Social Justice

Setting the Stage

With a population of over 2.3 million and one-in-four residents being foreign-born, Houston is the most ethnically diverse metro area in the nation. The city’s arts programs and cultural offerings are robust in number and breadth, and its vibrancy unfolds along the numerous bayous and highways. Most years see 11 to 16 million visitors traveling to the city for arts and cultural events. Houston’s nonprofit arts and culture sector, a $1.1 billion industry, employs more than 25,000 people.

Millennials live differently than previous generations of Americans. We stay single longer. More of us have student debt and are self-employed, freelancers, and members of the growing gig economy. According to Randstad’s research on the workplace, more than half of Americans will be self-employed by 2025. More than 40% of gig workers will be millennials, a figure that will likely grow given the size of the generation and its youth. Millennials are the largest demographic in American history. We are the future.

To better support Black artists and cultural communities, arts philanthropy should increase its focus on stability and resilience in creative practice. Covid has fully revealed its long-standing fragility, leaving 63% of all artists unemployed and 66% unable to access the infrastructure necessary for their work.¹

In William Faulkner’s novel, As I Lay Dying, a young character by the name of Vardaman is allowed to believe that his “mother is a fish,” because no one takes the time to tell him that his mother is dead. Instead he associates what he witnesses with the reality he understands within a highly dysfunctional family. In the novel, he repeats, “fish. fish. fish.” Similarly, I would offer that we are currently operating in a highly dysfunctional philanthropic family. I believe in the potential of our work.

A panel hosted in May 2020 by the Freelance Artist Resource Collective on building solidarity in and with Asian American & Pacific Islander (AAPI) communities featured important conversations that deserve reliving in the midst of acts of violence against Asian American communities.

In a recent article in Alliance Magazine, Nicolette Naylor and David Sampson examine legal action as a key tool for interrogating and challenging power and advancing justice.

Grace Nicolette, vice president, Programming and External Relations of the Center for Effective Philanthropy, wrote recently that her observation from working in philanthropy for more than 15 years "is that Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders are often left out of conversations around race, either purposefully or by neglect."

In its inaugural year, NPN’s Southern Artists for Social Change program awarded $300,000 through 12 project grants to artists and culture bearers of color engaging in social change in urban, rural, and tribal communities of Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi.

Toya Lillard wrote a piece in Hyperallergic that asks "the philanthropic, nonprofit, and education sectors to expand their circles of trust beyond white or white-adjacent executive leadership in order to water the roots."

Philanthropic organizations and funders launched together the California Black Freedom Fund, a new $100 million initiative to provide resources to Black-led power-building organizations in the state over the next five years.