Here we go again. It's always something. This time they're not "diverse" enough. Dammit, they're just too white.
Even as the Occupy Wall Street protests have spread and grown, many critics have pointed to the visible scarcity of blacks and other minorities in the protesters’ ranks, notwithstanding the occasional infusions of color, whether from black celebrities like Kanye West, or from union members who have rallied with the protesters, or from a Muslim prayer service at Zuccotti Park last week
"Many critics have pointed" to the problem. Many, many of them. Really, before I read this I was wondering what the next "concern" would be. How Occupy Wall Street could be "helped" to "fit the narrative" that the bedrock media empires--including, apparently, those who ought to be their natural ideological allies--seem to require.
Two weeks into Occupy Wall Street’s takeover of Zuccotti Park, a group of Bronx community organizers and friends rode the subway down to Lower Manhattan to check out a movement they supported in principle.
When they got there, they recalled, they found what they had suspected: a largely white and middle-class crowd that claimed to represent “the 99 percent” but bore little resemblance to most of the people in the group’s own community. That community, the South Bronx, is one of the poorest areas of the country and home almost exclusively to blacks and Hispanics.
“Nobody looked like us,” said Rodrigo Venegas, 31, co-founder of Rebel Diaz Arts Collective, a center for political activism and hip-hop run out of a warehouse in Mott Haven. “It was white, liberal, young people who for the first time in their life are feeling a small percentage of what black and brown communities have been feeling for hundreds of years.”
The article soberly notes that:
A survey conducted at Zuccotti Park by Fordham University a month into the protests, from Oct. 14 to Oct. 18, found that 68 percent of the protesters were white, 10 percent were black, 10 percent were Hispanic, 7 percent were Asian and 5 percent were from other races.
Wow. 68% white? There's just one small problem, though...
Here are the racial demographics of the United States as of the 2010 census:
White alone (of which 26.7 million are White Hispanic and Latino Americans, see table below.
Excluding these, this category comprises 63.7% or 196.8 million) 72.4%
Black or African American alone 12.3%
Some other race alone
(Mestizo, Mulatto...) 6.2%
Asian alone 4.8%
Two or more races 2.9%
In other words, the racial demographics of Occupy Wall Street are practically identical to the racial demographics of the nation as a whole.
Not to worry, though. As the article carefully notes, Occupy Wall Street has moved quickly to satisfy the sensibilities of the New York Times by reaching out to more minority-based organizations. And numerous organizations representing racial minorities, such as the NAACP, are reaching out in support of OWS. So the premise of the article's lead--that "Occupy Wall Street 'Struggles' to Make the 99% Look Like Everybody," wouldn't be misleading, would it? After all, many critics are still not satisfied:
And, many critics have noted, the Black and Hispanic protesters participating in the protests have tended to come from the middle class, just as the white protesters have.
You see, that's another problem. Black, White or Brown, Occupy Wall Street is not sufficiently poor enough. Many critics have said so.
Short: "Now that you've jumped through Hoop number one, here's Hoop number two."
Seriously, doesn't this sound just like the kind of faux concern you'd expect from Fox News?
Some critics have also accused the protesters of being reductive in their claim to represent the majority and oblivious to their own privilege, and argue that racism, rather than capitalism, continues to be the main problem for many minority Americans.
Not "many critics," this time. But "some critics." None are named, though. Wouldn't it be helpful to know who the critics are in order to put this type of criticism into perspective? There's a substantial difference in motivation if the criticism is coming from Reverend Jesse Jackson as opposed to David Brooks or Ann Coulter.
Yes, there is a good case to be made that a movement that lays claim to the interests of the 99% of Americans who don't make seven figures a year ought to be racially inclusive. There's no doubt that the excesses of Wall Street-based financial institutions have wrought disproportionate havoc on African Americans and Hispanics. I don't see anyone in OWS disputing that. I suspect it's largely assumed. In fact, it's arguable that the entire Economic meltdown was ignited due to predatory lending practices and opportunism that were steeped in and enabled by racism.
But there are many reasons why minority groups and individual persons of color might be wary of participating in OWS, the most obvious (as pointed out somewhat belatedly in the article) being a well-justified fear of police brutality and targeting. And the movement's methods of communication may be more comfortable and familiar for middle class whites to assimilate than the working poor of color. Suggesting this is somehow the "fault" of OWS, or an inherent weakness of the movement really misses the main point which is to draw attention to the gross inequities caused by a system tilted towards constantly rewarding the superrich at the expense of the 99%.
Rinku Sen writes in the Nation:
Diverse enough for what?” is the query that leaps to mind. Diversity alone will not ensure that OWS advances an economic change agenda that is racially equitable.
Sen acknowledges that the OWS movement at its origin did not overtly reach out to people of color, but cites several examples of racial inclusion in the movement, including Occupy the Hood and a recent march in Boston by Occupiers protesting gentrification from a racial standpoint. But her larger point is this:
We must now move from questions of representation to ask, How can a racial analysis, and its consequent agenda, be woven into the fabric of the movement? We need to interrogate not just the symptoms of inequality—the disproportionate loss of jobs, housing, healthcare and more—but, more fundamentally, the systems of inequality, considering how and why corporations create and exploit hierarchies of race, gender and national status to enrich themselves and consolidate their power. As the New Bottom Line campaign has pointed out through a series of actions across the nation launched the same week as OWS, the subprime lending practices of Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo have devastated communities of color. A 2009 study found that 85 percent of those hardest hit by foreclosures have been African-American and Latino homeowners.
If racial exclusion and inequity are at the root of the problem, then inclusion and equity must be built into the solution.
Sen is absolutely right, but "inclusion and equity" aren't going to come easy to this country. It took a Civil War which almost destroyed the nation and decades until a decent Supreme Court came about to achieve what can only be described as a very rough sense of racial justice. It also took a government of decent legislators who actually put the interests of the country first at the risk of their political hides.The economic crisis we now experience owes a lot to the perpetuated existence of racism, which remains not only a useful political tool to divide Americans, but a profitable one as well.