Rejecting False Harmony: How Philanthropy Can Support Real Healing
In Nonprofit Quarterly, Kataly Foundation CEO Nwamaka Agbo reflects on the events at the capital last week — focusing on disingenuous calls for harmony and the need for real accountability that confronts the harm that has been done to Black and Brown communities:
“Calling for harmony without accountability for harmful acts — reparations to restore and make whole those who were impacted, or reconciliation that points to systemic changes as policies to ensure these ills won’t happen again — is insincere. Rather than disinfecting, cleaning, and applying a salve to heal the wound, the wound will only fester and further spread the infection across the country.
The attempted coup we witnessed on Wednesday amounts to a direct action of the same voter suppression tactics and policies that Black, Indigenous, and communities of color have experienced by the hands of those most entrusted with the protection of our democracy and right to vote. Tactics like gerrymandering, reducing polling locations, and attempts to reduce the capacity of the US Postal Service and ballot drop-off locations all amount to efforts to undermine our democracy. Legislated policies like restrictive voter ID requirements and Citizens United all serve to dilute and invalidate the democratic slogan of “one person, one vote.” And, finally, the electoral college, a system sullied with the vestiges of slavery, is designed to disproportionately preserve the voting power of white men. All of these strategies and policies, legislated and administered by those in power, served as the scaffolding that manifested the attacks on the Capitol and our democracy.”
“Accountability cannot happen without action. At the Kataly Foundation, we believe it is essential to explicitly name our support of Black, Indigenous, and communities of color as the first step of acknowledging the violence, extraction, and exploitation that has sacrificed these communities in exchange for wealth accumulation and power consolidation. Our act of accountability is to center the voices, experiences, and decision-making authority of those same impacted communities through the grantees we support with both financial and non-financial resources, the partners we align ourselves with and take direction from, and through the team we entrust to carry out our mission.”
