African-American Community Calls For New Black Nerd Archetype

LOS ANGELES—A coalition of African-American activists and scholars released a strongly worded statement Monday citing the "urgent need" for popular media to depict a new black nerd archetype that more accurately reflects the full spectrum of 21st-century American dorkdom.

Believing black nerds deserve better role models, Cornel West chose to appear in the geek-centric sequels to 'The Matrix.'

"Outdated representations of African-American nerds are simply not cutting it anymore," the statement read in part. "Perhaps in the '80s and '90s it was possible for young people to identify with Steve Urkel's hiked-up pants, nasal voice, and lovable catchphrase of 'Did I do that?' But today's black nerds are different."

"They may not carry slide rules and calculators, but they do carry smartphones to make posts on Twitter, Facebook, and Foursquare," the statement continued. "Yet where are the modern-day nerds of color in our films and television programs?"

According to the Dweeb Diversity Coalition, nerds in the African-American community continue, like their predecessors, to be socially awkward, hilariously unstylish, and a source of embarrassment for their cooler black friends. But a recent survey of pop-cultural archetypes found that in the current TV lineup, almost all nerd characters are white.

There is the exception, coalition members noted, of Abed from the sitcom Community—a character, they also observed, who is not of African or Caribbean descent. Meanwhile, the popular nerd action-comedy Chuck stars a white "geek-chic" computer whiz, and the all-nerd cast of The Big Bang Theory is overwhelmingly Anglo-American, apart from one Indian and one Jewish nerd.

"Even more offensively, on Glee, the black nerds are notably cooler than their white counterparts, as if black geekiness is somehow less lame than white geekiness," Professor Cornel West of Princeton University told reporters Monday. "To add insult to injury, the one black man on the show was written out after the first season."

The prominent African-American writer, philosopher, and activist went on to stress that the highest-profile nerds in today's media—Jesse Eisenberg and Michael Cera chief among them—are exclusively white. According to West, this leaves many nonwhite nerds feeling as though they have no option but to follow in the footsteps of suspect characters such as the reactionary Carlton Banks, who still appears in syndicated reruns of The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air.

"And remember, we haven't seen a black gay dork on the screen since Lamar in Revenge Of The Nerds, more than a quarter century ago," West said. "When will young black gay dorks be able to look up to something besides Lamar's victorious turn throwing the wobbling flexi-javelin designed by his engineering-major friends to complement his limp-wristed throwing style?"

Baratunde Thurston, a black nerd residing in New York City, complained about the limited diversity in his favorite TV programs.

"There are any number of African-Americans on Friday Night Lights," Thurston said of the Emmy-nominated drama about a racially integrated high school football team. "Unfortunately, all the black characters are charismatic, sexy athletes. The only nerd, Landry, is—what do you expect?—white. What's a young black nerd supposed to make of that?"

His sentiment was echoed by the coalition's statement, which lamented the media's inability to reinvent the societal paradigm of the African-American dorkwad.

"Right now, there are only three major role models in American society for black children to aspire to: the gangsta rapper, the pro basketball player, and the president of the United States," the statement concluded. "And that is just sad."

Is diabetes the new death sentence for the African-American community?

Dr. Timothy Moore once weighed 320 pounds.


by Dr. Timothy Moore Ph.D, N.M.D, C.N.
Special to the Tri-State Defender




Diabetes may be the death of the African-American community. We think it’s guns or drugs, but really it is diabetes.
Diabetes is at an all time high with 57 million Americans nationwide with diabetes and another 26 million walking around undiagnosed with the disease. Why is diabetes so bad in the African-American community? 

According to the National Diabetes Fact Sheet, 11.8 percent of African-Americans have diabetes. Many of them might have avoided this danger if they had stuck with a healthy diet and scheduled regular exercise. 

