Burning Man Must Address its Racial Inclusion Problem: An Open Letter to the Board of Directors of Burning Man Project
Burning Man is one of the largest arts nonprofits in the world, an experimental community and a cultural organization founded on 10 principles, which include Radical Inclusion and Civic Engagement. Yet Black people and other people of color are significantly underrepresented in this temporary desert city of 75,000 people built each year in Nevada. From 2013–2018, Black burners represented 1% or less of attendees.
Burning Man, which started small and organically at Baker Beach in San Francisco, has grown into a worldwide phenomenon, an experimental city attended by nearly 75,000 each year, that leaves a significant and broad cultural imprint. I believe that cultural spaces with global reputations must be designed in ways that not only invite but include at its center people of color, they must have radical inclusion at their core.
As a young artist and daughter of immigrants growing up in East Oakland, I always wondered why cultural spaces did not reflect the stories of people who looked like me. I was too young to understand how systemic racism worked. One of the reasons I became an artist was to share my lived experience through culture, in the hopes that our country would become a more welcoming place for immigrants and their children.
At my first Burn in 2011, I experienced a sense of freedom and creative expression that I had never felt before, and I instantly knew that I wanted other artists and leaders of color to witness Burning Man because the event’s transformative could help us imagine solutions for society at large. Today, I lead Que Viva Camp at Burning Man, a camp for people of color who are engaged in social justice. This year will be my 8th time attending the Burning Man event, and every year, my camp facilitates art workshops around themes like immigrant rights, Black Lives Matter, and understanding white privilege.
I am also the Founder and the President of the Center for Cultural Power (formerly CultureStrike), and in my role as a national arts leader, I continue to offer my critique and partnership to cultural institutions who have access to a significant bulk of resources and an outside influence. Burning Man, like many other white-led institutions, receives great attention for their experimental and innovative approach, yet they do not reflect the racial diversity of the cities, states, or country they are in. As Burning Man continues to expand its cultural imprint and influence, Black people and other people of color must be a part of that vision.
Burning Man Project is actively thinking about how the 10 Principles translate in the culture on and off Playa. This is precisely why it’s critical for the organization to address the severe underrepresentation of people of color. In their most recent document laying out a vision for the next 5–10 years “Cultural Direction Setting: A Vision for Residential Black Rock City”, there was no explicit commitment made to addressing equity concerns on Playa.
In May 2019, with the support of my camp and after various conversations with Burning Man attendees, partners, and stakeholders, I decided to write a letter to Burning Man’s Board of Directors and staff leadership. In this letter, I offer both my critique and partnership. Burning Man is too influential a place for us to ignore. Spaces like it have ignored us — the racially marginalized and politically oppressed — for far too long already. Burning Man offers people the experience of living in a society that at least in its intention, is rooted in values of love, joy, gifting acceptance, expression etc. It is a different kind of society and urban space, one in which people of color have the potential to see things outside of oppression and expand their perception of what’s possible. People of color especially need the healing that this type of experience engenders.
The letter to the Board of Directors, sent in late May 2019, is pasted below with some redactions for the sake of length.
If you are interested in supporting true racial inclusion at Burning Man, here are some ways to get involved and support Que Viva Camp.
- Sign our petition urging Burning Man’s Board of Directors to take action on inclusion and racial equity
- Share this letter with other Burners and tag Burning Man Project
- Donate to Que Viva Camp and support our mission and workshops at the Burning Man event
- If you attend Burning Man, visit Que Viva Camp near Center Camp at Rod’s Road & Diana.
- For Press Inquiries, email info@culturestrike.org
LETTER TO BURNING MAN BOARD — MAY 2019
Dear Burning Man Staff and Board,
I’m writing to you as an artist, activist and change maker who has attended Burning Man for 7 years and who leads a powerful camp of people of color, Que Viva Camp. I’m writing with love and compassion to share my deep concerns about the culture of inclusion at Burning Man and to provide recommendations on how the Burning Man organization can do better.
