NCRP’s Cracks in the Foundation: Philanthropy’s Role in Reparations for Black People in the DMV is getting getting good feedback from local and national community leaders. Here is just a growing sample:
Community & Non Profit Leaders
Christian Beauvoir, Policy Table Coordinator, Movement for Black Lives
Every institution that claims to value Black people has a responsibility to make right every time that it has not. Reparations is more than just a legal framework for responding to harm. It says I see the violence that your ancestors endured when they deserved care, I see the discrimination they experienced when they deserved homes, schools, or doctors and because these histories still live in your DNA and in the institutions that surround you, I am committed to repairing what I have destroyed.
Rosemary Ndubuizu, Volunteer Community Organizer, ONE DC (Organizing Neighborhood Equity)
A powerful reckoning, indeed! NCRP’s report, Cracks in the Foundation, impressively reveals the need for organized philanthropy to do more than aspire to representational politics but embrace a redistributive commitment rooted in racial and economic justice. This report will trailblaze new ways organized philanthropy can center racial capitalism and reparations in its organizational ethical practices.
Linda J. Mann, African American Redress Network
As governments and institutions begin to reckon with their imperialist underpinnings, they are often challenged with how to advance policies that include the voices of those harmed. The strength of the NCRP report is that it not only provides guidance on how to engage directly with harmed communities, but moreover, responds to the need for organizations to additionally respond to their structural injustices. As a result, the NCRP report has the potential to result in initiatives that alter power imbalances and repair societal rifts towards a more just society. (Linda J. Mann)
Jennie Goldfarb, Director of Operations & Strategic Engagement, Liberation Ventures
This groundbreaking report shouldn’t be groundbreaking, but we’re so glad it is. This research stands on the shoulders of the generations of advocates that have been dreaming and implementing interventions in philanthropy that disrupt and transform the status quo. If philanthropy is ever going to do what it says it wants to do, it needs to take a long look in the mirror. Right now, foundations have a chance to model holistic repair. This report is the first step and I’m so proud of everyone involved to bring this across the finish line. My hope is it fuels a movement of funders committed to truth telling and being in right relationship with each other and the organizations they fund.
Dara Cooper, a national strategic consultant and organizer
Despite individuals and some organizations being generally aware of the historical exploitation of Black people in this country, philanthropy has never really reckoned with how the ill-gotten gains from systemic discrimination and exclusion were the seed capital for so many modern grantmakers. This report helps us connect the voices of the past with the data of the present in order to give foundations little excuse to address and redress historical and ongoing exploitation of Black DMV residents and families.
Foundations
Dr. Dwayne Proctor (NCRP Board Chair)
President & CEO
Missouri Foundation for Health
As the nation’s capital, it makes sense for D.C. to be on the vanguard of these conversations about reckoning with the way wealth generated for philanthropies harmed Black communities – D. C. has always been on the front line of these conversations.
Washington D.C. is also my hometown. In 1963, I was born in Cafritz Hospital. I lived down the street from a Safeway, one of the only grocery stores in the area. I started my education in the D.C. public schools. One of my earliest and most vivid childhood memories happened in D.C.; watching from my bedroom window as my city burned in the riots that erupted after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination.
Cracks in the Foundation: Philanthropy’s Role in Reparations for Black People speaks to generations of history of Black people in the region and the throughlines to their oppression. I am encouraged to read a report that not only tells these stories but applies them to new and tested frameworks. If readers can connect the overlaps between the social determinants of health and the necessary healing of Black families today – real and transformative conversations about repair can begin.
There are no stories about wealth generating without racial injustice. That is why philanthropy needs to think differently and more creatively about using their endowments. For some, that might even mean going beyond the required 5% payout.
However those actions are defined, we can’t back away from taking risks. If foundations built their assets on the backs of others to secure their wealth and their tax benefit, then they have a responsibility to those people, their families, and their communities.
Andy Horning [Horning Foundation]
“For white people, undoing racism and understanding white supremacy is a critical first step when they engage in philanthropy. It isn’t easy work. Expect a direct challenge to who you are and have seen yourself to be. It requires incredible courage to step forward into the discomfort AND deep self-compassion when it inevitably becomes difficult. Its a reckoning, a grappling with the hard new reality of understanding ourselves and the world white supremacy has created.”
Adam Liebling
Grants Management Executive
“Spent the past two days reading and then re-reading it. Absolutely stunning. Not being from DC/the DMV, the historical background was illuminating and disturbing (if sadly not surprising). And the calling out of foundations in the area that have benefited from the suffering of others was brilliantly and bravely done. This report is a must read.”