OK, great.
Don’t just be sad, explain it.
Larry Harvey on Burning Man's diversity gap: 'Black folks don't like to camp as much as white folks'
2 Likes
Harvey assumes that what keeps black people from not coming to burning man is pure choice. Any number of factors could be involved that have nothing to do with choice. Cost (not just of the tickets, but traveling there, bringing in supplies with you, etc) could be one factor. The culture of burners might keep people who might otherwise be interested away if they feel that they would not be accepted. Plus, his assumption about black folks and camping is extrapolated from his experiences with a small group of people, in a particular space - urban environments - and a particular urban environment, his own neighborhood.
Whenever issues like this are brought up, people often just get offended and double down. He might think he’s doing enough by bringing his family or encouraging people of color that he knows to come along. But there is still a rather large gap. If he’s interested in radical inclusion, then perhaps looking into why the number of African Americans are so low is a question worth exploring and trying to address. But he just immediately goes to the knee jerk reaction of “I’m not racist, I’ve got black family/friends, and it’s a choice people make.” Have black people gone and experienced racism while there? We don’t know, because he doesn’t care to ask that question.
His life may include a wide variety of choices and an endless buffet of wonderful things to chose from. There are many, many, many people, for a whole host of reasons, who may not have the same set of choices to make. I feel as if our goal in crafting a better society should be to make as many choices available to as many souls on this planet as possible. Harvey just comes off as a tone death libertarian to me, at least in this article, assuming that everyone has the same opportunities in life that he currently has. No. That’s untrue. And to have someone just ignore that when talking about something like this is just irritating at best.
12 Likes
Alright, thank you for a reasonable response. : )
Seeing as more than one black comedian has commented along similar lines, it does seem that it’s not just a theory from Harvey’s own background. So, I don’t know that it’s racially problematic. But may be it is as you say. A better answer could have been “I don’t know.”
For me, having been to Burning Man, it has definitely struck me how rare it is to see black people there. But I don’t know that it’s less black people than the average EDM concert, if one figures in the added cost as a filter. The cost-as-filter part of it seems to make it more a situation of class than race, although the two do run very parallel.
A larger question re: the whole festival can be, is something racist or exclusionary if a group of people just don’t seem to generally be interested? It’s an interesting question. It could be - it just hardly seems to me to be certain.
Edit:
Another thought could be, that it really is a crazy thing to go party for a week or more in a part of the desert that can kill you. It just may be close to the heart of how white people can be crazy.
2 Likes
Can we at least wait until a certain group complains about lack of access before we try to fix it? I promise you that it is not money, time or resources that have kept me from attending, but I do not feel that I need to sit in the desert to get my self-expression and self-freedom on. I have never once heard anyone complain that they felt excluded from Burning man, has anyone else?
They post the time and location of all the Star Trek, and Star Wars conventions, and many people enjoy them, and that is great. Do we need to have a ethnic breakdown of their attendance? Did anyone ever notice that there are way more men at car shows than women. Do you think we can find ways to make car shows more appealing to women, because women are always complaining they feel left out of car shows. They don’t really care about things like equal pay and glass ceiling issues.
1 Like
I live in something like the 4th whitest state in the country, so I don’t know enough black people to evaluate how prevalent camping is among their demographic, but-
“Many of the people that we’re camping with or around or hiking near are not African-American, in fact often they’re white southerners and we assume they might have some assumptions about us- So my husband, who is a civil rights lawyer, an African-American civil rights lawyer, has a camping cap. And on his camping cap is the confederate flag. And he wears the confederate flag camping cap as a way of signalling We’re friendly! We’re here. We’re with you in order to make camping safer for us in Mississippi.”
Jesus christ. That is the most demoralizing thing I’ve heard today.
13 Likes
It’s a bit of a boneheaded thing to say, BUT interestingly enough there is piece in the Guardian that explored this issue.
2 Likes
If every white dude attending brings their 'one black friend’™ that will at least increase total participation by one black dude every year.
8 Likes
Another demographic:
No one wants that. That’s why it’s a misdirection from an honest conversation about who’s at Burning Man and whether it’s radically inclusive. Or inclusive at all. And that’s why it’s a shitty thing to say.
Making sweeping comments about a culture you don’t participate in ain’t great either. Dude ain’t interested in listening because he already has it all figured out, which is, ahem, kind of a running theme with white dudes.
7 Likes
Just to have some more statistics, from the 2014 American Camper Report:
And according to wikipedia, the Analysis by 2010 Federal Population Census shows 13.6% percent of the U.S. is of African ancestry.
1 Like
Ok - I can agree with that. Especially when I was younger I wouldn’t go to certain concerts because I didn’t think I would fit in. Though in hind sight probably no one would have cared.
So what is Burning Man doing wrong, if anything? What can they do better?
Honestly, for me it has zero appeal and I would probably never go. It seems to attract a niche sub-culture I am not into. Could it be that there just as broad of an appeal?
2 Likes
I think we need to back up a minute and recognize that A.) camping (in all it’s usual forms) is not a typical vacation for a lot of people, and that B.) Burning Man is a very different thing that just happens to have a camping element to it; you’re not going to see a naked unicyclist fire-eater at Acadia National Park, and people aren’t really going to Burning Man to enjoy nature and some peace-and-quiet.
For a lot of people a vacation is about relaxing and pampering yourself, and camping doesn’t really fit that bill. Car-camping in a paid campground is like going to an upscale trailer park that maybe has some nature trails and a lake you can enjoy. Serious backpacking is more about solitude, but also about vigorous exercise and a half-assed sense of adventure (mainly the unpredictability of the weather and whether you have enough food to make it to the next road crossing.) Both of these are a far cry from relaxing on the beach, eating in nice restaurants, or wandering through a museum.
5 Likes
Sleeping in a tent under the stars in the wilderness, voluntarily? Sounds like camping to me.
(Or possibly in a camper instead of a tent, but, y’know, it’s in the name.)
Of course it’s not just camping, but it is also camping.
2 Likes
I thought part of the appeal with burning man is the exclusionary aspect of it? Saying you have been there is a social currency worth more than participating in something actually worthwhile and meaningful like Big Brothers Big Sisters (… in those circles anyway).
3 Likes
Good thing you have now been disabused of that ridiculous wrongheaded notion then.
2 Likes
As an honest question, what could/should Burning Man be doing to increase minority interest? There may be cultural things they could do that I’m not thinking of, but I don’t think “ticket prices are too high” is a fair complaint. Burning Man is a non-profit, and they’ve been quite open about their finances–making Burning Man happen costs upwards of ten million dollars a year, and nobody’s getting rich off of that money. They offer a million dollars’ worth of art grants and 800 grand worth of low-income tickets, so I don’t think you can reasonably say that they’re not putting money into their community.
At the end of the day, this is an event that costs a big boatload of money to put on, and that money has to come from somewhere. I don’t think there’s much that the Burning Man organizers can really do about that.
4 Likes
There were more than 65,000 people there this year. I’m not sure that’s “exclusive” anymore.
1 Like
I’d really like to know how you think anything that happens in the middle of an empty desert could possibly constitute “noise pollution.”
1 Like
Nope, still a party for the in crowd.
2 Likes
I don’t like Dirty Dancing, either, but I’ve heard the Catskills are very beautiful this time of year…