I’m writing to you to express the urgency of this moment, and ask — how is Burning Man living up to the true meaning of the principle of Radical Inclusion. How can Burning Man achieve Radical Inclusion without racial inclusion?
Burning Man must confront the awful reality that only 9–10% of attendees are people of color, and only 1% are Black. This is not at all reflective of the state of California, from which over half of your participants come from. It’s not reflective of the country in which most attendees live, and it’s definitely not reflective of the deep ethos espoused by the 10 Principles. As many of the top cultural institutions around the country are tackling issues of equity and inclusion from a race perspective, I ask, where does Burning Man stand on this issue and what is your plan to solve it? I urge you to ask the questions: How did we get here? How do we change ourselves from the inside out to address this problem? What can we do about it? How do we turn our inaction into action?
The Burning Man event has been a transformative experience for me since 2011. I vividly remember the first day I arrived to the Playa and experienced tremendous freedom, awe and wonder. To this day, those memories are imprinted on my imagination. I realized that I wanted to share this experience with other people of color, especially artists and activists who, like me, were involved in social justice causes because they would take the culture of Burning Man back to their communities.
As the daughter of immigrants who grew up in a working class Black and Latinx community, I witnessed severe inequality as a child and hateful xenophobic sentiment toward my family. I work in the social justice sector because those problems continue today and I want true freedom, safety and equity for my community. I knew at my first Burn, that I wanted other leaders of color to witness Burning Man, because I felt that its transformative nature could help us imagine solutions for our communities and for society at large. For this reason, year after year, I bring some of the most seasoned and diverse cultural workers, social justice leaders, and change makers to the Playa. Burning Man is not only a space of transformation, but also a space to learn new skills and strategies for building communities.
Racial inequality is pervasive and historic. People of color have less access to civil freedoms because of centuries of systemic racism and colonization. Communities of color face higher incarceration rates and live in communities with higher levels of pollution and escalated incidents of violence. We face higher probabilities of being killed by law enforcement. People of color earn less and have less accumulated wealth than their white counterparts. Today’s hateful national culture demonstrates that we still live under a system that benefits the few, while engaging in full on violence against the “other.” As people of color, we face higher probabilities of being deported, higher probabilities of our families being separated, of being discriminated in our jobs, or of facing housing injustices.
We are in a moment of reckoning in this country in which systems of inequality are being named, called out, and beginning to change. As a society, we are developing the language to name systemic racism and to engage in constructive dialogue about how white people can show up in this urgent work around equity. Additionally, cultural institutions around the country are recognizing that artists and cultural creators have a unique role in challenging inequity and imagining new and more just realities. Culture is power — it shapes who we are as a people, sets the terms of the world we live in, and inform our view of the world.
Burning Man is a part of the regional and national cultural landscape, yet has done little to engage in the question of racial inclusion and equity. When an institution does not confront racism and inequality directly, they are actually contributing to the problem by their implicit support of the status quo. Burning Man is overwhelmingly white and something must be done about it now.
We are experiencing highly divisive times with the resurgence of white nationalism and white supremacy, and the impacts of racism are vividly clear. What this moment in history demonstrates to us is that we can no longer move in a way where we ignore racial disparities.
For the past three years, I have met with board members and other leaders from the Burning Man organization to encourage you all to address how Burning Man may address it’s lack of racial diversity. It’s astonishing and extremely sad that Burning Man only has 1% Black people compared to a national average of 12.6%, especially at a time when Black people experience such severe discrimination from police brutality, higher death rates in hospitals, and the highest rates of incarceration. These disparities are indicative of the deeply entrenched, systemic barriers of anti-Black exclusion. Do you want your annual gathering to reflect and perpetuate the invisibilization of Black folks?
Despite my many attempts and interventions, I have noticed a general lack of interest and attention paid from the Burning Man organization. In your communications with the Burner community, this is not named as a priority, nor is there any kind of indication of any type of plan to address this. The blog posts “designed to spark conversation” interviewing Élida Bautista and Marlon Williams describe this issue as a quirky phenomenon. The comments sections on the Burning Man website and Facebook page demonstrate how many Burners minimize our very humanity as people of color. Clearly as an organization you have no communications strategy to frame this from the perspective of radical inclusion, as you allow ignorance and hate to spread in your comments.
