several semi-serious reasons from a black backpacker and former sierra club member out of california who has done whitney twice.
a) pickup trucks & shotgun racks. activities off the beaten path are often associated with rednecks. so who wants to be out on vacation with them? not most blackfolks i know. one yeehaw and the fun is all over. (on the flipside, why can't brothers bring their boomboxes to the campsite?). who owns the woods? hmm.
b) if you don't live in a comfortable suburb, what exactly is the point of roughing it?
c) backpacking is a sport, at least from my experience, that you learn young or learn yuppie. if your daddy didn't take you, then you most likely are with the rei crampon crowd, which takes you back to (b).
d) jason. yes jason. i've taken kids who've never been off the pavement in their teenaged lives express real fear that all the crazed ax murderers in the world hide out in the woods.
e) most outdoorsy blackfolks would much rather fish anyway.
That accounts pretty definitively for blackfolks (can I say that too?). But why don't you see any nice young Indian-Am doctors and Asian-Am consultants (etc.) at REI? We're talking about people who all grew up together, but only the white folks seem to end up at REI.
sure. i hope you do talk about blackfolks and asians too. we don't need more of that colorblind nonsense flattening the specific.
there's a lot of stuff about 'asians' i don't understand and i find it disappointing. i think many are repressed out of the conversation in ways we don't understand. i mean that of those before genx.
sometimes i think thomas sowell sayeth 'asians are not involved in politics and culture, but they are very productive members of society' and somebody decided at the big meeting on wednesday night, that was going to be the plan. except for jackie chan and margaret cho.
it's a very difficult conversation to get into.. chances are, we'll talk about it among ourselves and get it wrong.
My best friends are Asian and I still don't know why more of them don't go backpacking (especially hard for me to judge because my Asian friends do do it. Could it be that Unfogged doesn't have many Asian readers either and we'll never get an answer? Why don't Asians read Unfogged? What's wrong with Asians anyway?
It is fascinating to have a community that is so integrated and still so little understood.
I think I've tapped into something in the discussion about Dat Phan.
Oy vey. Unfortunately they seem to have missed your point. In any case, as you seem to say in the comments, it doesn't really matter if he's funny; someone needs to "normalize" Asians and he's doing it (I should note that until now I'd never heard of the guy).