Obesity is a big contributing factor towards diabetes. In America, an estimated 72 million individuals – 26 percent of the population – are obese. That is 1 in 4 Americans. The obesity guidelines are factored according to the Body Mass Index scale which states that obesity starts at 30 percent of our ideal body weight. Do African Americans really understand what a BMI means? (To learn how to calculate your BMI, visit http://www.nhlbisupport.com /bmi/bmicalc.htm) 

Obesity is out of control because everywhere you look the food in the African American community is loaded with fat and calories and served up in fast food restaurants. Why is it that everything we want today has to be delivered in seconds? Families can’t even wait for fresh vegetables to cook. 

We have plenty of fast food, greasy-spoon restaurants and too few groceries selling fresh fruits and vegetables in our community. For many blacks, this could end up being a death sentence. 

 I know a lot about diabetes because I was once a diabetic. Weighing in at 320 pounds, I couldn’t walk one block. I was taking insulin shots and oral medications that I thought would help me control the diabetes. Then I realized change would come only when I decided whether I wanted to live or die. I took control of my health and my food choices. I’m diabetes free now and I know medications or those dreaded insulin shots didn’t make me that way.

This silent killer must be stopped! The only way is through education about diabetes and other health-related issues. If you are diabetic, the time has come for you to decide if you’ve had enough of dealing with this disease and you are ready to start taking control of your own body. If you are not sure whether you are diabetic, get your blood sugar checked. How about adding some preventive health care to that as well? 

This is the beginning of a journey and it’s called a life change.

(Dr. Timothy Moore teaches nutrition, heart disease and diabetes reversal through a plant-based lifestyle. He is a professional speaker, wellness coach and personal plant-based chef. Contact: cheftimothy@wnm.net.)

Unearthing African American Roots

Harvard Scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. discusses how PBS documentaries unveiled hidden history of American celebrities

Ioana Patringenaru | Nov. 1, 2010

Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. spoke at UC San Diego last week.

Everybody these days asks Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. what it was like to have a beer at the White House with President Barack Obama. The San Diego airport, where Gates landed last week on his way to give a talk at UC San Diego, was no exception.

Gates jokes he has become “the beer man” in the eyes of the public. The Harvard researcher was reluctantly thrust in the spotlight last year when he was arrested at his own home in Cambridge, Mass., after officers came to investigate a neighbor’s report of a suspected robbery in progress. The incident resulted in President Obama, Gates, the police officer who arrested him and Vice President Joe Biden getting together over beers at the White House. The beer, by the way, was good, nice and cold, Gates told a standing-room only audience at the Price Center Thursday evening.

Gates signs books after his talk.

Related link:
Watch Henry Louis Gates' talk on UCSD-TV starting Nov. 22

Before the incident Gates was perhaps best known for a series of PBSdocumentaries examining the ancestry and genetic heritage of prominent African Americans, including Oprah Winfrey. That’s what he came to talk about at UCSD as part of the Helen Edison Lecture Series, the campus’ 50th anniversary and the Thurgood Marshall College’s 40th anniversary celebrations.  

During a 90-minute speech and Q&A session, Gates described his passion for genealogy and his research, which includes the history of the Middle Passage and slavery in the Americas. He also talked about his connections to the campus, including his friendship with music professor Anthony Davis and his admiration for African American poet Sherley Anne Williams, who taught here. Gates announced he set aside part of his honorarium from Thursday’s talk to create a prize named in her honor.

Gates also peppered his talk with references to celebrities, including music producer Quincy Jones, “my friend,” comedian Stephen Colbert, “my main man,” and, of course, Oprah Winfrey.

Making “African American Lives”

Joan Paggett Owens, a member of the San Diego African American Genealogy Research Group, asks Gates a question during a Q&A session.

Winfrey played a crucial role in making “African American Lives” a reality, Gates told his UCSD audience. He came up with the idea for the show after getting his own DNA analyzed in 2000. Through his connection with Quincy Jones, he was able to recruit Winfrey for the show. He then set out to raise the $6 million he needed for the project.

