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Hello and welcome to the counter narrative show. Today's topic is white supremacy in nonprofit environments. We are joined by Devon love. Devon Love is the Director of Public Policy at leaders of beautiful struggle. More context on Devon Yvonne has been sorry, oh. Devon has been sharpening his oratory style and political thinking for more than a decade as a coach and competitor in policy debate through his high school and college years, and that's just basically your start. Like you're very, very much like early start. Can you tell us a bit about some of the work that you have been doing? Been doing since that time, and how that has played a role, role in some of your public policy efforts?
Yeah, so, you know, I've done a variety of things. You know, I've worked at a few community centers over my time. And you mentioned that I coached debate. I was a high school teacher, you know, done constituent services working at city hall in terms of Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle that work has been really centered around political advocacy. So really just taking the skills that myself and my colleagues learned in the activity of policy debate and using them to advance the interests of black people in the realm of public policy. So that's kind of like in a nutshell, right?
So along the lines of our topic today is we'll be talking about white supremacy and nonprofit environments. Before we get like, deep into that topic. Can you just provide some context and just really explain exactly what is meant when we use this term, white supremacy. How is that different from racism, and why is it important specifically to identify white supremacy as opposed to racism?
Yeah, I think the term and using the terminology white supremacy is important because it helps contextualize our particular moment in history and the and it helps us understand more accurately, the way in which society is materially configured. So what I mean by that is, you know, racism by itself, could be characterized as just, you know, a group of people that hate another group of people, or a group of people that may engage in some, you know, negative activity towards another. But white supremacy is historically contextual, because we're talking about a process that's at least been 500 years of a project of European colonialization of the world, European domination of the world in all aspects of civil society. So you know, the place that it's easiest to demonstrate is kind of the political economy of our contemporary society. Most of the wealth is in the hands of white folks. Black folks have, you know, least access to capital and resources. You think about the societies that have the most power in terms of like foreign policy. These are European nations, Western nations, and those proximate to them. But then there's also white supremacy in terms of the culture of the society we live in. And in fact, the very basis of Western society was premised on the very anti African notion so or undermining the humanity of African people. Culturally. In fact, Frantz Fanon and wretch of the Earth, I think said it best where he says, he talks about the Jewish Holocaust, to say that that was a physical Holocaust, but against African people, we've experienced a physical and metaphysical Holocaust, right? There was literally an attempt to white African, white African people off of the face of the of the planet, in terms of us having an indigenous set of cultural resources, civilization and the like. So that's why white supremacy is so important for us to use it as a frame, because it helps us to accurately, under accurately understand all the different dynamics and facets of our contemporary society.
What would you say are the three significant dynamics in mainstream nonprofit sector that perpetuates white supremacy?
So so though, in just a little context for that, because I think a part of in the three things I'm going to outline, a lot of times when people talk about white supremacy, people oftentimes don't connect nonprofits or NGOs right. Nonprofits are supposed to be the entities that help people who are oppressed, and a lot of people who work within the nonprofit system have a conception of themselves as being helpers. So these three aspects of how. White supremacy manifests itself in the sector, are important because these are often the things that people don't care don't aren't obvious to people. So the first is the way in which black folk that the society that we live in, there's an inherent pathologizing of black people, right? So what that means is that many of the narratives that are rendered in mainstream and popular culture and professional settings are of black people, as broken, as oppressed, as a as primarily a suffering people. And when, when any people are rendered primarily in the context of their suffering, then any solution that you develop as a solution that requires that group's dependence on another group that is inherently less pathological, and that that's, you know, in every and I'll, you know, we'll talk more about it, but that's every aspect of our society is one from which the normalization of the enhanced pathology of black people that exists all throughout nonprofits, there are many nonprofits where the basis of their work is that There's these helpless Negroes that need us to go save them because of their inherent pathology in a very benevolent way. So that's the first. The first, the second is the marginalization of bodies of work, independent bodies of work, produced by peoples of African descent, other peoples of color. So what I mean by that is a a person that goes to school for education, right? They want to be an educator. The methods