Foundations and ‘Structural Racism’: Take Another Look

To the Editor:

Many Chronicle readers may have been alarmed to learn that our nation’s largest foundations are supporting a radical left-wing agenda, one informed by the discourse of structural racism.

In his gratuitously politicized piece (“Philanthropy’s Jeremiah Wright Problem,” My View, May 15), William Schambra of the Hudson Institute quotes statements about structural racism from various nonprofit groups and journals.

Mr. Schambra asserts that the American public would be “startled” and “surprised” to learn that “grants from the nation’s largest foundations sustain a similarly harsh view of a nation riven by an unrelenting and deeply oppressive racial divide. America, in this view, is steeped in ‘structural racism.’”

To his credit, Mr. Schambra draws from various resources in an attempt to introduce the readers to structural racism.

But a clearer, more accurate picture of structural racism begs for a comprehensive definition that takes into account the milieu of the analysis. Moreover, Mr. Schambra uses the most seemingly provocative statements from the many reports he cites, but when read in context, the quotes are far less “startling” than Schambra would have readers believe.

Andrew Grant-Thomas and John A. Powell offer a simple framework that describes structural racism as emphasizing “the powerful impact of interinstitutional dynamics, institutional resource inequities, and historical legacies on racial inequalities today.”

Similarly, a 2005 report by the Center for Social Inclusion, which Mr. Schambra quotes in his piece, offers affirmative action as an example to demonstrate the seemingly amorphous concept of structural racism: Affirmative action benefits white women and the broader society as a whole, not just communities of color.

In other words, the net benefit of affirmative action is greater than the sum of its parts. As the center’s report notes, there is a need to increase public awareness about the often subtle ways in which race and gender persist as barriers to equality of achievement.

We can use a multitude of lenses to demonstrate how structural racism is manifested in today’s society, such as Mr. Schambra’s effort at linking it to philanthropy.

Readers are left with the impression that our large national foundations are aggressively funding some radical leftist agenda that the American public is utterly unfamiliar with and, if enlightened, would be unsupportive of. Unfortunately, he fails to take into account key giving trends, resulting in an inaccurate, if not misleading, picture of the current state of philanthropy in the United States.

Let’s look at the numbers. In a 2005 report, Independent Sector and the Foundation Center found that social-justice grant making in 1998 and 2002 comprised a meager 11 percent of overall foundation giving, and only a fraction of that was grants for issues identified by the structural-racism framework as barriers to equality.

The report defined social-justice philanthropy as foundation grants that address “structural change in order to increase opportunity of those who are the least well off politically, economically, and socially.”

Because there is no category for grants that explicitly fund work framed by structural-racism principles, social-justice grant making offers a good proxy measure.

Is it true that our large foundations are so acutely aware of race and oppression in their grant making that they prioritize racially specific grants?

Again, the data suggest otherwise.

The 2008 edition of the Foundation Center’s annual Foundation Giving Trends: Update on Funding Priorities notes that in 2006, funding for racial or ethnic minorities increased by only 5.5 percent, while overall grant making rose by 16.4 percent.

Compared with 2005, when this group accounted for 8.2 percent of total grant dollars authorized, the 2006 data show that this group garnered only 7.4 percent.

While an analysis of the long-term trends indicates an increase in overall giving for ethnic and racial minorities in the 2005-6 period when compared with the 2000-3 period, one is left to wonder how much of foundation grant making is really supporting work that would fall under the rubric of structural racism.

The structural-racism framework posits that analyses of racial inequality that ignore the historical decisions that led to institutional barriers to equality of achievement are insufficient in understanding race in the United States.

To that end, explicitly identifying deliberate policy decisions that persist as barriers to equality is an integral component of any work that truly seeks to affect change in American racial attitudes. Mr. Schambra’s piece asks whether programs that are not racially specific are futile; an answer from within the structural-racism framework would suggest that they are.

In 2004, the Urban Institute in collaboration with Grantmakers for Effective Organizations produced the report Attitudes and Practices Concerning Effective Philanthropy, written by Francie Ostrower.

Their survey found that a “relatively low proportion of foundations in any region said that influencing public policy is very important.”

While the numbers increase for those foundations that state that this work is “somewhat or very important,” the report’s findings remain salient: If foundations are truly funding work that addresses structural racism, wouldn’t influencing public policy be a very important criterion in their grant making?

Lastly, readers of The Chronicle are ill-served by Mr. Schambra’s attempt to divide philanthropy along political lines, suggesting that “progressive” funders and nonprofit groups are the ones engaged in public-policy work.