His pitch was simple, he said. He asked corporations how they would like to be associated with a TV show that would reveal Winfrey’s genetic heritage. “It was like the sky opened up and an ATM machine came down” he joked.

The exploration of Winfrey’s DNA in Africa was interesting, he said. But what really moved Winfrey and the other guests featured on “African American Lives” was the stories Gates uncovered of their enslaved ancestors in the United States. That is an experience that Gates, and most African Americans, share.

A passion for genealogy

The audience reacts during the talk.

Gates first became interested in genealogy at age 9, in 1960, after his grandfather’s funeral. His father took him to the Gates’ family home and showed him a picture of “the first Gates,” as the Harvard scholar put it.

Her name was Jane Gates. She had been a slave and died in 1888. Gates’ father showed him her obituary, which described her as “estimable.” That night, before bedtime, Gates opened his Webster dictionary and looked up the definition of the word. The next day, he set out to interview both his parents about the family’s history.

“Since that day, I’ve been obsessed with my own family tree,” he said.

Gates went on to Yale, where he earned a bachelor’s in history. He later became a Mellon scholar and studied at the University of Cambridge in Great Britain, where he earned a master’s and a doctorate in English literature. He currently serves as director of the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University.

In the late 1970s, his passion for genealogy lead him to admire “Roots” the novel by African American writer Alex Haley, which became a television series. In the book, Haley traces his ancestry all the way back to the mid-1750s and to the African country of Gambia, where he writes that his family line originated.

“Since 1977, I’ve had one profound and serious case of ‘Roots’ envy,” Gates admitted.

Genetics and Gates’ family tree

Many students turned out for the talk.

Gates was finally able to track his own roots in 2000, when he took a blood test to find out where his mother’s line came from. His results turned out to be abnormal. It took a while, but he found out that his family tree on his mother’s side included a white female ancestor.

His father’s line was complex as well.  All of Jane Gates’ children were fair-skinned. Some of them looked white. The Harvard scholar’s grandfather was nicknamed Casper, after the ghost. Later, DNA analysis showed that Gates, and all his male ancestors, carry a type of Y chromosome that can be found in 10 percent of Irish males.  Jane Gates had enough money to buy her home and one of her sons owned 200 acres of land, so Gates suspects that the funds came from the white man who fathered her children.

Finally, as part of the “African American Lives” series, Gates found out that his lineage is 49.4 percent European and 50.6 percent African. “This gave me the blues,” Gates said Friday. “But I didn’t know if I was black enough to have the blues.”

Research has shown that 58 percent of African Americans today have at least 12.5 percent of European ancestry, he said. But only 1 percent are in Gates’ position, with a lineage that is basically half white.

Genetics research shows that there is no scientific basis for racism, Gates said. It shows that everyone is descended from a handful of humans who left what is now Eritrea and Ethiopia 50,000 years ago.

“DNA analysis could bring us together,” he said. “I guess it hope it will.”

That point resonated with Nouna Bakhiet, the head of the biotechnology program at Southwestern College, who had come to listen to Gates and was waiting in line for him to sign a book after the talk. She read all his books, and turned out for the event because she found it timely and important, she said.

The San Diego African American Genealogy Research Group turned out in force to hear Gates speak too. Joan Paggett Owens explained Gates is one of her personal heroes. “I’m just so overwhelmed,” she said. “I could just cry.”

Patrick nominates first African-American chief justice of Supreme Judicial Court

Nov 4, 2010

John Blanding / Globe File Photo

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By Frank Phillips, Globe Staff

Governor Deval Patrick announced this morning that he is nominating veteran associate justice Roderick L. Ireland as chief justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, an appointment that would make Ireland the first black person ever to lead the venerable court.

"We are making history again," Patrick, the state's first black governor, said to applause at a State House news conference with Ireland that included some of Ireland's oldest friends from his native Springfield.

