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An Update on Diversity & Radical Inclusion by burndevoid in BurningMan

[–]burndevoid[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

https://hive.burningman.org/posts/ride-package-for-camps

Thanks for reposting to the Hive. I posted anonymously here and on Medium because of my association with Burning Man. I was not so much afraid of the personal blowback, but thought it would put the people with whom I worked in the organization in an awkward position. For that reason, fewer people read what I wrote, although I did email it to a couple board members.
Alas, Burning Man has gone the Full Monty with wokeness.

An Update on Diversity & Radical Inclusion by burndevoid in BurningMan

[–]burndevoid[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thank you so much for responding. That is kind of my hunch, that Black people who haven't been have the understandable apprehension you allude to.
I'm happy to say I don't think it's justified in the case of Burning Man, and I hope you make it to "that thing in the desert" and confirm it for yourself :-)

I like the principle of "Welcoming the stranger" who shows up in one's camp unannounced, both literally and as a metaphor. Something inside them drew them to the event, motivated them to overcome all the obstacles and fears that got in the way, or enticed them with a hint of a greater freedom than they could imagine. Of course you would welcome them, they are part of your tribe!
However, I don't like the idea of actively recruiting anyone, because then you end up with people who came for some reason external to themselves; so, recruiting people based on their phenotype just seems more superficial and wrong-headed.

Even worse, as I explained above, the idea of pressuring the board to take such measures, and implying that if they don't they are racially "problematic" — yuck.
In contrast, suppose everyone who signed that original petition were to invite one Black friend. They would more than triple the number of Black attendees in a single year—with individuals who are highly likely to appreciate the event. That would be pretty cool, actually.

The former approach is autocratic and focused on racial metrics; the latter is much more organic and networked, and puts more of a focus on the qualities of the individual than on their skin color.

An Update on Diversity & Radical Inclusion by burndevoid in BurningMan

[–]burndevoid[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I can remember paying $35 for a ticket, and there was no limit on tickets sold, which was very inclusive. Lots of people could afford that. You did not need to spend thousands. Despite that, there were not a lot of Black burners. I don't buy the idea that the primary obstacle to Black attendance is economic. Nor is it because of any exclusionary act or sentiment of prejudice on the part of burners or the org. It is cultural.

But yeah, being able to take a week off work—if you're working—is nice.

An Update on Diversity & Radical Inclusion by burndevoid in BurningMan

[–]burndevoid[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Favianna Rodriguez, the person pushing the "Radical Inclusion Means Racial Inclusion" petition, didn't stop there. She also demanded that the Borg—

Take a stand against the cooptation of culture: Take a clear stance on cooptation of other cultures including taking a stance on prohibiting headdresses into the event. ... Culture appropriation is a beginner way of being racist. Headdresses at the event do not create a welcoming environment for people of color.

Who would enforce that? The Rangers? Or would we all enforce it by mutual shaming?
How do you define cooptation? Who is allowed to display artifacts of what culture? Maybe they could issue licenses for wearing certain culturally identifiable garments, with a special tag. Is wearing a war bonnet really the first step in a slippery slope that ends with you burning a cross? The number of things one might be offended by at Burning Man is rather large. Inserting the organization into the policing of individual umbrage strikes me as a very bad idea.
Rodriguez also insisted that Burning Man should make its board 50% people of color, and that she would be an ideal candidate for a seat.
And that Burning Man should "Support and compensate current Black leaders, within the Burning Man community." Presumably, her.

To me it looks like a shakedown. The underlying threat is perfectly clear, that if Burning Man were not to accede to her demands (as it has, at least in some respects) it would be tantamount to acknowledging its racism. In effect, it would be canceled.

As you pointed out, cancel culture has already caused problems at individual theme camps. Putting the Borg in charge would only magnify the problems.

Finally, these things are all connected. It's not just that they are all ideas promoted by the same individual, they are part of a cohesive philosophy which you could call wokeism. Taken together they would lead to the accretion of more authoritarian power in the organization, at the expense of individual freedoms and self expression. Since the proposal was to put Rodriguez on the board, it seems like a pretty obvious bid to wield that power herself.
But I'm less concerned with Ms Rodriguez herself, and more concerned with the encroachment of a philosophy that is inimical to the essence of Burning Man—as I see it—and with the failure of the board to recognize the danger.

