Why mainly only caucasian backpackers?

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Jimr
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Re: Why mainly only caucasian backpackers?

Post by Jimr »

Hobbes wrote: Ultimately, it comes down to the classic "he's just not that into you". People outside of the group simply don't register - it's not personal. Could be bikers, surfers, climbers, hikers, even born & bred NYers who view the country in this manner:

Image

I the late 1970's I recall the Sleazy Reader posting a cartoon just like that, but with the opposite perspective. A letter to the editor years ago from a former local must have seen the same cartoon.

Easy Reader Makes Me Smile
Dear ER:

I left the South Bay in 1978 for Michigan. After several more moves with my company, I now find myself retired and living in Hurst, Texas, a suburb of Fort Worth. The locals here swear this is where the east ends and the west begins. I keep trying to tell them there is no life east of PCH. ....
If you don't know where you're going, then any path will get you there.
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rlown
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Re: Why mainly only caucasian backpackers?

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Pietro257
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Re: Why mainly only caucasian backpackers?

Post by Pietro257 »

Interesting discussion here. Like others, I have noticed more minorities in the back country in recent years, especially Asian-Americans. I was on the PCT in the San Jacinto Wilderness last year and noticed several African-American PCT hikers, all in their twenties.

My daughter, who worked for the Forest Service in Yosemite Nat'l Park for a while, told me that the lack of minority visitors to National Parks is considered a serious problem. The demographics of the U.S. are changing. In the future, unless more minorities start visiting the National Parks, it will be hard to justify spending as much money on the parks as is spent now.

Whether you backpack is a cultural thing that most people pick up from family members. When my late father took me into the Inyo Wilderness in 1967, he handed me a gift that still gives in 2017. I have passed this gift to my children. Minorities don't backpack as much because the gift wasn't given to them.
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rhyang
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Re: Why mainly only caucasian backpackers?

Post by rhyang »

Not backpacking as such, but I saw this article a couple years ago after I started tenkara fishing -

https://www.outsideonline.com/1988036/hooked
So an Irish American, a Mexican American, an African American, an Asian American, and an Irish-Ukranian-Filipino American walk into a bar. Actually, it’s a breakfast bar. It’s zero dark thirty on a cold January morning, and we’re at a tiny café in Oregon’s Willamette Valley. After some coffee, we are going to chase winter steelhead.
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