Patrick lauded Ireland for his "wisdom and genuine concern for each and every litigant that comes before his court."

"My nomination says that anything is possible," said the 65-year-old Ireland, who had already broken new ground as the first black associate justice on the court when he was appointed in 1997.

Chief Justice Margaret Marshall announced her retirement from the state's highest court earlier this year, saying she wanted to spend more time with her husband, Anthony Lewis. The former New York Times columnist has been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease.

By elevating Ireland to chief justice, Patrick, who made history himself as the state's first black governor, still has the opportunity to appoint a new, seventh justice. The name of that nominee was not released today.

Patrick's choice must be approved by the Governor's Council, which now has two Republican members in the wake of Tuesday's election.

Ireland, who was nominated originally to the court by former Republican Governor William F. Weld, is the most senior member on the bench of the oldest appellate court in the Western Hemisphere.

Cholera deaths in Haiti reach 442, health organization reports

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• NEW: Cholera causes up to 120,000 deaths worldwide every year
• Tropical Storm Tomas could worsen the situation, officials say
• The storm is forecast to pass over Haiti on Friday

Port-Au-Prince, Haiti (CNN) -- A cholera outbreak in Haiti continues to spread to previously unaffected areas in rural communities, killing 442 people and hospitalizing 6,742 others, the Pan American Health Organization said Wednesday.

Health authorities are concerned that the situation may worsen as Tropical Storm Tomas approaches the impoverished nation, still recovering from a devastating January earthquake that killed 250,000 people and left 1 million homeless. Tomas is projected to pass over Haiti on Friday.

Health officials set up six cholera treatment centers in Port-au-Prince, the nation's capital. Four of the centers are fully operational, the Pan American Health Organization said. Four more are planned.

Officials hope to create 2,000 beds in the treatment centers, the health agency said.

What's causing cholera to spread?

Aid sits as cholera spreads in Haiti

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• Haiti
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In addition, the agency said, cholera treatment tents will be established at 14 hospitals in Port-au-Prince as soon as Tomas clears the island nation.

Cholera is an intestinal infection caused by ingestion of bacteria-contaminated food or water. The infection causes watery diarrhea and vomiting, which can quickly lead to severe dehydration and death if not treated promptly. About 80 percent of cases can be cured by rehydrating the patient, the Pan American Health Organization said.

The disease is one of the leading causes of death in the world, particularly in developing countries. There are an estimated 3 million to 5 million cholera cases and 100,000 to 120,000 deaths every year worldwide, the health agency said.

ACLU sues city police over 'stop and frisk'

Posted:  11/04/2010 4:01 PM

\ Home

By Troy Graham
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
Civil rights attorneys filed a federal lawsuit today seeking to have the Philadelphia police department's "stop and frisk" policy declared unconstitutional.
The suit argues that police disproportionately target minorities, often stopping them and frisking them without sufficient grounds.

The suit was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania and the law firm of Kairys, Rudovsky, Messing & Feinberg.
Among the named plaintiffs are an African-American, Georgetown-educated lawyer who the suit says has been stopped four times since 2008 in West Philadelphia "without probable cause or reasonable suspicion," and a Hispanic University of Pennsylvania ethnographer stopped four times this year in neighborhoods around Kensington without ever facing charges.

Another plaintiff is state Rep. Jewell Williams, who was arrested in 2009 near his North Philadelphia home after he witnessed what he described as overly aggressive police tactics and attempted to intercede.
The lawsuit says pedestrian stops have  more than doubled since 2005, to 253,333 in 2009. Of those pedestrians stopped, 72 percent were African-American and only 8 percent led to arrests.