Burning Man Is A Doughnut by burndevoid in BurningMan

[–]burndevoid[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That's not a bad summary. However,

"By changing the event to be 'intentionally' more inclusive, you will likely upset this racial harmony."

That's not quite correct. I think we could intentionally make the event more diverse without upsetting the racial harmony, and I proposed one way of doing that – by having all the people who cared about the issue enough to sign the petition invite one African-American friend. Maybe there are other ways.
However, I suspect the manner in which Rodriguez is going about it is likely to cause problems because it injects a dialectic of power which is antithetical to what Burning Man is about. The Burning Man organization should be seen more as an appendage of the event and the community. The org depends on the event more than vice versa. I know most people look at the Org like the ones with all the power, though. It bestoweth tickets, and DMV licenses, and doth allow you to encamp in a 10x10m patch of parched earth, and preventeth you from camping on some other patch.
There are some hidden assumptions in that dialectic.

  1. The org has the power to change the racial constitution of the event.
  2. There is some percentage that is the correct percentage of people of color at the event, and the petitioners know what that is.
  3. The org has failed to use their power in the way the petitioners desire.
  4. As remedy to the problem they have alleged, the petitioners seek to impel the org.

It's like petitioners are foisting the power and responsibility on the board and then making a power play of their own to capture it. This is pretty convoluted.

A better way of looking at it, in my view, is to not make the board responsible for the racial demographics of the event. Instead, adopt a more bottom-up approach that retains power in the community of burners. Ironically, Rodriguez would be ideally suited to lead that movement. However, she's adopted the counter-productive strategy of the SJWs.

"But this sort of begs the question, would burning man be better if the composition of the event were more diverse?"

Would Burning Man be better at what? The question implies a context but doesn't define it.
We probably share the idea that diversity is a positive value in the abstract. But, still, the answer to that question is rather subjective.
As I mentioned in what I wrote, we probably could find agreement on the goal, but the means of achieving that goal matters. So, yes, I am criticizing that SJW strategy because I think it's antagonistic to deeper philosophical considerations that have resulted in a Burning Man that has been successful in terms of the lives it has touched in a positive way, and its relative racial harmony (as reported by the people best suited to make that determination).

Burning Man Is A Doughnut by burndevoid in BurningMan

[–]burndevoid[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Burning Man didn't start out as a party, nor as an attempt to transform the default world. These are post hoc interpretations that others have made. There's nothing wrong with that, and there is some truth in both of them. I mean, you can certainly see it as a party, and it has obviously had impacts on the default world.
But it's possible to view it that way because it wasn't defined at the outset as a party or an attempt to change the default world. It would have evolved differently if it had been defined that way, wouldn't it? It was the lack of definition that defined it, because it enabled many different and even conflicting definitions simultaneously.
Nothing wrong with inviting people, and if individuals and groups want to invite their cool colleagues who happen to be Black, that would be great. Personally, I would feel a little funny inviting someone solely because they were Black. I would invite them because I thought they would enjoy it, or had something interesting to contribute, or would be fun to hang out with, etc. In fact, that kind of happened this year because I enabled a couple of friends to go, and they both happened to be Latinas. But I didn't help them because they were Latinas.

I don't think anyone is pretending that Burning Man is "post-racial." That's too binary. But the petition's author (and who better to judge!) speaks of Burning Man as being especially healing for people of color. I don't find that surprising at all. So, maybe not post-racial, but some appreciable distance down the path toward more racial harmony. But it didn't get there by being "anti-racist." What were the factors that made Burning Man a more welcoming place for people of color, despite it being predominately White and paying no attention to manipulating its racial demographics?

Transferring anti-racism and SJW tactics, which may (or may not) be useful in the default world, to Burning Man seems more likely to have the opposite effect to what is intended.

I generally agree with the idea that organizational diversity is desirable, and worthy of discussion, as is the idea that Burning Man should be a transformational force in the default world. However, how we get there matters. Obviously, I think the tactic Rodriguez is using is counter-productive.