What We're Reading: Groups Working on Reparations for Black Americans Get Boost From New Philanthropic Funding
"The campaign to win reparations for Black Americans plans to bring broader support for smaller nonprofits advancing the cause, with a new philanthropic funding initiative announced Friday at the 'Alight Align Arise' national conference in Atlanta," said Thalia Beaty for The Chronicle of Philanthropy. "The Decolonizing Wealth Project, an organization dedicated to creating racial equity through education and 'radical reparative giving,' is committing $20 million over five years to boost campaigns for reparations across the country, along with a research collaboration with Boston University to map reparation projects."
"The project’s founder and CEO Edgar Villanueva announced the plans at the Atlanta gathering of advocates, including the writer Ta-Nehisi Coates, journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones and U.S. Rep. Jamaal Bowman, the Democratic congressman whose district represent parts of the Bronx and Westchester County in New York."
'The nonprofit, which is fiscally sponsored by Allied Media Projects, has not yet fully funded the commitment but has brought in millions of dollars in unrestricted grants from the likes of the Ford Foundation and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation in recent years. That’s in addition to hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations from individuals to their reparations campaign fund, called Liberated Capital, which the MacArthur Foundation supports."
"Even before the police killing of George Floyd three years ago, institutions and municipalities began examining their own roles in systems that oppressed Black Americans, including slavery, redlining, and gentrification. They also looked at policies impacting other communities of color.'
"Last year, Harvard University pledged $100 million to atone for its extensive ties with slavery. In 2021, the Minnesota-based Bush Foundation committed $100 million, which they raised through issuing emergency bonds during the pandemic, to address economic inequality in Black and Native American communities. Also in 2021, the city of Evanston, Ill., launched a program to pay $10 million to facilitate home repairs or down payments for Black residents, the first of its kind in the United States."
"Civil-rights lawyer and professor at the Harvard Kennedy School, Cornell William Brooks, has a quilt hanging in his office that was made from the clothing of his great-great grandfather, which he points to as just one measure of the present connection to the impact of slavery. His scholarship looks at the many ways the U.S. government compensates groups that have been harmed, though not yet Black Americans."
"Will Cordery is a philanthropy consultant and directs the Reparative Action Fund at Satterberg Foundation, which supports the Decolonizing Wealth Project. In his experience, individuals and smaller family foundations have been much quicker to grapple with and support reparations than larger foundations, which are more bound by their missions and internal procedures."
"He hopes that funding more nonprofits to work on reparations campaigns will mean in five years that more people understand that reparations work is not just about handing over money but about healing past harms."