Like air, power is everywhere, yet it is often invisible. We may not think about its role in our daily lives, but we live and breathe it. Used positively, power helps communities thrive. But there’s also a dark side.
Like polluted air, power becomes most visible when something is wrong—when someone abuses it, and the consequences are inescapable. Foundations often wait to acknowledge inequitable power dynamics and their impact until events force them to—a police shooting of an unarmed black person in their community, or a parent deported and their family torn apart. Once power is visible, we see how race, gender, wealth, and other identifiers influence who has power over whom.
Read the entire article in Stanford Social Innovation Review.
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