Racial Equity, Grantmaking & Chandeliers
Submitted by Steve on October 16, 2011
Conference blogger Hoong Yee Lee Krakauer sat in on the conference session Grantmaking with a Racial Equity Lens, a salon discussion facilitated by GIA Board member Justin Laing of The Heinz Endowments. For this year's conference, GIA initiated the Salon Session as a way of providing more participatory discussions around a topic.
No question, racial equity is a highly charged topic that brings people together with complex emotions simmering beneath their conference badges. No question, we work in a dominant society that is managing our system of race and culture. It is structured racialism, poverty and colonization, all the time.
“We must commit to rootwork. To constantly question power-brokering.” said (Timothy Dorsey, program officer, Open Society Foundations). I like that word, rootwork. In my mind I imagine deep questioning and determined fistfuls of newer ideas.