that they are, that they're taught in terms of how to teach, are grounded in a body of literature, um, rooted in, you know, white folks, institutions and culture and so what happens is their bodies of work that people of Africa said have produced in terms of educating our community that are often marginalized, right? One of the best examples that I typically use, you know, for folks in Baltimore, you'd be familiar with Coppin, state on the west side. Coppin is named after Fanny Jackson Coppin. Fanny Jackson Coppin, from about 1865 or so, up until, I believe, about 1903 was the director of the Institute for colored youth, and she wrote a book that actually talked about her approach to education. And so we don't study, you know, institutionally. We don't study the our folks that give us methodology on how to teach we use other people's methodology and then fit ourselves in other people's methods. And there are ways in which the methods that come out of our bodies of work that actually end up being more effective at accomplishing the goals than many of the mainstream white supremacy does is that it makes the notion that black people would have come up with something white people wouldn't have as kind of this crazy idea, when, in fact, there's all kinds of stuff that in our bodies of work would actually help to address many problems, even beyond black people's problems. But that because of the marginalization of those bodies of work, you know, nonprofits operate from white methodologies of human service, and then the last way to white supremacy, or the third way that white supremacy is perpetuated in the nonprofit sector, is the leadership of those institutions often don't reflect the communities that they serve, right? And so, and this isn't just like, you know, there's a question of like the executive directors, but also looking at like the board, the board of directors, right? Who funds them? And so those, and particularly thought leadership, which is, I think, something that is undervalued in the in the general conversation about the nonprofit sector, that there are, in addition to the institutional leaders, there are thought leaders who are able to make determinations as to who and what practices and approaches and institutions are legitimate, and again, those folks usually are not reflective of the communities themselves that they're serving.
I feel like, um, in all three of those, and it was so hard for me like not to stop you at points, because they just pulled up other questions. And one of the one of the things that came up for me are the ways in which black led organizations, specifically, if they have a philosophy of black liberation and black self sufficiency, are not supported. Like, I feel like that connects to that whole aspect of pathology, like, if I do that, then if I give support to an entity like that, then who am I? And I feel like that kind of talks speaks to a bit of that paternalism. Can you talk a bit about that paternalistic relationship?
So one of the things that I say in the the publication we put out last year when Baltimore awakes, I talk about the what I describe as the missionary zeal that fuels much of the work in the human. Social Service sector, the nonprofit sector, more broadly. And when you think about the history of missionaries in Africa, for instance, they saw themselves as being zealous in their helping to lift up black people out of their kind of inherent misery and backwardness. And so that pathologizing is something that is so central to, I think, how folks have been taught to engage and interact with the world, that pathologizing particularly as it relates to getting support. So what tends to happen is, is that to the extent that a group of people is able to express its level of being oppressed. It's the extent to which in the nonprofit sector, it gets reacted to with resources and funding and support, because in many ways, it affirms the notion of white supremacy, right? It affirms the necessity of the outside, you know, missionary for the, you know, benefit of those that are quote, unquote, less civilized, right? So that's the fun. That's why enemy, even if you look on like those commercials you might see, you know, for 10 cents a day, a child and so and so, it's that. It's that same dynamic where, in the name of helping, you're investing in other outside institutions, you know, ability or lack thereof, to impact or improve the quality of life for the people that are being spoken for. And so that, so that pathology in many ways. And there is a there's a way in which we saw your Hartman in her book, seems to subjection. She critiques many of the popular renderings of enslavement. And what she argues is that, and I'm paraphrasing, that white society interacts with black suffering the way that most people consume horror movies, that there's a certain there's the spectacle of suffering is something that is highly consumable in white audiences, right? And what that spectacle does is that it provides kind of this cathartic, you know, relief to white folks in terms of the guilt that they might feel, and this the spectacle of violence that becomes what they're drawn toward. And what sorry Hartman says is that it's the actual structure of the society that's that's the most violent. So, so you should need to see displays of oppression and suffering and whippings to understand just the very structure of enslavement was is violent. And so that's a part of what happens in the sector, is that there's there's a folks are drawn to the spectacle of black suffering, and it becomes the basis on which support is given to different entities in the sector for the most part. And there's some exceptions here or there, but I would say that's the that's the trend.
