The Monochromatic Rally: Glenn Beck and the Overwhelmingly White Crowd

on August 31, 2010 at 9:03 AM

Jenny EriksonCrowd estimates have put attendance as high as 80 people for Glenn Beck's Restoring Honor rally in Washington, D.C., this past weekend. Of those 80 people, 78.4 of them were white. It's obviously because Glenn Beck followers hate black people almost as much as they hate the gays.

The Washington Post claims an overwhelmingly white crowd. The Huffington Post says, "The rally drew white people like grilled cheese to white bread." Salon referenced the overwhelmingly white crowd of thousands having to strain to hear Beck because they couldn't get in range of the massive speakers. Interesting that they couldn't get closer to the speakers in the sparse crowd.

In other news, elementary schools across the nation welcomed back thousands of people this week, the overwhelming majority of whom were children.

Some things are just not newsworthy. It's not exactly news that the majority of the Restoring Honor attendees were white, because the majority of Americans are white. Besides that, I fail to see what the skin color of the participants has to do with the price of loans from China.

Yet the mainstream and liberal media delight in reporting to us that Glenn Beck supporters are, more often than not, white. Why is this news? They might as well report that some house in Oklahoma didn't burn down today or Paris Hilton is kind of slutty. Common, everyday facts and occurrences don't deserve a headline.

This just in! Being predominately attended by white people, the Glenn Beck rally was an accurate racial representation of United States citizens. No wonder MSNBC's ratings are so low.

If reporters and commentators want to report on rallies and race, I'd suggest looking into Al Sharpton's Reclaim the Dream march. Held across town from the Beck rally, Sharpton's event was also overly monochromatic. Here's a potential headline: Sharpton Harps on Identity Politics to a Predominately Black Crowd.

And they say Glenn Beck is the racist.

Filed Under: in the news, media, sarah palin, politics, tea party

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Comments (24)

Facebook comment from Dianne Kovacs

on Aug 31, 2010 at 9:23 AM

Ms. Erikson, attendance of the Glen Beck was estimated at 87000 people, who came from all walks of life. I, for one, is a legal immigrant who is forever grateful of this country, our legal immigrants second homeland. For those who can't look past races to believe and recognize that all of us, black, white, yellow, green have the same common goal: united together under the same belief to uphold what our Founding Fathers created for us. Hopefully, we can all set aside our differences to put our efforts into maintaining a strong, united country for the next generations to come.

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Stinamarie2268

on Aug 31, 2010 at 9:31 AM

I agree with you they can't get any news right. This was a big event with anywhere from 300,000-600,000 Americans attending. That dosen't include all the Americans that wanted to attend but couldn't afford to make the trip since we're all out of work. This Country is in trouble but we're all to worried about the demographics of the rally rather than the message behind it. It's rather sad.

Facebook comment from Carrie Humphrey

on Aug 31, 2010 at 9:35 AM

Anyone who believes Glen Beck's version of politics is missing the point of government in the first place.Color of their skin means nothing.

Nonmember comment from SKL

on Aug 31, 2010 at 10:07 AM

IF the racial demographics mean anything (not saying they do), then why doesn't the relatively low non-white attendance mean that non-whites are racist? I mean, surely there was nobody preventing darker-skinned people from attending, right? When people jubilantly comment on the relative whiteness of the crowd, exactly what is their point? I assume they are trying to imply that those who knew of the rally expected the message to be pro-white or anti-color, which is pretty idiotic. But since they brought it up, what DOES it mean? Are they saying that a rally isn't legit unless it attracts all races equally? Why, exactly? And why does this only seem to apply to white speakers?

MomIWant

on Aug 31, 2010 at 11:38 AM

I love your blogs Jenny!!!!!!

Jill_W

on Aug 31, 2010 at 12:12 PM

It seems you are the one focusing on race. Yes, each article points out the fact that the majority of the crowd was white, but it's hardly the focus of either article. For an event that was billed as non-partisan and a call to civil rights, I do think noting the diversity, or lack thereof, of the crowd is a valid piece of information. And, to be fair, the articles also discuss the Sharpton rally and the racial make up of the crowd. In fact, The Washington Post article discusses the ‘mostly black crowd' at the Sharpton rally first. You've accused the ‘liberal' media of making an issue where there is none, but that is exactly what you have done.

Nonmember comment from mjm

on Aug 31, 2010 at 1:01 PM

Hey there, Im not white, and I wish I was at the rally. looking at an overhead shot there were at least 400 thousand people there!! Im not sure why this idiot president recognizes a minuscule amount of Muslim, Mosque supporters, but not a half of a million people in DC???? People like you astound me!! White people, I say wake up.... You do not need to feel guilty if you dislike the president. He is half White, thats the half I hate!!! haha

Facebook comment from Steven Benard

on Aug 31, 2010 at 1:43 PM

Most media didn't mention that Sharpton's event was "overwhelmingly" black? Even the WaPo was itself biased, reporting Al's group as merely "mostly" black, versus "overwhelmingly" white for the Beck's. An affront to minorities at BOTH! The mentioned WaPo article is a priori proof that is was biased, agenda-driven.

Nonmember comment from sbenard

on Aug 31, 2010 at 1:58 PM

These media reports also reveal the natures of the reporters and target audiences. They use such labels because 1) they themselves are biased with an agenda, using labels that expose such, 2) they are seeking to distract by making it about race (revealing their own racist world views), and 3) they know their readers are bigoted, choosing labels to capitalize on those bigotries of conservatives/whites. They are playing on the bigotry of their own audiences! It wasn't Jenny that raised the issue of race, responding only to the media's racist agenda -- the agenda THEY chose, not Jenny. Glenn's rally reflected the nation's demographics, a fact omitted by the media. Could Al say the same? Not hardly!

Facebook comment from Kate Meyer Caufield

on Aug 31, 2010 at 2:11 PM

Um...I followed your link- according to their data, 69.13% of the population is white. Even if we only add the Hispanic population (12.55%) and Black population, (12.06%), that's a full 24.61% that should have been non white.

So, of your 80- given the ratio of the US Population, a full 19.6 people should have been of color. NINETEEN. According to you, it was 1.6. YES, this is noteworthy AND newsworthy. It does NOT represent the larger scale population of the US. One has to ask, 'Why not?'

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The Monochromatic Rally: Glenn Beck and the Overwhelmingly White Crowd

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