The News Letter | I Chickened Out on Talking About Race and the Los Padres
My Mea Culpa and a Promise to Do Better
It wouldn’t have been my first question. Or even my second or third. But at some point during my interview with Daryl Hodges, the new Santa Barbara District Ranger (pictured below) for the U.S. Forest Service, I could and should have asked about race.
That’s because the national forest system, like many other American institutions these days, is starting to finally reckon with its racial divides. A 2019 nationwide survey found that 88-95 percent of all visitors to public lands are white. While Black people make up 13 percent of the population, they account for less than one percent of visits. Locally, only 15 percent of trips to the Los Padres National Forest were made by Latinx residents, even though they comprise a full 47 percent of Santa Barbara County’s population.
And think about it ― when you’re tromping around the backcountry, how many of the people you pass are people of color? Very few, in my experience. It’s one of those things white people don’t notice from within our pleasantly opaque cloud of privilege until it’s pointed out to us.
