Proposal for a Transformative, Racially Just Philanthropy

For philanthropy to truly serve a transformative role, it must first be acknowledged that all philanthropic efforts occur within a larger economic and political scheme. Mainstream philanthropic efforts primarily sustain and strengthen existing institutions, such as schools, hospitals, and similar sites. Rather than questioning or disturbing the structural ordering of resources and relative access to opportunities had by privileged and subordinated groups, these philanthropic efforts support the status quo. One critic recently offered that certain foundations “have far too long remained drag anchors on American social, political, and scientific progress, choosing to slow forward motion.”

Social-justice–oriented philanthropy distinguishes itself from mainstream philanthropy by directing resources and guidance to institutions that seek equity for those groups that are marginalized under existing arrangements. However, social justice efforts represent a very small portion of philanthropic work.

There is a tension inherent in the positioning of social justice philanthropy in the larger political and economic framework. I recently told a group of philanthropists in Hawaii that if we could conceive of a just society, a just world, then many of them would not be in the philanthropy business at all. The very existence of philanthropy presupposes economic and political arrangements that are counterproductive to our notions of justice. The tension between social justice philanthropy and these arrangements should not foreclose action, nor should it draw needed resources away from current campaigns for equity. It is a conundrum that must be vigilantly recalled and considered. Mindfulness of this tension helps design and promote a social justice philanthropy that disrupts structures, laws, and policies of privilege and isolation. It could be said that the ultimate goal of social justice philanthropy is self-annihilation.

White Supremacy and Social Justice Philanthropy

Contemporary social justice philanthropy operates under the same limited framework for discussing and approaching racial justice as our society does. That is, actors in social justice philanthropy often engage in dialogue and crafting of solutions without deliberately confronting the deeply entrenched, systemic, and institutional nature of racial subordination and exclusion.

Exceptions are emerging. Certain grant makers have made clear their commitment to confronting institutional racism. We talk squarely about institutional racism because we think it speaks to our society's core issue and challenge. Part of that challenge is talking honestly—however painful that may be—about racism, in partnership with leaders and groups who are prepared to acknowledge that institutional racism still exists in America.

These are the discussions that can be built upon and expanded if philanthropy is to have an effect on the racial and economic inequities persistent in our society.

I advocate a discussion on the issue that we can rarely bring ourselves to name in modern America: white supremacy. That institutional type of racism not only describes the systematic resource and political deprivation of people of color but also privileges whites and white institutions. The discussion of white supremacy is taboo. It engineers our laws, policies, and decisions so much so that the topic is almost unanimously ignored, replaced by discussions of race relations, diversity, and multiculturalism. That white supremacy has sunk far beneath the surface of public discourse constrains effective and racially just social justice philanthropy and the transformation of our larger society into a true democracy. Instead of focusing on systems that promote white supremacy, the focus rests on individual racism and racial animus in discourse and problem solving.

I advocate a discussion on the issue that we can rarely bring ourselves to name in modern America: white supremacy.

This severely limits efforts to attain racial justice along a number of fronts. First, it invalidates the history of racial oppression in this nation, with its cumulative advantaging of whites and subordination of people of color. Second, it suggests societal attainment of a level playing field or at least achievement of distance from today’s formal and structural racial injustices. Third, this focus serves as the basis for a piecemeal approach to offer remedies for white supremacy, from diversity training to the opening of racialized spaces, such as higher educational institutions, without a critical examination and restructuring of those spaces—in effect promoting assimilation.

Because racism is not primarily a personal, psychological set of events, it cannot be adequately addressed by focusing on our personal, psychological states. Racism and racial hierarchy must be affirmatively addressed in all of their settings but, most important, at the structural level. A race-conscious approach is a crucial beginning to the transformation of these settings.

The focus on individual racism in liberal social justice philanthropy also implicitly, though surely unwittingly, validates the conservative position. That is, by permitting the focus of this type of philanthropy to be on the individual (i.e., on bad actors and victims, on racists and those who are discriminated against), liberal thinkers and practitioners essentially condone claims made by conservatives like the Thernstroms in the education sphere, that the individual is the essential unit in society.

