The DSA Has a Diversity Problem
19th August 2026
For a movement that talks incessantly about diversity, the Democratic Socialists of America has an awkward problem of its own: it is remarkably white.
According to an internal survey obtained by City & State New York, 60% of respondents in the New York City chapter of the DSA identified as white. Some 63% of the chapter’s 15,600 members completed the optional survey, so this was hardly a small sample.
These results are difficult to square with the organization’s own rhetoric.
In official NYC-DSA materials, the organization has repeatedly spoken of building and organizing a “multiracial working class.”
But if nearly three out of every five respondents to its own membership survey identify as white, just how representative of that multiracial working class is the DSA itself?