Bad reporting

The New York Times has a remarkably bad story about minority visitors to national parks. Not as bad as anything in Style, but for the news columns really stupid. It cites a National Parks study worrying that only 1 in 5 visitors to our magnificent national parks is African-American -- not stated that this is about the same as the proportion of blacks in the whole population.

It certainly would not surprise me to discover that blacks are underrepresented at, say, Yellowstone, just as they are underrepresented at Bohemian Grove. It takes money to visit Yellowstone, and to the extent that blacks and browns have less money, I'd expect they'd go to Yellowstone less frequently.

I'm not sure places like Chickamauga hold any particular allure for black people, either.

But what struck me most strongly about this piece was the lack of recognition that Americans are a minority at our great national parks, or some of them.

I was at Grand Canyon in July. Only 1 in 5 visitors is American. That fits the profile of the group I went up with -- one American and five from Ulster.

And has anyone noticed that an unusually large proportion o Japanese visit the Arizona Memorial?

Non-white and white visitors at Yavapai Point, Grand Canyon

 The Times should investigate!