Yeah. I mean, I feel like what you're saying resonates with me on so many levels, even back to what you were saying about there are theories, concepts and practices that have been cultivated by people within the community that have been marginalized and not used and not used unless they are supported by a dead white man, right? And I feel like I definitely had that experience in grad school, where I would be wanting to use specific theoretical frameworks, whether it's critical race theory or intersectionality or black feminist thought, and there was just this, and this is that HBCU, there was just this way in which of looking at it like it was a little bit less valid unless it was it went through some sort of European validation machine. And the only way in which I was able to use it in that context was if I had the foundation of it be the theory of a dead white man, and then I could overlay this other theory as like a lens, like it was allowed to be used as a lens. With that being said with I don't know that, for example, black people have as many institutions that socialize or train around that. So even our black thinkers come out of that mode of thinking. I know in a lot of the publication that for scholarly articles, there's this emphasis on some of what you're talking about. There's this emphasis on, tell me the bad story, tell me what the problem is, even if you're looking at it from a strength based approach, like, No, I'm studying this to show you, yo, they're doing this. They're doing it good. You could pick up this practice, but there was this emphasis on show me the blood and the guts, and then show me where I could put my money so that I can come in and save the day. That's
right, yeah. So, so a couple things on the piece of the methodologies, piece that's so. Important, like, what you just laid out about, like in grad school, having to have some white intellectual foundation, and then you can overlay black folks with it, because, because when you think about bodies of intellectual work, white folks get described as having systems of ideas, right? So you can be a Marxist, right? Karl Marx is a body of knowledge, or, you know, Jeffersonian republicanism, right? And it's a, it's a body of knowledge, you know, John Dewey's pragmatism, right? And that, you know, that's, that's a body of knowledge, right? But with black people, we, it's we people talk about what we do as if we also don't have systems of ideas. So we should be talking, for instance, about Ida Wells from the perspective of having a system of ideas, right, and an approach to how we look at, you know, political mobilization and advocacy and journalism like there are whole systems of ideas, she wrote enough that there's enough literature that could be the basis for a scholarly approach using Ida wells as a lens of analysis, right? We don't, we don't, we shouldn't have to use, you know, C Wright Mills, or mill Durkheim or these other like fundamental theorist to then read on to Ida wells, the practical application or the material impact of that is, when you think about them, the services that are rendered to folks in our community, You know what? What tends to happen is that the services end up not being very effective. And so when you were talking about like, you know, getting like, people are looking for the problems in terms of doing, like, research or programs, see the thing we that doesn't happen, that there are two things that don't really get funded. One is studying white people and their pathologies, right? And what also doesn't get funded is learning from black people the things that worked right. And so as a result, what ends up happening is, is that then we end up essentially the material impact of the piece around methodologies is that then the people who are elevated to the spokespeople thought leaders, are people who have demonstrated in ineptitude at solving our problems. So it isn't just like a more ethical problem of we shouldn't just have our stuff. We shouldn't be read on to by white beards. It's also a real material impact in that we keep reproducing ineffective approaches to addressing these problems. You know what I mean? And the inability to see black people as having been able to address these problems is something like one thing I say typically, is that when you look at outcomes in education prior to integration and post integration, one could argue, and I'm not saying that it's definitive one way or the other, but one could argue that for black children, outcomes in education were better pre integration than post right? And very rarely are. I mean, it's, it's hard to find books that study black schools during segregation that effectively educated black children, which, to me, would be very useful, like we should want to know what did they do in those conditions? That probably is most consistent with the conditions today. That would be useful. But that's not a thought that occurs to folks, because what do we have to learn from them? I think it's the general attitude that folks have generalized.
Can you identify some other share examples of white supremacist methodologies that you see in nonprofit sector and nonprofit environments?
