The shocking siege on the U.S. Capitol one year ago is rooted in a familiar American story. At a time when the country is growing more diverse, many middle- and working-class people face a perilous economic future and turn their frustration into resentment of people of color and immigrants. A faction of these mostly white Americans rejects claims of equality by these groups and embraces authoritarianism and political violence.
Throughout history, racism and inequality have undermined the American project. When we have achieved national unity, that unity has often excluded and subordinated Black and brown people. Our task now is to negotiate a future that reckons with the legacy and harms of racism and ensures security, hope, and opportunity for all Americans — including white Americans who feel their status threatened in a multiracial society.
This is a formidable challenge. Since January 6, 2021, threats of political intimidation and violence have only grown in intensity, infecting our local politics and injecting chaos into the once-routine functioning of school boards and local health departments.
Tackling this challenge will require nothing less than the creation of a civil society and a public square that elevates dialogue over division, truth over lies, and authentic relationship building over digital tribalism. To achieve these goals, philanthropy needs to focus its attention on the following three areas:
Put an end to the toxic media landscape. The growth and fragmentation of broadcast media during the last 40 years, coupled with the revocation of the Fairness Doctrine requiring television and radio networks to provide politically balanced content, paved the way for today’s hyperpartisan media outlets, such as Fox News, Newsmax, and One America News Network on the right and, to a lesser degree, MSNBC on the left. At the same time, social-media platforms have amplified the spread of highly partisan content, disinformation, and hate speech, leaving those on the left and right to increasingly occupy entirely distinct information ecosystems presenting separate versions of reality.
An emerging group of philanthropists and advocacy groups are working to end this toxic media environment and restore the health of the public square. This includes groups like Disinfo Defense League, a network of more than 200 organizations combating online disinformation and hate speech, and Media Democracy Fund, which is advancing policy and regulatory changes, corporate accountability campaigns, and litigation to curb digital disinformation. Some grant makers are also investing in local journalism as a trusted source of news for all Americans through programs such as NewsMatch, a pooled fund that supports nonprofit news organizations across the United States.
Confronting broadcast media’s role in spreading disinformation has attracted less philanthropic interest than reining in social media, but is equally important. For example, philanthropists can support organizations such as Media Matters, which has pressured corporate advertisers to drop conservative media personalities who spread disinformation and engage in hate speech. Grant makers could also consider supporting new forms of public-interest litigation to combat disinformation on broadcast media. The potential of such litigation will be tested by Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation lawsuit against Fox News for promoting baseless election-fraud claims.
Use multiracial organizing to build solidarity and fight economic inequality. While social media and broadcast media divide Americans and stoke partisan animosities, participation in civic associations can serve as a counterweight, providing people with healthy opportunities to build connections and engage with others in common purpose. Yet during the last several decades, Americans’ involvement in religious congregations, unions, fraternal organizations, and other civic associations has plummeted. The erosion of communal life in white middle- and working-class communities — combined with decreasing economic opportunity — has undermined trust in American institutions and created fertile ground for right-wing extremism to take hold.
To be sure, today’s extremists haven’t all experienced economic dislocation — many are white-collar professionals or business owners. But extremism feeds on social isolation and feelings of economic loss. As more white people experience both economic decline and civic poverty, far-right extremist groups gain traction by offering them the sense of identity, purpose, and belonging once found in dignified work, family, and participation in community institutions.
A new generation of civic associations, especially those focused on community and worker organizing, can help repair divides and bring Americans together to address the problems that are driving economic inequality and undermining social cohesion. History offers lessons here as well. In the 1930s and ‘40s, the Congress of Industrial Organizations, or CIO, organized millions of white and Black working-class Americans based on their shared economic interests as workers. The CIO unions achieved significant, though by no means universal, success in supplanting white racial identity with a working-class consciousness that crossed racial divides, and they became important champions for civil rights and the end of Jim Crow.
Recent research affirms that union membership today increases racial tolerance among white workers. Yet foundations have invested just $4.3 billion in economic and labor-rights efforts since 2010. Compare that figure with the nearly $15 billion donors have contributed to art museums, operas, and symphony orchestras during the same period.
Philanthropists need to rectify this funding imbalance and devote vastly more dollars to multiracial organizing. This should include contributing to economic-justice groups like Restaurant Opportunities Center United and United for Respect, which are organizing workers across geographic, racial, ethnic, and partisan divides and winning significant victories. Organizations such as the Poor People’s Campaign and People’s Action are also building solidarity and power between workers of different races and deserve far more robust philanthropic support.
Invest in rural and small-town America. Reinvigorating American democracy will require developing a shared vision for a multiracial democratic future that includes small-town and rural Americans of all races. Consider that by 2040, just 30 percent of Americans living in 34 rural states will control 68 U.S. Senate seats. A society in which a minority wields such disproportionate power is undemocratic. It is also inherently unstable when that minority experiences a markedly different social and economic reality than the majority. This includes growing divisions between rural and urban communities in areas such as political ideology, racial and cultural identity, education, economic opportunity, and even attitudes toward public-health measures such as vaccines and masks.
Despite rural America’s vital importance to our political system and social cohesion, a 2015 USDA study of foundation grant making found that rural communities received just 5 to 6 percent of foundation dollars from 2005 to 2010. A more recent 2017 report from the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy found that rural regions in the South received just $41 per person in foundation funding, compared with the national average of $451 per person.
Rural voices are also significantly underrepresented in foundation decision making. A Chronicle of Philanthropy analysis of trustees for the 20 wealthiest U.S. foundations found that most reside on either the east or west coast and that more have degrees from Harvard (52) than live in “flyover” states (51).
Foundations must increase investment in and engagement with rural and small-town America. Pooled funds such as the Heartland Fund have emerged in recent years to help guide such investment. But rural philanthropy is likely to remain marginal if philanthropic leadership is dominated by urban professionals. Just as philanthropy has made a commitment in recent years to greater racial diversity in its staffing and governance, it should seek to integrate rural and small-town working-class voices of every race in its decision making.
Other areas, of course, need immediate attention. These include protecting voting rights, overhauling campaign finance and redistricting laws, upholding the integrity of our elections, and holding accountable those who foment political violence. But the fate of our democracy depends not only on our laws and institutions, but also on forging a shared national identity and a common purpose.
Without national solidarity and mutual trust, multiracial democracy will falter, and we will lurch toward authoritarianism or civil war. Instead, we must finally extend the American promise of freedom and equality to Black, brown, and Indigenous people while redeeming the idea that, no matter our race, we are all freer and more prosperous united than we are divided.
