Warning: This column is going to discuss reparations for Black people and why philanthropists who say they’re committed to racial equity need to get on board.
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With the school year underway, this conversation must start with what’s happening in classrooms. Since September 2020, a total of 750 measures have been introduced at the local, state, or federal levels that attempt to regulate how race is taught and discussed in schools, according to new research from the UCLA School of Law. At present, 2023 is outpacing previous years for such legislative activity.
The measures, commonly couched as anti-critical race theory, should be called what they really are: anti-equity. Although the critical race theory framework is intended for law students, the UCLA researchers found that 94 percent of the measures adopted were aimed at how public schools teach about race.
What we teach or don’t teach today affects the world we become tomorrow. Without a collective understanding of the historical root causes of America’s inequity, it’s impossible to build a culture of racial repair whereby the harms caused by systemic racism are acknowledged and healing is a priority.
This topic has been on my mind a lot lately because, in my day job at the Bridgespan Group, I’ve spent the past six months researching a report on philanthropy’s role in reparations. The report was done in collaboration with Liberation Ventures, an intermediary organization and donor committed to reparations and racial repair.
Often overlooked by those not steeped in the issue of reparations — including me, before this research — is its deep connection to racial repair. A broad group of grassroots organizations, nonprofits, artists, scholars, multiracial coalitions, leaders of color, and philanthropists see reparations for Black people and building a culture of repair as the missing piece in the racial-equity puzzle. They’re motivated by the belief that harm has been done and such work is necessary for society to heal and prevent a repeat of historic and ongoing policies that drive racial inequity in America.
Although using a warning label to kick off this column was (mostly) in jest, the reality is that the topic of reparations, despite its roots in racial repair, can seem too radical, even toxic, for some philanthropic leaders. I’ve been in Zoom rooms with philanthropists who fund reparations work but admit to purposely not using the word publicly.
That the mere word “reparations” sets off alarm bells is no accident.
In an interview for the Bridgespan/Liberations Ventures report, racial justice advocate and scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw, who developed the critical race theory framework, described “a hugely asymmetrical situation where hundreds of millions of dollars are being spent [by far-right groups] trying to shift understanding away from the idea that there’s still race work that needs to be done and that there’s still racial repair that needs to happen.”
Perpetuating the Status Quo
Philanthropic silence on reparations can seem like an endorsement of the inequitable status quo, making it harder for nonprofit leaders dedicated to repair to succeed. The anti-equity forces are counting on this.
Luke Charles Harris, co-founder with Crenshaw of the African American Policy Forum, told us that staying focused on the real problem is critical: “What we should be afraid of is white supremacy, not reparations.”
It’s worth noting that the United States previously paid reparations for slavery — to slaveholders. In 1862, when President Abraham Lincoln signed a bill emancipating enslaved Black people in Washington, D.C. — a year before the rest of the nation — the District of Columbia Emancipation Act paid slaveholders loyal to the Union up to $300 for every enslaved person freed.
The tactic to thwart social change by policing public discourse on race also isn’t new. As far back as the 1820s, Congress passed legal measures to limit anti-slavery speech. Abolitionist literature was intercepted in the mail and recipients of such mail were surveilled by law enforcement.
Likewise, many see the anti-CRT push as an effort to thwart racial repair. Tatishe Nteta, a political science professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, who researches opposition to reparations, told NPR that anti-CRT efforts are “part and parcel of the debate about reparations.”
Many of the anti-equity bills seek to ban schools from using a curriculum based on the New York Times’ s 1619 Project, which frames American history with slavery and its legacy at its center. Already, Texas and Florida have succeeded in passing outright bans on the 1619 Project curriculum, and at least 16 states now prohibit teaching about racism and sexism, which would restrict use of the curriculum.
“This battle is not about history, because you can’t change the past, but you can certainly shape our perception of who we are by manipulating what we know about the past,” said the creator of the 1619 Project, Nikole Hannah-Jones, at a national reparations conference I attended this past spring, hosted by the Decolonizing Wealth Project.
Philanthropy’s Role
If we aren’t authentically teaching and talking about the harm created by our nation’s history of racism, how can we start to heal?
To be clear, philanthropy’s role in reparations is not to replace the federal government in providing the scale of redress and racial healing the nation needs. Nor are philanthropic grants to Black-led organizations reparations. However, philanthropy has a massive opportunity to support the network of organizations that are fighting for reparations and working to build a culture of racial repair.
During my research for the reparations report, my favorite moments were at the end of each of the more than 45 interviews when we asked: “What do you see on the other side of reparations?” Those who read my last column will not be surprised that a particularly powerful mic-drop answer came from a Black woman in philanthropy — in this case, Ricshawn Adkins Roane, executive director of the Weissberg Foundation.
Roane responded that she’d like to “turn this question around to say, ‘What would you be doing if you didn’t have to fight for justice?’” This is how Roan described the life she imagined for herself in such a world: “I am a librarian, I am surrounded by books, and I get to read all day because I am not fighting for my people, for recognition of both our contributions and what has been and continues to be taken from us. On the other side is true liberation; it’s the ability to exist in our fullness.”
I tear up with joy imagining a classroom of students all able to exist in their fullness. A big misconception about reparations is that it is a discussion stuck in the past — that it’s about long-ago history rather than an investment in the future. Reparations and the racial repair that comes with it are an opening, an invitation, and an opportunity to transform ourselves, our communities, and our nation.
As to grant makers’ role in reparations and racial repair, the decision comes down to this: Will philanthropy leaders be part of that transformation in a meaningful way, or will they stay silent?
