Battling the Symptoms of Injustice, Not the Disease (Letter to the Editor)

To the Editor:

Structural problems need structural solutions. This should not be a controversial statement in 2020, where we have seen the systems that uphold injustices in policing, the economy, health care, and so many other sectors exposed; their insidiousness laid bare for all to see. That’s why I was disappointed to read “Today’s Racial-Justice Grant Makers Could Learn a Lot From an Early-20th-Century Philanthropist” in the Chronicle (August 25), an article urging foundations to prioritize services over policy, addressing the symptoms of injustice, but not the disease.

Funding programs that ameliorate injustice instead of attacking the causes provides a handful of people with the ability to overcome the obstacles to their success but will never achieve a truly just society. Because they locate the problem in the individual, rather than the system, that is where their interventions begin and end.

At the Edward W. Hazen Foundation, we have learned over our near century of work that transformational change will require dismantling the structural foundations of racism. While this moment of reckoning and uprising has led some foundations to commit resources to the fight for racial justice, at Hazen we center the leadership of people of color in all the work we do and the organizations we fund and follow their demands for change over charity.

Philanthropy has a history as a conservative force, using our influence to artificially narrow the focus of activists and advocates in ways that reify social conditions, rather than challenging white supremacy and its manifestations. By limiting our funding only to alleviating the symptoms of injustice, we are acting as if this is the natural order of things. Foundations are products of a system that enables the aggregation of wealth and power, and in general, the sector has prioritized the continuation of that system, rather than its destruction.

Suzanne Garment and Leslie Lenkowsky lift up the Julius Rosenwald Fund and the Rosenwald schools as a model for modern philanthropy in their article in the Chronicle.

But while the Rosenwald Fund made enormous contributions to the education of Black people in America, it did nothing to challenge the remnants of slavery that lived on in segregated schools. As Maribel Morey points out on the HistPhil blog, not only did they likely confine the curriculum to subjects that would prepare Black children for a life of low-level work, but they required the Black community to raise a match in order to access Rosenwald Funds for a local school. Thus Black communities paid double for schooling their children, once in the form of taxation and a second time for the Rosenwald Schools. Garment and Lenkowsky also remind us that this approach was not necessary and give examples of Black women who risked their lives by demanding changes that would fundamentally alter circumstances for Black students and communities.

Today, we have contemporary examples in education of tactics that fail to address the root cause of social inequity. Charter schools, for example, perpetuate structural inequity rather than serve as a strategy to end the continued inadequacies of our school systems. Philanthropy has been enamored of the idea that choice, competition, and markets free from government intervention will inevitably lead to a fairer, more equitable system of schooling. Some charter schools do provide some families access to better quality education than the local public-school system. But this is an insufficient approach. It leaves most children and families behind and normalizes the notion that educating our children is the responsibility of the individual parent rather than the collective responsibility of society as a whole. Even without detailing the many examples of charter schools failing to improve student achievement and their frequent closures, financial improprieties, and other irregularities, the truth is that charter schools are simply a short-term solution to a wider problem: disinvestment by governments in public education and a commitment to a system that educates all children to high standards.

Alternatively, the movement for police-free schools provides a different approach, one that understands that schools are components of a larger set of interlocking systems and that, working together with law enforcement and other systems, they funnel Black and brown children away from educational opportunity and into the criminal-justice system. This work, led by Black and brown youth and parents across the country, is creating tangible outcomes while simultaneously addressing structural problems of race and gender.

Policy work and programmatic support move in tandem in the police-free-schools movement, identifying and removing the structural roots of oppression through policy, which in turn is producing safer schools. This work did not happen overnight, and the wins we have seen in recent months are the result of more than a decade of organizing, research, and advocacy. Seeing the work of organizations like the Black Organizing Project, the Advancement Project, Leaders Igniting Transformation, Padres y Jóvenes Unidos, and more coming to fruition, we must acknowledge the importance of funding grass-roots initiatives that target the structures of racial injustices.

This is in no way a criticism of the critical work being done by those who provide direct services — a hungry individual with access to a food bank is better off than a person without. But if that person, and people in their community, are consistently experiencing food insecurity, it is worth asking what conditions in our society have produced this outcome. We are far from the only foundation to consider this in our work, and we are heartened to see foundations such as Open Society Foundations, California Endowment, Packard, and more, stepping into this moment with resources, not just words.

When we support initiatives that treat the symptoms of social injustices, from racism to economic disparities to gender-based discrimination, we must critically assess whether those programs wind up simply reinforcing underlying inequities.

Service delivery and emergency relief can often be where philanthropy ends its involvement — but we must demand more of ourselves if we truly seek to eradicate racism and social injustice. We are in a movement moment, a singular opportunity to affect structural changes that can fundamentally alter the balance of power and opportunity in our country. Activists and communities have set the challenge; now it is up to us to provide the resources and raise our voices in the fight for justice. Only then can we achieve the true American dream.

Lori Bezahler
CEO
Edward W. Hazen Foundation
Brooklyn, N.Y.