It doesn’t feel like this is a priority. We do notice your concern with the plug and play camps. We’ve noticed you have a clear action plan for that.
This lack of action is in stark contrast to what the rest of the cultural sector. Hollywood, major art museums, national cultural institutions, are prioritizing diversity and inclusion. Important cultural centers like Los Angeles, New York and Nashville are adopting cultural equity policies, in which they acknowledge systemic inequality and commit to accountability and change. I encourage you to read the statement by the city of Nashville linked above, in which they lay out a clear plan of action. Even in Hollywood, we are witnessing a rising momentum around equity. And it seems that everyone agrees that without racial diversity, we’re simply not seeing the entire picture.
Burning Man’s low attendance of people of color, especially Black people, signals a problem within the organization. It signals that this is not something you all are taking seriously. Furthermore, your board and your staff don’t reflect racial diversity. So it’s understandable that this is not a top priority for you, its because you are missing these voices in your leadership. We know from research on inclusion in the workplace a critical mass must be achieved before the outsider has enough social capital to effect change. A handful of people of color is not sufficient.
You have had requests and opportunities to address the lack of racial diversity, but you have fallen short of making real commitments and charting a course of action. Here are some recommendations for the Burning Man organization:
- Racial justice training: Comprehensive racial justice and anti-racism training for your entire board and staff. The Burning Man organization should better understand how white supremacy and white privilege works in institutions of power that are predominantly white. I think it’s imperative that you all understand how you may be standing in your own way.
- Set goals to increase representation on playa: An intentional commitment from the organization to change your racial diversity attendance numbers in the next five years. The promise of an inclusive Burning Man is that new stories are told from people with different experiences and backgrounds. Set real goals, allocate resources, and engage in regenerative conversations around solutions. Denial stands in your way.
- Support people of color leaders through incubation strategies: Commit to supporting Burners who are people of color leaders. It could look like intentionally supporting theme camps like mine. Consider an incubator for camps led by people of color, invest in building the community of anti-racist knowledge that you are missing. There must be an investment from the organization towards the leaders of color in your community. As somebody who has led a camp 6 times, I can tell you that even I, as a seasoned burner, do not have the same access to resources and to the knowledge base that forms the core of Burning Man. I am simply not a part of those communities. Invest in the generation of people of color leaders who are going to bring more people of color to the event. How can current people-of-color-led camps support more people-of-color-led camps with support from the Burning Man organization?
- Add more people of color to your Board of Directors: Commit to 50/50 diversity and set some goals around racial diversity in your leadership. I am a great candidate for your board actually as a thought leader in the space of culture. And I know the event inside out, and understand clearly what your challenges are. I am also empowered enough to be able to challenge you all with love and directness. I am happy to provide a list of suggestions of for board members.
- 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. That’s a low lift you can do. Other events like Symbiosis have done the same. Culture appropriation is a beginner way of being racist. Headdresses at the event do not create a welcoming environment for people of color. Cultural cooptation is something you could easily solve.
- Address ecological sustainability: Communities of color and indigenous communities are disproportionately affected by climate change. In today’s day and age, we can’t be burning fossil fuels like we do out on the Playa. Burning Man can and should take more responsibility for your event footprint (and this goes well beyond paltry carbon offsets, or encouraging burners to take the Burner Express). This is beyond “compliance” with the EIA. Compliance is not leadership. This event is called “Leave No Trace,” but we ARE leaving a trace in indigenous communities with how much fossil fuels are being burned, and we are leaving a big carbon footprint. Please reassess your carbon footprint, and put forth a meaningful commitment to reduce your footprint over time.
My hope is that this open letter will encourage you to engage in a more public dialogue around these questions.
-Signed, Favianna Rodriguez & select members of Que Viva Camp