"The majority of these arrests were for alleged criminal conduct that was entirely independent from the supposed reason for the stop and/or frisk in the first place," the suit says.
The plaintiffs are seeking class status and rulings to prevent the police from conducting pedestrian stops based on race or national origin.
The suit also asks the court to order more police training, supervision and monitoring to ensure that "stops, frisks, searches and detentions comport with constitutional requirements."
"Mayor Nutter repeatedly promised that this policy would be carried out in a way that respected the Constitution," said Mary Catherine Roper, a staff attorney with the ACLU of Pennsylvania. "But instead of stopping people suspected of criminal activity, the police appear to be stopping people because of their race."
The controversial stop and frisk policy was instituted after Nutter took office in 2008 amid an increase in crime.

Outgoing Commissioner Sylvester Johnson predicted that the stop and frisk policy would be "a disaster." New Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey embraced the tactic and violent crime has dropped significantly in the past three years.

Confederate flag stirs endless debate

A Confederate flag flies 100 feet over Interstate 75 near Interstate 4 in Tampa. Most white workers and residents on U.S. 92 like it, but most blacks do not.

BY THOMAS BECNEL

Sarasota Herald-Tribune

Published: November 2, 2010

TAMPA - Every day, Marcus Fowler rides a bike to his job at a furniture warehouse. Every day, he pedals along U.S. 92, a gritty industrial strip off Interstate 75.

Every day, the 48-year-old black man looks up at the huge Confederate flag that dominates the urban landscape.

"I notice it every day, every day," Fowler says. "I don't like it; that's my opinion.

"They say it's their history, fine and dandy, but I say it's a symbol of hate," he says. "Even Caucasian people would say that."

* * * * *Not this neighborhood.In body shops, junkyards and trailer parks near U.S. 92, it is hard to find a white person who objects to the Sons of Confederate Veterans memorial.

Casper Simmons works on motorcycle engines at Last Chance Cycles, where a "Don't Tread On Me" flag hangs in the garage. He enjoys seeing the rebel flag wave every day.

"Every morning, on my way to work, and every night, on my way home. I think it's the greatest thing in the world," says Simmons, 44.

It's honoring the people of the South. Black and white, doesn't matter, he says.

"Just because it was used by people as a racist symbol doesn't mean that's what it's being used for today. It's only a race thing if you want it to be a race thing," he says.

The man behind the flag, Marion Lambert, a South Tampa welder and farmer, lives far from U.S. 92.

Lambert wanted a high-profile site overlooking I-4 and I-75.

In 2004, he bought a tiny triangle of land next to the interstate. In 2008, the Confederate Veterans organization built a 139-foot flagpole and hung a 30- by-50-foot rebel flag.

The huge flag became famous — or infamous — as thousands of Florida motorists drove past daily.

It became a national controversy, with critics and defenders arguing about free speech and racial sensitivity.

The controversy has subsided, but the flag still flies over East Tampa, home of everything from the Camp Knox Motel to Stein's Auto Graveyard.

Next door is Accent Marine, where Ted and Maxine Lowden sell fishing boats. They have been on U.S. 92 for 20 years. The jovial couple marvel at the hoopla.

Ted jokes that he could have bought that land years ago and saved everybody a lot of trouble. Maxine remembers when Lambert first talked about plans for the property.

"He just told us it was going to be a veterans' park; he didn't say anything about a Confederate flag," she says. "I don't like him, but that's just his personality and my personality. It had nothing to do with the flag."

* * * * *The best view of the big rebel flag might be from the Fern Valley Trailer Park, where Tammy Williams flies an American flag outside her home. That does not mean she is against the Confederate symbol. She laughs and turns, like a beauty pageant contestant, to show a visitor the tattoo on her right calf.It's a rebel flag — a rebel flag with a Chevrolet car logo.

Williams, 40, an unemployed Tampa native, used to work at the county jail. She enjoys her view of the big flag.

"It's something different, something about the South," Williams says. "Dixie, rebellion, I don't know."

This positive sentiment is shared by many along U.S. 92.

Jerry Southern, 62, a native of North Carolina, sees the Confederate flag on walks to the Free Will Baptist Church. "It's symbolic to me; I'm a Southerner," he says with a grin. "If they took that down, they'd take away something from this area."

