SCOTTSDALE, ARIZ. — Philanthropy leaders must repudiate the idea that racism is the main cause of problems in African-American communities and that government holds the solutions to those problems, according to the opening speaker at the annual conference of the Philanthropy Roundtable, an organization that represents predominantly conservative donors.
“Perhaps the biggest challenge for you, or perhaps anyone else who wants to close racial divisions in our society, is pushing back against that prevailing narrative about how racism impacts black progress in the 21st century,” Jason Riley, a columnist for The Wall Street Journal, said Thursday at the first plenary session of the group’s annual meeting.
For the benefit of the philanthropists, foundation leaders, and board members in the crowd, he listed his thoughts on the best options for aiding black communities, which included: finding “alternative ways to educate the black poor” outside of public schools, supporting programs for ex-offenders, and fighting minimum-wage hikes and prohibitive business-licensing requirements that he said hurt African-Americans.
Philanthropists, Mr. Riley said, should focus on helping African-Americans develop human capital and get “back to helping themselves.”
Blacks living in the Jim Crow era, he said, “had more stable families and lived in safer communities than their counter[parts] living under a twice-elected black president.” Those points, he said, undermine the notion that white racism is a big contributor to racial gaps and the idea that government programs aimed at closing them have worked.
“No, I am not calling for a return to Jim Crow,” Mr. Riley said. “And I have to make that clear, actually, because that would be a headline.”
Police Not ‘Gunning for Black Men’
In his remarks, Mr. Riley, who is also a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, attacked progressive-leaning movements and organizations — and the conventional wisdom they’ve adopted.
The narrative that police are “gunning for black men,” he said, is a myth that’s unsupported by data. He cited welfare programs and a black culture “that changed for the worse” after the 1960s as causes for disparate social outcomes for African-Americans.
Early in his comments, Mr. Riley alleged that today’s black leaders have little interest in bridging racial divides. “In fact, their livelihoods, in many cases, depend on exploiting these divides, and that’s what they specialize in doing,” he said. At another point, he said, modern black leaders were focused “on making excuses for anti-social black behavior” and alleged that they send “young black people out into the world with a chip on their shoulder.”
He told the audience, “You may be sincerely interested in closing racial divisions, but a lot of other people out there have no problem with these divisions — and not all of them are members of the alt-right.”
Mr. Riley, who is African-American, took aim at the NAACP and the Black Lives Matter movement, which has grown in recent years out of concern over high-profile cases of police shootings of African-Americans.
He criticized the NAACP’s recent warning to consumers about an alleged “pattern of disturbing incidents” concerning black passengers of American Airlines. The NAACP reportedly will meet soon with officials from the airline — which has pushed back against the group’s claims.
“Will anyone here be surprised if American Airlines announces that it is about to cut a big, fat check to the NAACP?” Mr. Riley asked.
Malik Russell, director of communications for the NAACP, did not respond directly to Mr. Riley’s comments but wrote in an email message to The Chronicle: “Oftentimes, members of oppressed communities are used and funded as spokespersons for ideas and policies that reinforce white supremacy. These individuals have no real constituency nor any legitimacy in the communities they ostensibly belong to, yet make careers by reiterating the language of those seeking to normalize their racism by hiding it in coded language.”
In a question-and-answer session, Mr. Riley lobbed another barb, this time at diversity-officer positions, which have been adopted by many colleges and nonprofits in recent years to help build equity programs.
“I don’t see a constructive role for them to play whatsoever,” Mr. Riley said. He added that he viewed the jobs as “window dressing” and suggested that many organizations use them to stave off attacks from the “racial-grievance industry” and “perhaps even lawsuits.”
Asked later about Mr. Riley’s views, Adam Meyerson, president of the Philanthropy Roundtable, said in an email that the organization “does not explicitly endorse any of our speakers’ views. We frequently provide contrasting perspectives in our programs.”
Fighting the Opioid Epidemic
The annual meeting of the roundtable dealt with many hot topics beyond race. In a session on combating the opioid epidemic, Cara Christ, director of the Arizona Department of Health Services, said that philanthropists could pay for public-service announcements and other educational messages about substance abuse.
“A lot of people don’t understand that they may actually be on an opioid because it’s called something different,” she said. There’s been lack of philanthropic dollars aimed at fighting substance abuse in general, said Alexa Eggleston, senior program officer of the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, adding that she hopes public-private partnerships at the local, state, and national levels start to develop soon.
Groups that work on substance-abuse prevention and “wraparound services” for addicts also need money for new, innovative programs, Ms. Eggleston said. Governments and many donors largely dismiss efforts that are not “evidence-based,” she noted.
Paul Jarris, chief medical officer for the March of Dimes, agreed. “Government does not fund innovation,” he said.
He told the audience: “We need you to come in and help us develop these models” and spread and refine them for different communities.
Also, funding is needed for items that are “not sexy,” like building organizations’ internal infrastructure and a work force for substance-abuse programs, Ms. Eggleston said.
Another session focused on philanthropy’s impact on democracy.
Rob Reich, co-director of the Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society at Stanford University, said that America was in a second Gilded Age, and “big philanthropy” from wealthy donors needs to be scrutinized because it’s often “an expression and an exercise of power.”
What’s more, he said, much of the power is unaccountable to the public.
“It’s often very low transparency,” he noted. “It’s power that can be exercised in perpetuity.”
Society should move away from viewing charitable gifts with automatic “gratitude” and be more critical and skeptical of philanthropic efforts, Mr. Reich said.
He also lamented the trend toward big foundations and philanthropists providing funding as “stopgap” measures when governments face revenue shortfalls. “That’s philanthropic regress rather than progress,” he said.
Heather Higgins, president of the Randolph Foundation, emphasized the need for “philanthropic freedom” in her remarks and rejected Mr. Reich’s concerns about accountability.
There are no doubt projects that will be funded that will be a “waste of time” and perhaps antithetical to the public good, she said. “But I also think that marketplace of ideas and of innovation will, in the long term, create greater civic engagement ... and greater solutions to problems.”
Government intrusion in philanthropy should be limited, she argued. “Democracy does exist to define the rules of philanthropy — but then, within that construct you [should] have a lot of freedom unless you are infringing on someone’s well-being or their rights,” she said.
Mr. Reich and Ms. Higgins, however, did both agree that government should force foundations to shut down at a set time rather than let them decide they can live forever. Mr. Reich compared long-lasting foundations to professor tenure: “Endowments within private foundations are identical institutional arrangements that tenure is: It’s lifetime performance unaccountability, and it’s even worse in several respects because it’s perpetual.”
Fundraising by Foundations
Another session focused on grant makers that solicit wealthy donors to pool their gifts into a fund to deal with specific causes.
Speakers advised foundations to ensure that they have the resources to pull off these projects. “I don’t think this is for the faint of heart,” said Jim Bildner, chief executive of the Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation. For some organizations, building the funds might be a “huge distraction,” he said.
For such efforts to work, organizations need to have expertise in certain aspects of philanthropy so that they can “look a donor in the face” and ask for money, said Evan Feinberg, executive director of Stand Together, a Charles Koch-affiliated organization focusing on poverty and education.
As Chuck Harris, chief operating officer of Blue Meridian Partners, a project of the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation, put it: “This is not rocket science. When you’ve got something good that you’re pursuing, you can probably persuade other people to join you in it. But you do have to steward those relationships just like any other fundraiser.”