This may seem counterintuitive at first blush, as the ideologies embraced by the two sides are binary opposites (i.e., with liberals arguing for equality for every individual and conservatives asserting the “individual responsibility” position). But both focus on the individual to the detriment of a structural reform project.

A Transformative Approach to Social Justice Philanthropy

First, it is essential that social justice philanthropy and other concerned sectors step outside of a reactive mode and assert a positive vision to guide efforts toward racial justice. The theories and language of conservatives have placed a choke-hold on public discourse and policy making for too long, affecting issues from welfare to criminal justice and taxation. The social justice community has been pushed from the main stage and forced to take a reactive position to such concepts as family values, individual responsibility, the culture of poverty, and getting tough on crime. Too often, the social justice position comes too little and too late, failing to effectively shift public dialogue and policies.

Organized philanthropy has often approached challenges with a sense of urgency, but also with great caution. In many instances, organized philanthropy is slow to see problems coming, slow to respond, and quick to justify every decision. As a result, its remedies are often late and occasionally entirely futile. Those philanthropists and others committed to seeking racial justice must deploy messages, research, and policy tools with the same or a greater degree of sophistication as that of conservative ideologues.

Racism doesn’t create a deficit in some people—it marks all of society and its members; merely relocating resources does nothing to reverse the marking.

Second, a transformative approach entails seeking genuine change in education, housing, employment, health, criminal justice. The dominant liberal framework for remedying racial and economic injustice is the distributive approach, where resources are redirected toward marginalized groups or access to predominantly white institutions is opened. The solutions do not disturb the mechanisms that created and continue to produce resource inequities but merely relocate portions of the resources produced by those mechanisms. For example, furnishing low-income people of color with housing subsidies is a form of redistribution of the public fiscal budget. But it doesn’t change the privileging of predominantly white homeownership via tax structures and systemic housing discrimination. The same is true in employment and higher education. Distributive remedies do not alter those structures themselves but simply open the doors to “white spaces.” As Toni Morrison discusses in Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination, a racist society marks all individuals and institutions. Racism does not create a deficit in some people—rather it creates a deficit in society and in its members. Merely relocating resources does nothing to reverse racism’s marking of the entire society. In place of a model that leaves untouched white supremacist structures and promotes assimilation, we need a transformation of structures.

Instead of redistribution, instead of a focus on the individual, what is needed is a language and a process for exposing white privilege and the subordination of people of color. One element of this is an examination of the relationship between privilege and subordination. We must find a way to connect the accumulation of privilege and the aggregation of isolation from opportunity (e.g., the relationship between concentration of poverty and agglomeration of wealth).

Georg Hegel, a racist philosopher, offered that there can be no real discourse between a master and servant because of the power and resource differential. Social justice advocates often focus on creating dialogue and developing relationships without looking at the conditions necessary for genuine dialogue to occur. If we take seriously the need for meaningful dialogue, as a prerequisite to democracy and as a foundation for a transformative approach, we have to consider the structural impediments. Then the challenge for social justice philanthropy is to bring structural racism into public discourse, pushing beyond limited and even harmful distributive and assimilationist remedial models. We need to set into place a process of transformation that is not only race conscious but forged out of an understanding of the relational structural nature of privilege and subordination.

The theories and language of conservatives have placed a choke-hold on public discourse and policy making for too long, affecting issues from welfare to criminal justice and taxation.

Taking on this challenge is important now and will become more crucial as philanthropy expands in the coming years. It was estimated in the Boston Globe recently that “organized philanthropy could become the fastest-growing segment of the economy in the next 50 years as the result of intergenerational transfer of wealth.” For these resources to support meaningful changes, establishing a new framework for racial justice philanthropy is imperative. As pointed out in an article last year, “in sight is an opportunity for organized philanthropy to become a vital instrument of American civilization.”