Racial Equity
Grantmakers in the Arts (GIA) is committed to addressing structural inequities and increasing philanthropic and government support for BIPOC artists and arts organizations. Racial equity is a lens through which GIA aims to conduct all of its work, as well as a specific area of its programming.
Since 2008, GIA has been elevating racial equity as a critical issue affecting the field. To actualize this work within the sector, GIA published its Racial Equity in Arts Funding Statement of Purpose in 2015. Through webinars, articles, convenings, and conference sessions, GIA provides training and information to support arts funders in addressing historic and structural inequity through their grantmaking practices as part of an effort for racial justice as a means toward justice for all.
GIA believes that all oppressed groups should benefit from funding. We give primacy to race because racism is the means by which oppressed groups are manipulated into opposing programs that assist them. Therefore, Grantmakers in the Arts’ equity work – including our discussions of support for trans artists, artists with disabilities and for disability arts – is NOT race-exclusive but IS race-explicit. GIA’s vision for the future of our work is to increasingly reveal how the liberation of all oppressed people is interdependent.
GIA has made a strategic decision to foreground racial equity in our work for several reasons:
- Within other oppressed peoples’ communities (including women, members of the lgbtqi community, people with disabilities, and others), it has been well-documented that people of color still face the worst social outcomes.
- GIA feels that others’ strategies of combining considerations of race with other considerations too often result in racialized people being pushed into the background or ignored.
- The U.S.’ creation of race was established to keep oppressed peoples separate.
Unless we articulate our support for racialized peoples, while calling out this separation strategy, we inadvertently reinforce this separation strategy.
Specific themes of our racial equity programming include:
- The analysis of how funding practices create structural challenges for BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color)/ALAANA (African, Latinx, Asian, Arab, Native-American) organizations (Eurocentric quality standards, matching requirements, among others).
- The impact of these practices, as manifest in racialized disparities in levels of funding.
- An exploration of the use of coded language to justify racial inequity (i.e. referring to white audiences as “general” or “mainstream,” while organizations of color are “culturally-specific.”
When it comes to self-identifying language, GIA seeks to use terms that communicate our respect. We do not seek to impose language on members of any group. We respect the manner in which anyone prefers to self-identify. When referring to issues of racial equity, “we use the term BIPOC to highlight the unique relationship to whiteness that Indigenous and Black people have, which shapes the experiences of and relationship to white supremacy for all people of color within a U.S. context.” We take this explanation and practice from the BIPOC Project.
GIA has also used the racial and ethnic identifiers African, Latinx, Asian, Arab, and Native American. We have used African, Latinx, Asian, Arab, Native American – represented using the acronym ALAANA – because we know that many believe the term, “people of color,” conflates together entire groups of people and as a contrast to white. This results in a continued centering of whiteness as the norm and the standard from which other identities deviate.
GIA does not refer to organizations that are founded by, led by, and feature the work of ALAANA/BIPOC communities as “culturally-specific,” as we believe this term centers whiteness as the norm from which other organizations deviate.
GIA is committed to communicating respectfully. GIA does not ask that anyone self-identify with or use any term other than ones they prefer.
Neighborhood Funders Group (NFG) and the Aspen Institute Forum for Community Solutions recently launched a leadership fellowship for CEOs of progressive philanthropic institutions. The fellowship is best suited for philanthropic institutions that already support racial equity and powerbuilding and want to go deeper by building a strong peer group and aligning more towards equity and impact.
Read More..."Racial equity isn't something we do because it's a nice thing to do. It's the core issue out of which everything else we do flows." La June Montgomery Tabron, president and CEO of W.K. Kellogg Foundation, shared that idea in an interview, in which she emphasized how racial equity is a crucial part of the transformation needed to improve the United States.
Read More..."Why do you need a cultural equity statement?" "Isn’t a mission statement enough?" Those are the questions Hoong Yee Lee Krakauer, executive director of the Queens Council on the Arts (QCA), used to introduce a post in which she lays out how and why QCA developed its cultural equity statement.
Read More...Memphis Music Initiative (MMI) takes pride in its "disruptive philanthropy," a practice of "conscious giving" and a model that starts "with the understanding that institutional and structural racism shapes (arts) funding and produces inequities in resources and opportunities."
Read More...Organizations from the public, private, and philanthropic sectors announced recently the Racial Equity Here commitment, an effort to dismantle structural racism in America. Recognizing the need to collectively tackle growing racial disparities, these institutions invite others to join them in taking clear steps to prioritize racial equity in their work.
Read More..."Race is a social construct that has deep societal impact. Our nation’s history of racism has been codified through systems such as slavery, education, and housing — all issues that the social sector seeks to address. As such, the social sector has a mandate to eliminate racism at all levels on which it exists and shift its axis towards race equity." This statement sets the tone and context for a report by Equity in the Center, which tackles how organizations can begin the race equity journey in their respective institutions.
Read More...This May, after five years, the art space 356 Mission in East Los Angeles will be closing its doors. But, as Nonprofit Quarterly wrote citing Hyperallergic, there were mixed reactions to the news. From artists, there was a sadness as they acknowledged the work the space has done for the arts and for its neighbors. And, with a very different reaction from community activists who “applauded the announcement as a victory against developers and the artists and galleries they see as their enablers and collaborators.”
Read More...The Memphis Music Initiative (MMI), dedicated to broaden and strengthen existing music engagement offerings in and out of schools and supporting youth-centered, community-based music spaces, released a new study that looks at the landscape of equity in arts funding alongside patterns of exclusionary funding practices which all too regularly confront black and brown arts organizations.
Read More...In a recent blog post, Barry Hessenius, author of the nonprofit arts Barry’s Blog, highlights the importance of increased diversity at the top as a step toward greater funding equity.
Racial diversity is not racial equity, but as Hessenius explores, enhancing racial diversity in leadership positions is a step toward increasing racial equity in arts philanthropy.
Read More...This is the first of a series of blog posts Eddie Torres, president and CEO of Grantmakers in the Arts, will be writing on arts philanthropy and principles, like racial equity, that drive GIA’s mission.
Read More...