Creating Change?

I've been introduced to a new idea that is challenging and I feel like I should write out a couple thoughts to explore it further. An idea that I've talked about a lot in this blog and in my newsletters is that of my own privilege. I've been blessed with access to all life's necessities and more, which makes it much easier for me to take a year without making any real money to volunteer and experiment with living in community. It's obvious from our house and from meeting the national YAVs that we are largely a caucasian group of people. A book that we are reading as a house suggests that white people have traditionally had access to higher social status and can more easily live intentional and alternative lifestyles than can other groups who have traditionally been held back from achieving social status. In one passage the book describes an interaction between a white person who is being self righteous about eating organic, vegetarian foods and a black person who says something like "when I was growing up the only choice we had was organic, vegetarian food!" This in itself is a challenging idea, but I think it has some good merit in partially explaining why a lot of intentional, simple lifestyle communities are made up of mostly white people. But this isn't the idea I'm thinking about here.

No More Deaths (NMD) is a humanitarian aid group in Tucson that gives medical aid to migrants who have gotten stranded in the desert and are in trouble. They also push for immigration policy changes. NMD is another organization made up almost entirely of white faces and in my opinion their work saves lives and is necessary. A friend of mine brought up the issue that the organization is composed mainly of white members and explained how he thought it was arrogant for us to think that we could speak for this group of people without representation from that group. There are no migrants that are members of NMD as far as I know. But the point he was making was that we cannot expect to make any real change for people in a completely different demographic.

I can see his point, but have a few things to say to shine some light on the other side of the issue. The first point is that I don't think NMD actively discourages migrants or Hispanics from joining. Maybe it's really intimidating for someone to walk into a room of white people and to feel connected with and welcomed by that group. But how do you change that? I really don't think there should be a membership quota to fill in order to feel like they can do the work they want to do. I also don't think recruiting members based on race is a good thing, since it still singles them out based on their race. Also, it's obvious that people in my demographic have a tremendous amount of privilege, but what are we to do with that privilege? I might be wrong, but it seems like I can use that privilege in a way that fights marginalization in society or I can use it to advance myself. I don't feel guilty for whatever privilege I've been born in to, because there's nothing I could do about that and because it gives me a responsibility to use it in a way that helps resist marginalization. But at the same time I do think that my friend has a point that the groups that are trying to create change would be stronger if they included, or were led by, people in the group that is being marginalized. Any thoughts on the issue?