At their 2017 SphinxConnect conference, the Sphinx Organization hosted a roundtable discussion entitled “Funding Inclusion,” which brought together leaders in philanthropy who actively support the arts, diversity, and creative expression. Jamie Bennett, executive director of ArtPlace America, hosted the conversation between Susan Feder (The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation), Kamilah Henderson (Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan), and Margaret Morton (Ford Foundation).
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.
by Monica
A recent story from Minnesota Public Radio highlights the challenges of funding disparities experienced by ALAANA (African, Latino/a, Asian, Arab, and Native American) arts organizations:
by Monica
A recent blog post on The Huffington Post expresses the importance of equity as New York City works to create its first-ever cultural plan:
by Monica
A recent article in the Stanford Social Innovation Review advocates a “shift from a framework that grounds giving in ‘charity’ to one that grounds giving in ‘justice.’” The authors ask funders to interrogate the historic inequities which have made philanthropy necessary, offering a set of questions for philanthropic field to examine their own practices under this framework.
by Monica
The New York Community Trust has announced a new program called The Liberty Fund, a “special funding opportunity to help New York City nonprofits address immediate issues affecting vulnerable New Yorkers.” The fund is a partnership with the New York Foundation and aims to address issues related to identity-based discrimination, mental health, health care, immigrant rights, and other time-sensitive needs.
by Monica
A recent article in Crain’s Chicago Business highlights the work of Enrich Chicago, “a coalition of 14 nonprofits and seven foundations whose goal is racial equity, in terms of management, funding, and artist support, for Chicago-area ALAANA nonprofits by 2050.” The coalition was founded in 2014 by Angelique Power, GIA board member and president of The Field Foundation of Illinois, and Brett Batterson, former executive director of Auditorium Theatre of Roosevelt University.
by Monica
As the Seattle Office of Arts & Culture releases its Racial Equity Statement, Director Randy Engstrom writes on how the arts can lead the way to cross-sector, community-wide change:
Arts are how we can achieve racial equity in our institutions, and in our lives. They hold the power to capture, nourish and move us. They serve as a vehicle for radical social change, and are an effective strategy to address the pressing issues of our time. We believe that we need to center the arts in our strategy, but look beyond our field to affect change structurally, in partnership with the community, City departments, other institutions and jurisdictions, so we can help build racial equity in housing, criminal justice, education, jobs, the environment and more.
by Monica
The League of American Orchestras has released two reports on diversity in orchestras. The first, Forty Years of Fellowships, analyzes the efficacy and impact of fellowship programs for African American and Latino musicians. The second report, Racial/Ethnic and Gender Diversity in the Orchestra Field examines diversity among orchestra staff, boards, conductors and instrumentalists.
I was lucky as a young artist, with the ink still drying on my BFA, to learn about working in the public art field through a Minneapolis-based CETA program in 1977. CETA (Comprehensive Employment Training Act) was a federal jobs program that included several arts initiatives around the country. As gallery director of City Art Productions — the name of the one-year program initiated by Melisande Charles at the Minneapolis Arts Commission — I got to organize exhibits of CETA artists at libraries, plazas, government centers, and parks throughout the city.
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Glyn Northington, Special Initiatives director, Nonprofits Assistance Fund
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