Why is Burning Man so white?
Every year a dust covered fairy tale unfolds in the desert where artists, revelers and thrill-seekers converge to explore the outer limits of collective imagination at Burning Man, a festival centered around expression held in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada every year. Historically, the event has had a low participation rate for Black festival-goers, with a figure that increased to only 1.1% in 2019.
One of the greatest and most obvious barriers to access to the festival is cost. Ticket prices alone are upwards of $500, and combining travel fees, camping needs and time off from work, totals can easily add up to $1,000 to $3,000.
Organizational leadership has been viewed by many BIPOC attendees as one of the major reasons that the festival’s overwhelming whiteness has prevailed. When asked in 2015 why Black attendance was so low, festival founder Larry Harvey replied, “I don’t think black folks like to camp as much as white folks.” This statement was followed by “We’re not going to set racial quotas” when asked about the presence of ultra-wealthy tech moguls at the event. That year, burners who earned $300,000 or more outnumbered Black burners at the festival by 2 to 1.
Many Black burners see the same sentiments through a more historically focused lens. Before racial integration, many Black people had closer relationships to the land, relying on herbal medicine, wild game and natural materials to make household goods. This knowledge helped people of color navigate their way to freedom and maintain independence when faced with discrimination in housing, storefronts, and medicine. Expropriation of Black people from outdoor spaces and creating conditions where populations are urbanized for more efficient labor exploitations have been functions of the machinations of racism in this country for years and play out in the racial discrepancy at the festival.
Beyond the boundaries of creature comfort, some of the forms of expression that are common at the festival are seen as unpalatable in Black communities, which can tend to be more conservative and rooted in “traditional family values”. Full nudity is a fairly common sight among participants, as are whimsical modes of dress that may include cross-dressing elements, like men in skirts and dresses. One Black festival-goer reported that his family tried to stage an intervention for him after seeing his tutu-clad photos from the trip.
For many people of color, the idea of being relatively isolated in a remote setting while surrounded by thousands of white attendees reveling in an unbidden “no rules” environment simply seems unsafe. Such fears are reflected in incidents such as the decrying of the Black Lives Matter banner that is hung each year in the Que Viva BIPOC campsite.
Despite being a festival supposedly founded on the premise of “radical inclusion” (as listed in the 10 principles written by the founder in 2004), and in light of a reputation for whiteness so widespread it became a cultural motif, 2020 was the first year that the festival organization spoke out about race issues. There have been a number of listening and learning procedures pushed forward by BIPOC burners and undertaken by organizational leadership, including sensitivity training, a review of policies and the reshaping of accessibility needs. However, many feel that it is too little too late, calling the change a perfunctory set of steps that had to be cajoled out of leadership by BIPOC attendees. What the future holds for diversity at the festival unfolding this Labor Day weekend remains to be seen.
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This story was originally published September 2, 2022 at 6:00 AM.