So so there are three major things that I would argue make a methodology itself an example of white supremacy. The first is the notion of false, the false notion of objectivity, you know, so you have like, the proliferation of like evidence based practice, right, right? And what that's a code for is there are institutions that are deemed experts, for whom they are able to establish the credibility of their approach, because they have the resources to support it, and call it scientific, right, you know, and when, in fact, objectivity is, most of the time, an inscription of the belief of the entity that is describing it as objective. And so that's we get a lot of evidence based practice usually becomes a gatekeeping tool to determine which. Those practices, approaches get elevated to the top. So that's, that's one place, without
even, I would say, without even investigating. Whose evidence, you know, how does this? How does this stand up in the first place, is evidence, and then I think to speak more to just as a researcher, to that the this false idea of objectivity, um, not even being able to see. I think that there's a way in which whiteness just does not even it is so normalized, it doesn't critique itself, and it doesn't critique itself even in its view of others. Like to be able to say, well, this is my background. This is at least where I'm coming from with this. This is my view that. Um, so I definitely see that show up, and then use evidence, evidence based, practice, based on who's evidence, and then put it out there as well. This is, this has been tried and true and and tested. So it is facts, you know, at the end of the day, it is facts,
exactly, and if the institutional mainstream in a sector it science will reflect its own worldview and perspective. And to your point,
no. Science is objective. Science has no point of view. It's just that,
and was into a part of it is. And it's not so much that that's a problem, and is, in and of itself, as much as the the lack of of self awareness that that is the case, right? So now you mark bar in his book, papers on African psychology, he has a like a template that I've used. He calls to the African American research paradigm. And one of the things that he says, he describes what he kind of adapted from some cultural anthropologists, this notion of a relationship index, relationship index, relationship index, okay. And what he says is that what it is is that in a study that is done on a particular population, it's a responsibility author to identify their social, political, intellectual relationship to what they're studying. So it helps the reader make assessments about the conclusions and when he argues is that if white folks were forced to do that, they would have to disclose a lot of things about their worldview that they're typically able to perpetuate unquestioned. You know what I mean? So I think so that's the first place terms of the sector. The second is that black people are typically studied in isolation of our social context, so particularly youth, right? So youth are plucked out of their cultural, familial context, and a lot of the programs and research done is often done from that vantage point. And so what happens is, is in solutions get framed in the context of an individual, and part of what happens is the young person's community is rendered pathological, right? And the solutions to that young person's problem, implicitly, are often characterized or not characterized, but often they move in the direction of distance, culturally and socially, from their community and familial background, right? So that's, that's, that's, that's the second way. And then
I think that, I think that that's so important, and I feel like it really connects also to what a bit about what you were saying earlier, like that. There's nothing wrong necessarily with having a social science structure where you are, where you have your own methodologies that come, that come as a source for your belief system, your ecosystem, your thought pattern, however, it becomes a problem when it's used as a universal structure by which we are going to measure folks out of context that we did not consider in the formulation of this as a tool. That's
right. That's right. And I think, and I think a part of you know, one of the things that I say in the black paper, and when Baltimore awakes is I say that I quote Andrew Billingsley, where he is refuting Patrick, Daniel, Patrick Moynihan, who describes the black family as a tangle of pathology. That's what he says. It's the problem. But, and Dr Billingsley, a former Howard University professor, he says that racism produces the pathology that these social scientists are observing. And so it's, in fact, the other way around, but it's the pathology of society that gets transmuted onto, you know, our communities, but when you look only look at black like you, for instance, as individual people, the frame then becomes, how do we take them out of their pathology, right? As opposed to, how do we and so what that usually means is we got to take them away from that cultural, social context. And I've observed. That like I've observed young people in the nonprofit sector, particularly in youth advocacy and youth advocacy approximate organizations. I've watched them be socialized in ways where they've alienated themselves from their own community and don't develop a robust knowledge of themselves and culturally because they only understand it to be pathological, like I've observed that happen, right?
And then, of course, that is rewarded, and then that becomes like a path and model and direction for success,
exactly, exactly. And then the third is the the research that is used, having white supremacy embedded in the intellectual resources being used. So, for instance, if you're thinking about like, like, again, teacher trainings, if the materials that teachers are using to be trained on how to teach young people, if, or anybody, if, all the material, most of the material, they have characterized black people as having not done anything significant in terms of contributions to civilization, and that whole pathologize a piece, if that is the basis of the literature that's being used, then it's impossible, then, to not transmit that on to the very practice that you're engaged in, right? And if you think about it like there are very few uh, contexts where that would be acceptable, where you could consume a bunch of negative things about a people, but then all then also simultaneously be qualified to teach them, right,
you know, with no with no track record of success, and continually be funded with no track record of success,
right, right? I mean, white folks are pretty stunningly mediocre in this field. Oh, absolutely. And it's one of the things that I find it useful to say, because people aren't white people in those spaces aren't used to being told that. And I think that's a part of what holds it together, is they're able to assert themselves as experts. And I think the kind of intellectual warfare saying you actually aren't good at what you do, right? They they project that onto us, yeah, right, in ways that are political. It's important for us to say, actually, you folks have been really bad at this for the past 60 years, right?
