that shape our society and its various cultures–the collective stories that give birth to our dreams and our fears–evolve to be more inclusive of all of us.
My hope is that one day children who don’t look like me won’t fear being shot when they visit a national park. My hope is that one day all children can dream of being park rangers.