In fact, a decade of research by the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy shows how conservative foundations have been strategically advancing their agenda by providing sympathetic think tanks and advocacy organizations with flexible and multiyear grants, and supporting programs that specifically target public policy and promote conservative ideas. If “progressive” funders had been funding “progressive” nonprofits in a similar fashion, structural racism as a theoretical framework would likely not exist.

Mr. Schambra suggests that, “just as Senator Obama seized the Jeremiah Wright controversy as an opportunity to explain his broader view of race in America, so this might be the moment for some of our largest foundations to explain what they intend by giving money to organizations that advance the structural-racism critique of America.”

In response, we ask: Why are the small percentage of structural-racism grants a cause for concern among Mr. Schambra and leaders of conservative foundations who have been so successful themselves at actually influencing government and policy decisions? Why should progressive foundations apologize for seeking to effectively address the needs of marginalized communities by funding organizations that seek to transform the institutions that perpetuate social inequities?

Aaron Dorfman
Executive Director

Niki Jagpal
Research Director
National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy
Washington

To the Editor:

The topics of race and racism have hit the headlines in the last few months, in both electoral politics and philanthropy, providing an opening for a national discourse that we seldom have in our country.

Yet too many of those discussions have been sensationalized and divisive rather than constructive. In the current political season, race has been at the forefront of many media conversations but, with the notable exception of Sen. Barack Obama’s landmark Philadelphia speech and the observations of a few other thoughtful commentators, it has rarely received the sober treatment that it so desperately needs.

William A. Schambra’s op-ed is an example of how inaccurate and inflammatory the conversation can get. The way in which we frame race and racism can make all the difference between making progress toward our national ideals of equality and justice and deepening the divisions among us, particularly the divisions along lines of race, place, class, and citizenship.

With the historic possibility of an African-American candidate becoming our next president, some take comfort in the idea that we have achieved a post-racial, “colorblind” society.

The philanthropic and nonprofit sectors that have played such an important role in promoting racial justice ought to know enough to avoid this false assumption. Moreover, they must be vigilant about and confront those who would cast as “racist” or “un-American” any effort that tries to understand the causes of continued racial disparities and takes up the hard work required to eliminate them.

Despite the meaningful progress we have made to root out blatant discriminatory practices, people of color are sinking faster into poverty from middle-class status.

From 1964 to 1973, 24 percent of African-American families were in the bottom of the national income distribution. This proportion grew to about 39 percent over the next two decades. The median net wealth of African American and Latino households stands at less than 10 percent of the median net wealth of their white counterparts.

Why is this? What can we do better to achieve real equity and equality of opportunity?

Simple, single-cause approaches may be appealing but will do little to address the problem. Evolving, yet persistent, racialized poverty is the result of a complex set of interactions between institutions and public policies that have accumulated over time. With greater understanding of these dynamic interactions, we are more apt to identify proper interventions in one area that could have a positive effect across others, changing the life opportunity for impacted groups.

Foundations, notably Akonadi, Atlantic Philanthropies, Annie E. Casey, Ford, Kellogg, and Mott, as well as the Open Society Institute, have supported a number of grantees, including those that have joined to write this letter, to develop and apply a comprehensive, structural race analysis to help identify such solutions.

Those organizations have shown how structural racism today is manifested in seemingly neutral and benign public and institutional policies and practices that many of us take for granted. They recognize that one of the main ways in which structural racism operates is through the interrelationships among critical opportunity-shaping sectors like education, employment, home ownership, and criminal justice.

Personal choices obviously matter. But structural racism recognizes that, while personal agency is an indispensable element of success in America, the ways in which some individuals and communities are positioned in the wider society can also seriously undermine their prospects for getting access to or benefiting from the opportunities they truly merit.

The subprime-lending crisis, an issue of concern to many foundations, provides an excellent example of how the lens of structural racism enables us to see the ways in which public policies and institutional practices interact to reproduce racial disparities and, if left unaddressed, result in negative outcomes far beyond communities of color.

African-Americans and Latinos still live mainly in segregated neighborhoods; these Americans and these neighborhoods are being hit especially hard by the foreclosure crisis.

In 2006, African-Americans and Latinos in the United States were twice as likely as whites to receive high-cost loans, even after adjusting for loan amount and borrower income.

The historical legacy of redlining policies, which has denied loans to applicants within certain areas, and the scarcity of bank branches in minority communities today, have limited minority access to standard financing options, and predatory lenders have filled the vacuum. An analysis of 34 high-cost loan companies in Cleveland in 2006-7, for example, found that they were responsible for 20 percent of mortgage loans in minority communities and only 4 percent of such loans in white communities.