Ricky Kernon, 33, a repo man, also lives near U.S. 92. Asked why he likes the flag, he says bluntly that he hates black people, using an offensive slur. "I'm not gonna lie to you," Kernon says. "I'm a racist."

* * * * *Just west of I-75, U.S. 92 offers everything from the Iron Workers Union to the State Highway Baptist Church.The old Citgo gas station advertises "Fresh chicken tenders, livers, gizzards and more."

After work at Taylor Rentals, Fred McGlon and Shelly Miley take cigarette breaks at a picnic table outside the Citgo. He's black. She's white.

They don't mind the rebel flag nearby.

"It's not a racist thing," Miley says. "It's just history."

McGlon shrugs.

"It doesn't bother me," he says. "It's people's choice."

Most black residents of the neighborhood disagree.

They consider the Civil War symbol provocative and insensitive.

"What do you think I think?" asks Keith Johnson, 25, a college student.

"You know I don't like it. I notice it all the time. You can't help but notice it," Johnson says. "I don't think it should be there, but I guess I can't do anything about it."

Lambert, 62, who started the flag controversy, is a Pensacola native who lives on four acres in South Tampa.

He keeps bees and raises chickens and cows, selling milk and honey.

* * * * *Lambert is genial and soft-spoken. The answering machine on his telephone asks people to "Have a Dixie day."He calls the flag a big success.

"It went overwhelmingly positively," Lambert says. "It's an affirmation of our heritage."

He says that he cannot imagine why black people would take offense at the flag.

Asked about the Civil War ending slavery, Lambert replies that, well, it was the period of Reconstruction after the war that led to the Jim Crow laws and to segregation in the South.

Lambert laughs at the idea that interstate construction or anything else might take down the great Confederate flag of Tampa.

"They'd have to buy the land from us, and we'd just find another place," he says.

"We'd put up a taller pole and a bigger flag," he adds.

National Parks Reach Out to Blacks Who Aren’t Visiting

Shelton Johnson, a ranger at Yosemite, enlisted Oprah Winfrey in an effort to increase interest in national parks among blacks.

By MIREYA NAVARRO

When Shelton Johnson was 5, his family took him to Berchtesgaden National Park in the Bavarian Alps. To this day, he remembers his sense of awe.

“The mountains, the sky being so close — it affected me profoundly,” said Mr. Johnson, who now works as a ranger at Yosemite National Park in California.

In 23 years on the job, Mr. Johnson, 52, has been equally struck by how few of his fellow African-Americans visit the national parks, Yosemite included. A few years ago, he decided to do something about it.

In a plaintive letter to Oprah Winfrey, he wrote:

“Every year, America is becoming increasingly diverse, but that diversity is not reflected in the national parks, even though African-Americans and other groups played a vital role in the founding of national parks. If the national parks are America’s playground, then why are we not playing in the most beautiful places in America?”

On Friday, “The Oprah Winfrey Show” devoted the full hour to a segment that was taped at Yosemite in response to Mr. Johnson’s appeal. Part 2 of the episode is to be broadcast on Wednesday.

The visitors issue is a pressing one for the National Park Service, which is expanding its efforts to diversify both its guests and its work force as the agency prepares to celebrate its centennial in 2016.

Studies and surveys show that visitors to the nation’s 393 national parks — there were 285.5 million of them in 2009 — are overwhelmingly non-Hispanic whites, with blacks the least likely group to visit. That reality has not changed since the 1960s, when it was first identified as an issue. The Park Service now says the problem is linked to the parks’ very survival.

“If the American public doesn’t know that we exist or doesn’t care, our mission is potentially in jeopardy,” said Jonathan B. Jarvis, who took over as director of the Park Service last year. “There’s a disconnect that needs addressing.”