I think there's also this, this need to hold on to, I think, in the nonprofit sector of like I but I do good for I think there's this belief that one, non all nonprofits are inherently good and and I think that that there's also pushback, even from people within the community, to just like, not even question it, because they are giving us this, whatever this symbolic thing is, or whatever this thing is that may not be symbolic, but it is not a real solution. It is like it is sustenance to me in this moment, but it is not something that if this nonprofit went away, that I would be able to sustain myself. So I feel like there's this system of reinforcing, this concept of of the of the dependence, right? So you have, of course, the nonprofit, they're like, I do good. I'm a good person. I am helping the poor, weak and trodden. And to question that, I think automatically activates some defensiveness, because how dare you question my inherent goodness? And I don't think there's a real investigation of whether or not they are successful. Because I think also the success measures are different. How many, how many plates of food that I give out, right, right? How many book bags did i i think it's, I think it's in this I think it's measured in a way of dependency. How would you measure, I would say, the success of a nonprofit organization. How would you say, of like, okay, this organization is successful.
I mean, I would say the extent to which the community being served has the ability is cultivating the ability to meet its own needs, should be the basis of whatever more specific metric and in whatever area is developed. And oftentimes you think the examples you give are often the metrics that are used. One of the things that I think is important, particularly in this piece around dependency, is that, and particularly, and this isn't, this isn't quite off topic, but I just want to use this as an example so an example. Sure, in the world of like, the emerging world of like, what people say are community organizers right or advocate, or advocates right or active, what happens is, is that oftentimes it is the organizers are activists from whom. Who are who benefit more from particular programs and the people that are being served. And so oftentimes, there's not an assessment of, what is the end to your point? What is the impact that this particular person or entity has on the community in real ways? Right? Because to this point of, if I would just want to do good, then that should be enough. And so, and I think, and so a part of I think it's always useful when we talk about, like the Western Hemisphere and really the globe, it's important to understand it in the context of the political economy of a plantation. And I find it useful because the example that you gave of like we're giving out plates of food, to me, is very similar to what it means on a plantation when a slave master feeds the enslaved Africans, right? That's a good thing to feed them, right? But, but it it justifies the overall structure. And a lot of times, what happens is we find ourselves the real the real debate or issue is short term harm reduction versus long term sustainable independence and autonomy. And that's difficult, because there are moments when you do need some short term sustenance, right? The question that I often don't see asked in nonprofit sectors is, to what extent are these short term issues impacting the negatively impacting the ability to facilitate long term independence? So in the example of food, it's like, if you just give food away, right? Then when, when the people who are giving the food stop giving it, you don't have it, right? An example in debisa Moyo, she wrote in a book, her book dead aid. The example she gives is because she's critiquing the West charity to Africa. And the example she uses is Valeria nets, where she says that in her country of Zambia, you know, folks were manufacturing malaria nets, but in the West comes in and gives them away for free. Ah, which means it destroys the economy we're making Exactly. And so then what happens is, when the West stops giving them, then they as opposed to building an ecosystem where the folks are manufacturing it for themselves. And so her argument is, is the giving of charity that actually undermines the development of an ecosystem that would allow them to be self sufficient. And what happens is she is characterized as being evil because she says, Stop giving charity. It's actually having a negative impact on on African people, and so I think this gets at what you were saying earlier.
