Philanthropy and Racism: Additional Views

To the Editor:

In his letter to the editor, William A. Schambra continues to willfully distort the rationale and implications of the structural-racism framework.

Those of us who find the structural-racism analysis to be useful and powerful do not dismiss American progress on racial discrimination. Rather, we aim to change the racial impact of current policies and practices. We argue that racial disparities do not fix themselves. Instead, they occur as a result of institutional histories and current practices that require explicit attention if we are to improve outcomes for all Americans.

In the example of the subprime mortgage crisis, Mr. Schambra says that we could arrive at the same solutions with or without a racialized economic analysis. This is simply not the case, as history has shown.

Current data are demonstrating that subprime loans have been disproportionately directed to black and Latino neighborhoods. Those neighborhoods are racially segregated because of the contemporary and continuing effects of historical policies and practices that deliberately promoted segregation.

The Federal Housing Administration and Veterans Affairs insured half of all mortgages in the 1950s, but the FHA downgraded the creditworthiness of mixed-race neighborhoods and required that underwriters include racially restrictive covenants in their mortgages. The FHA also established minimum standards for lot size, setbacks, and separation of structures that eliminated the eligibility of many inner-city homes. These actions promoted the residential segregation that endures today and that, in turn, reduces access to opportunities such as credit, employment, and quality education. That is what kept, and still keeps, those communities poor.

The call for a moratorium on foreclosures, while helpful, leaves in place the policies that deny credit to people of color, even when their incomes equal those of whites. It does not address the severe lack of available credit in communities of color, nor the cultural, political, and economic isolation that makes them such easy targets for unscrupulous lenders.

Unlike the view presented in the letter to The Chronicle from the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, we think that a structural-racism analysis can lead to universalist solutions. But we want to ensure that the solutions that are intended to be good for all actually do include everybody.

Today’s institutions no longer need to intend discrimination in order to create inequality — they are programmed to reproduce and reinforce historical patterns. Those of us crafting solutions, however, must be deliberate about the racial impact because the role of institutions and policies in perpetuating the racial divide is hidden from the gaze of most Americans, in large part because of approaches like Mr. Schambra’s.

Mr. Schambra’s theory of racial progress fails the tests of logic and evidence. Pretending that prisons, schools, predatory lenders, and police departments no longer need to be held accountable for racially inequitable outcomes is simply dishonest.

A growing racial conscience within civil society supported the gains of the past. As much as we might wish it so, it is not yet time to abandon that conscience under the self-congratulatory message of “colorblindness.”

Anne C. Kubisch
Director
Roundtable on Community Change
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
Ohio State University
Columbus

Rinku Sen
Chief Executive
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 organizations that seek to end racial bias.

To the Editor:

Purposefully provocative, contrarian commentaries such as the recent piece by Hudson Institute’s William Schambra (“Philanthropy’s Jeremiah Wright Problem,” May 15) often spark constructive, unintended consequences.

Unfortunately, your chosen format, of a free-standing commentary in one issue, letters in subsequent ones, even if it wasn’t your intent, leaves the framing of a conversation about structural racism to the original cleverly phrased, but deliberately misleading, piece, that was structured to set up and demolish a straw man, not to stimulate a serious discussion within the independent sector about a real challenge we all face in our grant making.

Next time, I hope you’ll consider introducing a topic of such importance to the field and beyond with an objective, reported introduction, along with a roundtable that simultaneously presents a range of views.

Today’s interactive technology, which you use to great advantage elsewhere, could further help enlighten your readers and advance conversations like these in real time.

Instead, we’re left to compose letters to respond to an argument which should not be the frame for this discussion in the first place and may not reach the same audience as the original commentary. I think I speak for many of your readers when I say that we’d rather seriously engage in the kind of more thoughtful exploration and dialogue that we look to The Chronicle to foster.

Drummond Pike
CEO & Founder
Tides
San Francisco

The Chronicle did create such a forum for readers at http://philanthropy.com and welcomes readers to contribute.