Reckoning, Reflecting, and Calling to Action

When I was asked to write a piece to commemorate Black History Month for Stanford PACS’ Philanthropy Innovation Summit blog, I wanted to take the opportunity to share the history that we must reckon with as a sector, and also what is possible when we undertake that reckoning. I hope that through the stories I share here, both of those themes come through. 

“Where do you get the courage to continue to focus your funding on Black communities? You’re not afraid of the risk and implications?” 

As soon as I heard the question, I knew what the person was referring to: the administration’s stance against DEI, the anti-Black attacks on organizations like Fearless Fund, the Supreme Court’s repeal of affirmative action, and more. 

The answer is, my courage comes from my belief that those closest to the problem are closest to the solution. 

Justice and Liberation

I’d like to begin with a story about why I believe that by centering Black communities in our philanthropic work and grantmaking, particularly those at the intersection of multiple identities, all of us have a greater chance at justice and liberation.

We followed the organizers and staff of The Knights and Orchids Society (TKO) as they led us through a tour of the park where they held their first Pride Parade. They described the fear and hesitation they held as they leaned into courage and decided to move forward with their plans for the celebration. They arranged for community-based safety protocols and liaisons with the local police department in case anything were to go wrong. 

Gentle raindrops started to fall as they continued to lead us through downtown Selma, walking us past the grocery store they hoped to acquire and develop into a cooperative grocery store for the local residents, until we finally made our way to the storefront that served as their office space. There they began to tell us the story of what they experienced during the pandemic.

As an organization already deeply familiar with the protocols for administering direct services and distributing supplies to local communities for sexual and reproductive health, housing, food and more, this Black-Trans-led organization was able to quickly activate their systems and protocols when the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic brought their town to a halt. TKO opened up their doors to distribute food, personal protective equipment, and COVID-19 tests to local residents when local governments and federal agencies were unable to effectively and efficiently respond to their communities’ needs. 

For the first time, residents that had looked upon TKO and their members with disdain were now showing up in TKO’s service lines seeking assistance. Rather than turn away their neighbors in need, TKO used this moment as an organizing opportunity to build mutual trust and respect with their neighbors, insisting that their humanity is recognized, rather than allowing the destructive narratives that divided them continue to keep them apart in a time when collective care was essential to everyone’s survival. 

The work of TKO is so powerful and an undeniable example of what is needed, and therefore what philanthropy must resource, in order to not only save those that have been marginalized, but create the possibility of the rest of us saving ourselves:

The Black-Trans community and their desire and deservedness to live and thrive in the face of structural racism, sexism, and sexual repression forces all of us to confront our own insecurities and openly name who we are at our core. 

Love for Humanity

TKO’s work demonstrates what so many of us are lacking: the ability to create systems and practices that honor the humanity and needs of those that society would prefer to hide or throw away. It is through the process of creating practices that center collective care and well-being, enveloped in joy and celebration, that we can heal ourselves and demonstrate what true power and transformation looks like. The selflessness, spiritual strength, and generosity to care for those that in the best of times would not do the same for you, is a demonstration of that “love for humanity” that philanthropy and society has failed to uphold. 

To my colleagues in philanthropy, whether we recognize it our not, our complacency in funding the status quo, our repeal and retreat from our unfulfilled promises to support racial justice organizing, our resistance to fund projects and communities that are different from our own and what we think they should be, is how we contribute not only to the ongoing harm of Black-Trans communities, but how we deny our own humanity and inhibit our ability to create a more loving and just world for all of us. Nikole Hannah Jones’ extensive work on the 1619 Project has laid bare the way that much of our financial systems, legal practices, and cultural norms are rooted in anti-Blackness stemming from the United States’ sin of the enslavement and trafficking of Africans to the Americas. And much has been written about philanthropy’s disparate funding for Black-led organizations and communities. 

Acknowledging Our History of Oppression

If we do not reckon with how anti-Blackness, anti-Indigeneity, and its intersectionality with systemic oppression is the crux upon which our society is built, it will be our collective undoing. As we watch children torn apart from their loving parents and disappeared into filthy detention prisons, we must also remember the Native American children that were forced into American Indian Boarding schools to strip them of their language, identity and culture; and the Black babies ripped away from their mothers under slavery in the United States. 

As we watch the sidewalks in our urban cities become filled with people unable to afford the rising costs of housing, we must remember the practice of redlining that sequestered Black families to disinvested and neglected neighborhoods and the subprime mortgage crises that profited off of foreclosures, stealing Black generational wealth. 

As we watch poor, white, rural communities being hit hard with the opioid crises, we must remember the failed War on Drugs that flooded Black neighborhoods with crack cocaine and then further terrorized them through criminalization, fueling a system of mass incarceration. 

As we shudder for children being denied and criminalized for gender affirming care, and women forced to creep across state lines in search of reproductive care, we must remember the Black women that were forcefully sterilized without their consent, told that their pain was not real and denied proper healthcare. 

As we watched in horror, from every angle imaginable, the murder of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti, we’re reminded of how many tried to silence the calls for Black Lives Matter as reverse racism, even after watching the murder of George Floyd and understanding its long and immoral arc that originated from the terror of lynching Black people in the Jim Crow South.

If we remain unwilling to confront the original sin of anti-Blackness and anti-Indigeneity, it will eventually consume us all. Denying the existence and persistence of anti-Blackness will prop the door open for justification of everyone’s oppression, regardless of race, gender, sexuality or even net worth. 

The Call to Action

The call to action for us this month, and always, is simple: fund the self-determination of Black and Indigenous communities, and all communities of color. 

This means fund their ability to organize and build political, economic, and cultural power. Fund their ability to develop and provide permanently affordable housing for one another. Fund food sovereignty and their ability to have access to safe and healthy food. Fund their ability to provide culturally competent and trauma-informed healthcare. Fund their ability to have access to the resources to create systems, practices, and a way of life that centers their collective care, well-being, and dignity. If and when we are able to do that, then all of us will thrive.