No, definitely I'm going to go over to the chat. Thank you for watching. You've been watching the counter narrative show. We are discussing white supremacy and nonprofit environments with Avon love Franka says agree, this is why we need to revelate, revolutionize our teaching education system. Ty says, nonprofit moving fast. Nonprofits just perpetuate the failure. Receiving money from programming is contingent on creating programs that reflect their ineffective solutions. Jamilia, Jamila, sorry. Jamila says self sufficiency. Another comment says measured in dependency. So much. Yes, feels like they just want their savior complex constantly validated. Jamila says nonprofit create an illusion of addressing problems? Yet, at closer look, will show that the target population rarely becomes self sufficient. Then funding ends. Nonprofit will find a way to ensure that their employees, even if they have to stop serve that sorry, that their employees, even if they have to stop serving people. There were some other comments earlier, asking about what book you were referencing, but you you named a few of them. Um, so I would just encourage you to watch the replay, so I'm not because I'm not sure where that, where that, where that particular comment came up from, but please do keep the questions. Comments coming. Feel free to share. Um, so I want to go to the revolution will not be funded. They talk about this relationship between the state owning classes, foundations and nonprofits. Can you talk a bit about that relationship and what is problematic about
it. So one of the things that we talked a little bit about this before we got on lbs, we made a very intentional decision not to be a nonprofit, and so we're actually an LLC, and a part of the rationale for that is because to be a nonprofit, you. Are. The concept is you are an extension of the state, right? You're acting in the capacity of the state. And so that's why there's so many kind of public reporting requirements that are connected to nonprofits. Because of the tax exempt status being an extension of the state, what that typically means is that the revenue streams are typically from the corporate sector, and oftentimes the approach to building a successful nonprofit is to have a board of directors that can raise money. What that means is that the folks who are people who are the kinds of folks who people encourage folks to have on their boards are, of many respects, the people who are the biggest beneficiaries of the status quo. And so what happens is, is that these nonprofits, in many respects, are attempts to absorb revolutionary energy and potential. One of the best words that I've heard to describe it is this notion. Antonio Gramsci is the first person I've seen use it incorporated resistance, right? So in the best way to describe I've heard Dr Greg Carter Howard University describe it, as you can say, all that black stuff just come to work tomorrow, right? And so if you do anything outside of the conflict confines of your employment, they're able to control your livelihood, right? That's why the plantation metaphor is so, so important. And so So nonprofits become an extension of the state apparatus, really, by definition, like by the very way that it's structured, and then it creates incentives for in terms of the organization sustainability, to capitulate to the status quo. It's, from my perspective, it's part of the reason why you don't see very many nonprofit organizations really go after or this notion of self sufficiency, right? Because if black folks were self sufficient, you would need a lot of these nonprofits, right, right? They would need to exist.
I think one of the things that I feel like comes up so much for me in terms of being able to actually visually see this connection between the state and the owning class and the nonprofit are what is being asked for in reporting requirements, like, what is it isn't being asked for? Also, I feel like it comes up in the in applying for grants, right? The number of black and brown? How many black and brown people did you serve? How many poor people did you serve. And it's very stat based, not outcome based, not what is the outcome overall on that community, not and also, a lot of times, not even a critique of what that actual community needs to be able to come in and say that this is, you know, this is needed. There not an investigation or conversation with folks in that community to be able to say also what is needed there. Um, I want us to talk a little bit about the impact of because you talked a bit about the boards and the organization and the impact, or lack there of basically the role that the leadership plays in the direction that the organization takes. And I want to take us a bit down history lane, and I want us to pull up two examples, the NAACP and Unia. I want us to talk about those two organizations. How are they what? How are they similar? How are they different, and how did the organizational structure and people in leadership impact the direction that those organizations decided to take? It's
funny, you must be fine on me, because I gave, I did a I did a seminar this morning, and this was, this question was kind of the centerpiece of it.
Oh, this morning. No, I missed that. Yeah.
So, so that's, that's really important. So the NAACP was founded by white folks who put out a call, and then you got people like WEB DuBois and others that showed up, right? Black folks that showed up. And, you know, the point of the organization was being kind of an up, you know, uplift organization to do kind of political agitation for the rights of black people. And there's a, there's an article as written by assistant named Megan, Megan Ming, France, Megan Francis Ming, I believe I'll find that and send it to you if I have it wrong. But the art the article, she uses a turn in her in the title, she's the term movement capture
in this, I'm sorry say that time again. Move. It.
