re: #98 marjoriemoon

My guess is that it’s a rally so they went, not that the diversity theme necessarily drew them. Half the time, you can’t understand the speakers at those rallies anyway.

There were apparently 8 African American speakers and 1 Latino speaker. We’ll see if their presence draws more minorities to the fold. I’m guessing no.

They do seem to make a fairly consistent effort to get some racial diversity in their speaking panels, and I have to say, I approve of that. It’s tokenism, sure, but as I said above, and not totally in snark, they are trying, and there are worse ways to try. I sense that many of the less problematic of them really don’t understand why this movement isn’t attracting a more diverse crowd, and would be happy to see black and Latino and Asian and NA and etc TPers show up.

That said, I doubt there’s any way they can really sell this outside the base they’ve already discovered. The formula works, but it appeals to a fairly specific demographic, and that demographic is, among other things, overwhelmingly white.