Why Do Hardly Any Black People Attend Famed Festival in Middle of Desert? Burning Man's Founder Has a Theory

Larry Harvey, founder of the decidedly off-the-beaten-path Burning Man festival, apparently has an attendance problem.

Larry Harvey (Image source: YouTube)

According to the festival website, "Once a year, tens of thousands of people gather in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert to create Black Rock City, a temporary metropolis dedicated to community, art, self-expression, and self-reliance."

Image source: YouTube

The description ends like so: "In this crucible of creativity, all are welcome."

Indeed, while the fest is pushing nearly 70,000 attendees, the problem is that one particular group of people is barely attending Burning Man — namely, black people.

The Guardian noted:

According to the most recent Black Rock city census, complied yearly by a team of academic demographers and anthropologists to determine the makeup of the festival, 87% of burners identified as white; 6% identified as Hispanic, 6% as Asian, and 2% as Native Americans (figures rounded) – on the latter of whose ancestral lands the event occurs. The smallest demographic of burners – 1.3% – identified as black. According to the census, which also measures income, this means that the temporary city is home to twice as many people who earn $300,000 a year as it is to black people.

The paper added Harvey's theory on why this is: "I don’t think black folks like to camp as much as white folks."

Harvey, who has black family members, expanded on his premise by invoking his take on U.S. history.

“Remember a group that was enslaved and made to work," he told the Guardian. "Slavishly, you know in the fields. This goes all the way back to the Caribbean scene, when the average life of a slave in the fields was very short. And, so, there’s that background, that agrarian poverty associated with things. Maybe your first move isn’t to go camping. Seriously.”

It's worth noting that first on the list of Burning Man's "10 Principles" is "radical inclusion."

(H/T: New York Daily News)

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