Apparently, those darn prepper magazines are a hotbed of coded racial injustices. I am especially WTF’ed by this jewel:

It’s important to note that, despite the robbery, the reader is starting from a place of privilege – even after being robbed, he has a single-family home with attached garage and the “usual personal belongings,” including two cars with full tanks of gas, tools, three mobile phones, a second secret stash of a food and water (one man removed his from behind the bathroom drywall), and a loaded gun, which was apparently of no help in the confrontation with the gunmen. (And was apparently of no interest to them anyway.)

Because, apparently, in this womyn’s world, having gear that you worked hard to acquire is privilege. As if someone just dropped a gold Cabela’s card in your lap and said ‘go forth and prep’. But, this chick is no doubt of the mindset that whenever you have more than her (or people who look like her, have the same plumbing as her, or the same economic mobility as her) that is an ‘injustice’ or ‘inequality’.

There’s actually a much more sinister implication here. This womyn, who is ‘of color’, seems to imply that the ‘prepper culture’ caters mostly to white males. If thats the case, and there is indeed a lack of ‘preppers of color’, is that an indictment of a publishing and marketing industry that is racist or  does it show that the notion of self-reliance, taking care of ones self, being responsible for your own well-being,  and independence from government support is a mindset not supported by the ‘of color’ community. Or, to put it in a very racially charged, but much simpler context, are white people more inclined to resist being in a state of dependency on others and .gov than non-whites? Now that’s a tack the writer should have taken. Rather than ask ‘why is the demographic for this magazine mostly white males’ perhaps she should be asking ‘why aren’t more non-whites interested in this’.

From a devils advocate point of view, I suppose you could make the argument that in our society the ‘marginalized’ segments (the people of color, the ‘econmically unprivileged’, etc.) simply cannot afford to spare the money, time, and other resources since they are already at a deficit on those resources compared to the white population. Or, put another way, if most other racial and ethnic groups are earning less, then they have less time and effort to put towards this sort of thing…they’re too busy just trying to catch up.

Honestly, I know absolutely zero non-white survivalists. In fact, from a strict racial standpoint, I’m the only one I know (I’m 50% ‘other’ ingredients.) But part of that, no doubt, is because I wound up living in a place where the population tends to be rather homogenous. Still, as I diddybop across the blogosphere I find very few survivalist or prepper blogs that aren’t being done by someone not ‘of color’. Oh, there are some exceptions…the ones I have found tend to be less about survivalism and more about ‘urban homesteading’, ‘organic gardening‘, and that sort of thing, which does kinda come into the preparedness Venn diagram. In fact, the only black person I’ve ever even read about who comes close is this fellow. (And I had to dig back over seven years to even find that.) Wiki.

As a commenter to the article said, the outrage the author shows about the overwhelming white maleness of the prepper magazines must be how he feels when he flips through Jet and notes a decided lack of not-of-color people. Face it, some things target a niche or demographic that tends to be very homogenous. And there’s nothing wrong with that if that homogenous nature is due to a simple lack of interest from others and not a result of exclusionary policy.

I’ve met dozens of people over the years who are into preparedness in some form or another…some religious, some not. Some male, some female, Some gay, most straight. Most rightist, some leftist. Most race-indifferent, some rather race-conscious. But everyone across the board was some shade of white person.

Do I think that the prepper magazines out there are full of images of white people and absolutely vacant of positive images of non-white people? Somewhat, yes. Do I think it’s because of a racist mindset? Uh, no..I think it’s because when you’re trying to sell magazines you sell to the market you think exists for that magazine.

As an interesting project, if anyone can find me some preparedness-themed blogs that are run by ‘people of color’, I’d like the links so I can go check ’em out.