philanthropy, “if you say you’re about it, then be about it.”
The philanthropic has come to love a statement. It has become a bit of a sport for institutions to craft a heavily curated statement to name what they stand for or against and pepper LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, and any other statement-worthy platform with wordy responses to police killings, hate crimes, court rulings, and so much more.
It’s no surprise that the recent Supreme Court decision to upend affirmative action triggered another wave. And many of these statements warrant a deep side eye as they are coming from institutions that operate from the same ideology as the conservative Supreme Court judges. That is to say, they willfully and actively resist acknowledging the impacts that race has on access to higher education, opportunities, and livelihood in this country.
Boards and leadership across philanthropy have decided to remain willfully “risk averse” to funding, designing, and standing in solidarity with populations that have been historically excluded, exploited, and scapegoated. Countless institutions cling to the idea that things will “correct” themselves without intentional and monumental interventions.
It’s as if the Supreme Court ruling made these institutions forget the ways they have been saying “hard pass” to Black, Indigenous, and People of Color-led leadership and programming. As if they haven’t been gutting their internal equity work and trying to rally behind a pluralistic approach to philanthropy including the mind-blogging stance that: “We behave as if the foundations and individual donors who take stances with which we disagree are also committed to the betterment of society.” {insert melting face emoji}
