There’s an interesting blog post today “The Big Uneasy” over at White Courtesy Telephone (an occasionally irreverent series of guest blog posts about philanthropy) talking about why Community Foundations shy away from funding Social Justice. Better than just talking about it, they provided some survey data (surveying community foundation staff members) about it. While it’s a small sample (57 people), it’s a lot better than one person pontificating. (And they let you download the survey results, though not the raw data…)
The main concerns are that “social justice” is either too radical or too vague.
- 57% agreed or strongly agreed with the statement:
“Many CEOs or trustees of community foundations resist social justice philanthropy because they fear alienating donors”
This doesn’t mean that the respondents themselves felt that way. Indeed, it smacks a bit of “sour grapes” where staff members would like to take a more radical stand, but feel push back from CEO’s or trustees.
They speculate a bit about how improved messaging (a focus on “fairness” and “equality of opportunity”) might clarify the goals and make it more palatable to donors.
As for me, some stats about the inequities that social justice is trying to correct is more compelling than word-smithing a perfect definition.
How about these drawn from “Fourteen Examples of System Racism in the Criminal Justice System”
- People of color represent half the population of NYC, and 80% of the NYPD stops. 8% of whites who are stopped are frisked, for blacks and Latinos, it’s 85%.
- In 2004, the American Bar Association reviewed the status of the public defender program and wrote: “All too often, defendants plead guilty, even if they are innocent, without really understanding their legal rights or what is occurring…The fundamental right to a lawyer that America assumes applies to everyone accused of criminal conduct effectively does not exist in practice for countless people across the US.”
- “The U.S. Sentencing Commission reported in March 2010 that in the federal system black offenders receive sentences that are 10% longer than white offenders for the same crimes.”