The Park Service does not log attendance numbers at individual parks by race or ethnicity. But in a comprehensive survey it commissioned in 2000, only 13 percent of black respondents reported visiting a national park in the previous two years. That compared with 27 percent for Latinos, 29 percent for Asians and 36 percent for whites.

Jim Gramann, a visiting social scientist with the Park Service who is overseeing a review of a follow-up survey in 2008 and 2009 that is to be released early next year, said the gap persisted.

“The demographic face of America is not reflected in national park visitation, with a few exceptions,” Mr. Gramann said. In the large Western parks especially, he added, visitors are overwhelmingly non-Hispanic white, highly educated and affluent.

Park Service officials have identified factors like cost, travel distance and lack of information — for example, ignorance about what activities the parks offer — as barriers to visits.

But some officials acknowledge that the parks may not seem welcoming to specific ethnic groups. They cited rules that limit the number of people in picnic areas or the number of tents that can be pitched at specific sites, which can clash with the vacation style of extended Latino families.

Yet no group avoids national parks as much as African-Americans. The 2000 survey found that blacks were three times as likely as whites to believe that park employees gave them poor service and that parks were “uncomfortable places.”

Park Service officials emphasize that the demographics vary, and that parks like the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site in Atlanta and the Manzanar National Historic Site in Independence, Calif., site of a World War II detention camp for Japanese-Americans, draw diverse crowds.

But attendance tends to be more homogenously white at wilderness parks like Yosemite, where a 2009 survey found that 77 percent of the visitors were white, 11 percent Latino, 11 percent Asian and 1 percent black.

When Ms. Winfrey visited Yosemite this month to tape her show, Mr. Johnson said, he was not surprised to hear that it was her first trip to the park and her first time camping. He said he was more likely to meet someone from Finland or Israel in the park than from, say, Harlem or Oakland, Calif.

“It’s something that’s pervasive in the culture — it doesn’t matter whether you’re Oprah or a postal worker,” Mr. Johnson said. (Ms. Winfrey was traveling and unavailable for an interview, a spokeswoman said.)

Nina Roberts, a former education specialist for the Park Service who is an associate professor of recreation, parks and tourism at San Francisco State University, said her research showed that many blacks were anxious about the people they might encounter in the parks, a wariness that gets passed on through the generations.

Ms. Roberts said a 19-year-old woman in a focus group in Denver had told her: “My granddaddy told me the K.K.K. hangs out up in the mountains. Why would I want to go?”

Mr. Johnson, who was born in Detroit, said he visited Berchtesgaden in the Alps when his father was stationed in Germany as a staff sergeant in the Army.

Mr. Johnson, who majored in English literature and creative writing at the University of Michigan, became a ranger in 1987 after what he described as a lark of a summer job washing dishes at the Old Faithful Inn in Yellowstone National Park.

As he learned more about the Park Service’s early history, he embarked on a work of fiction, “Gloryland: A Novel,” published last year by Sierra Club/Counterpoint. The novel recounts the experience of a black cavalryman in the Army, one of the so-called Buffalo Soldiers who patrolled national parklands in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Today, the Park Service’s 25,000 employees are 83 percent white.

Incorporating stories like the Buffalo Soldiers’ tale into tours and brochures is one step the Park Service has taken to be more welcoming as well as more accurate. But such efforts are scattered, said Mr. Jarvis, the agency’s director, and far more are needed.

Mr. Jarvis said the Park Service was planning more partnerships with high schools that arrange park jobs for students and more naturalization ceremonies for new citizens in parks. It is also seeking to recruit employees at black colleges.

With the “The Oprah Winfrey Show” segments and a black family in the White House who made a point of vacationing in Yellowstone last summer, some experts suggest that the climate is favorable for a turnaround in park visits.

“It’s all layered,” said Carolyn Finney, an assistant professor of environmental science policy at the University of California, Berkeley, who is working on a book about blacks’ relationship to the natural environment. “You need ways to make people think about the parks differently.”