The securitization of the mortgage market, which shifted lending services from local savings banks to investments banks and avoided the regulations placed on traditional lenders, has increased the volume and short-term profitability of adjustable rate mortgages.

This complex of interrelated policies, institutions, and practices together produce racial disparities that further depress the wealth and well-being of minority communities, and therefore exhibit structural racism.

The disproportionate impact of subprime-mortgage foreclosures on racial minorities is clear: Foreclosure means a loss of the wealth invested in a home, the abandoned buildings cause declines in neighborhood property values, and the vital asset wealth that minority homeowners have long sought is lost.

The structural-racism analysis does not assert that any individuals involved in mortgage finance were motivated by prejudice or bigotry. Rather it suggests that the cumulative effect of regulatory policy, institutional practices, and self-interest has been to harm minorities disproportionately — but to ultimately impact society more broadly.

Having located the causes of racial disparity in the subprime crisis, we can consider possible remedies. For example: Greater regulation of mortgage finance would prevent the proliferation of high-cost loan products that precipitated the crisis in the first place; financial education in poor minority communities would minimize the capacity of predatory lenders to mislead their clients; municipal efforts to manage abandoned foreclosed properties would prevent neighborhood decline.

The contention of the structural-racism analysis is that as we explore these and other viable policy solutions, we must specifically consider the problem of racial disparity, and how new policies and programs will reduce that disparity.

Acknowledging the problem of structural racism in this way does not malign fundamental American values, virtues, or accomplishments. On the contrary, America’s values of democracy, equality, and liberty are best served by our willingness to understand, confront, and dismantle structures that undermine those values.

America’s historical legacy shines brightest in our struggle against racism, from abolition to the civil-rights movement. But our past successes must serve as encouragement for future gains, not as an excuse for complacency and inaction in the face of persistent racial inequalities.

More foundations and nonprofit groups must make the distinction between colorblindness as a desired outcome and colorblindness as a strategy. Colorblindness is a desirable endpoint, but a colorblind strategy ensures that racial disparities will continue.

Conversely, policies that flow from the structural-racism analysis, as applied to education, health care, incarceration, and more, target racialized disparities and by this means benefit Americans of all races.

Moreover, as we have seen with the subprime-mortgage crisis, problems that incubate in communities of color can become national epidemics when we ignore our structural interconnections.

A structural-racism perspective simply reminds us that all Americans are still affected by our nation’s past, must work together in the present, and share linked fates in the future.

Anne C. Kubisch
Director
Roundtable on Community Change, the Aspen Institute
New York

Dan Petegorsky
Executive Director
Western States Center
Portland, Ore.

John A. Powell
Executive Director
Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity
The Ohio State University
Columbus

Rinku Sen
CEO
Applied Research Center
New York

Lori Villarosa
Executive Director
Philanthropic Initiative for Racial Equity
Washington

Maya Wiley
Director
Center for Social Inclusion
New York

The groups that signed this letter are members of the Structural Racism Caucus, a coalition of groups that seek to end racial bias.

To the Editor:

It is hard to fathom Mr. Schambra’s characterization of the Ford Foundation and its civil-rights grantees as widening the racial divide in the United States. Almost nothing could be further from the truth.

Our mission stands firmly on the bedrock American values of fairness and opportunity. Suggesting otherwise does a grave disservice to the thousands of courageous individuals and organizations who through the years have helped our country find new meaning and new depth in those words.

Creating opportunity and access for all Americans, regardless of race or color, led us to support the civil-rights movement. Offering everyone a place at the table, regardless of sex or gender, led us to support the women’s-rights movement. It was the universal search for dignity and decency that led us to help foster the human-rights movement.

Fighting against discrimination, narrow-mindedness, and fear of difference is work that is never done. Mr. Schambra depicts the courageous Americans who do this work as un-American. But they are as diverse as our nation is — and as rich in optimism, purpose, and patriotism.

Mr. Schambra and The Chronicle know that fulfilling our nation’s promise requires unflagging effort and perpetual renewal. Meaningful debate on how we get there should be built on something other than hyperbole and dark innuendo.

Marta L. Tellado
Vice President for Communications
The Ford Foundation
New York

Editor’s note: The headline on Mr. Schambra’s article was changed in our online edition to “Philanthropy’s Jeremiah Wright Problem” to better reflect the theme of his piece.