Movement, capture, capture, okay? And what she does is she She reviews the minutes of NAACP board meetings in the 19 teens, 20s, 30s and 40s. And doing that, what she figured out was that in the 19 teens and early 20s, the NAACP was involved in anti anti lynching advocacy, but they made a decision to shift to edge it, to desegregation work around education, because of a major funder that wanted them to go in that direction. And so she says that it was a funder that that that's the reason why they shifted from anti lynching to this other work. So, so I use that as an example, because I think it's important that that that's the limit of the nature of the advocacy during that period of time that the NAACP was capable of, given the nature of how it's funded. Now it's interesting you mentioned, you know, you and universal Negro Improvement Association, Marcus Garvey, you know, biggest mass movement of black people in modern history. And what you have is a completely autonomous black institution. And in fact, the for a brief period of time, the NAACP and the Unia worked together on anti lynching federal anti lynching legislation, a part of where the breakdown happened was on negotiation of what was an acceptable outcome, because the NAACP was willing to basically agree to a watered down version of the bill that would not have had a significant impact, and the Unia felt like no, it's either what we said or not at all. The Unia, I mean, the NAACP, it was important for them to maintain their relationships and on Capitol Hill right and in the sector, so they didn't want to alienate their political connections by walking away from the advocacy. And so that was one of many, but one of the conflicts between the two. But I use that example because I think to the point you're making, I think it helps really outline the impact that the nonprofit sector has on advocacy, where the Uni is able to walk in and say, it's either this or not at all, and we'll walk away, right? Because we're accountable to our community, and we'll be able to tell our community, we weren't going to sell you down. We're not going to we're going to sell a bad version of the bill. The NAACP is accountable to its funders, right? It was accountable to those that who gave it money, and to many of, like, the, you know, the white liberals for whom they just wanted to be able to say they did something good, right? So that's a big part of the problem that we see in the nonprofit sector. And in addition to, I mean, there are other dynamics that occurred. And like I said, you know, I talked about this a bunch this morning, the conflict between Dubois and Garvey in particular. I think, I think we can learn from as a community, quite frankly, right? Because, you know Dubois, you know Harvard, educated, you know he would describe Garvey is ignorant. You know, called him a monk monkey, you know, made fun of fact he was dark skinned. Garvey, you know, questioned Dubois his blackness and the light and so that fueled the conflict. Now, Dubois, by the time he goes to Ghana, you know, agrees largely with many of the things that Garvey had said during the time that they, you know, were feuding. But I also just think Dubois is proximity to white institutions like created a context where it would make sense for the NAACP to attack Garvey, and in fact, Dubois wrote a letter asking for or or encouraging the government to support gardening, right? And so, you know, it just goes to show that proximity to whiteness typically, what it does is that it creates incentives to attack, go after, undermine black leaders for whom the base of their support is not connected to or adjacent to those white men.
No, that's so important, that's so like, so brand and so consistent, um, because even before that, I was recently looking at identity and studying whiteness and like, how what has determined whiteness change over time. And I got to this, to this area in my research where one of the key components there was, like three top components of like how, for example, Italian or Irish or Slavic folks got to become white. One of them was just money buy your way into it. Another one at that particular. The time was becoming part of the Democratic Party, and then the one that seemed to be most effective was this rejection of blackness, this anti blackness. And it just seems like that's just a consistent way to win the love, the adoration, the accoutrement of whiteness is to reject or just have this anti blackness approach. I want to talk about that, what we just what you just shared, as it relates to some of it, as it relates to today, and CO opting of movements. And I know you wrote a piece recently that starts to talk about that. And I really would love if you could just give us a bit of an overview of that. The piece that you recently wrote let people know also where they can find it. But I really want to have that conversation about the ways in which movements are co opted, gentrified, colonized. They're commodified. Um, yeah, just talk about that for a minute.
Yeah, that's a big one. I think, I think this is, like, one of the most pressing problems that we face today as it relates to the work of black people's work towards freedom. So a few things, Dr John Henry Clark, in his work notes on world African revolution and a lot of his speeches, he talks about this term ego starvation and and basically he says that, because black folks have been beaten down so much, you know, in terms of, you know, popular culture, you know, we're stupid, we're nothing, we're criminal. All that that black folks that develop an enhanced desire for affirmation, recognition, etc. And so I think what that has done is and so I think that that dynamic is widespread. What that has done is it's created an environment where black folks seek out affirmation from white folks on a variety of things, in very deep ways that oftentimes folks don't recognize. We talked earlier about, like the the way in which, when people are studying black people, you have to have a white person. That's the intellectual basis, right? That that is the that is the way in which in which institutions, institutionalize this dynamic of needing the approval and recognition of white folks, but that transfers into people's own social and political behaviors and activities. And I've seen it where, you know, it's cool when you walk in a room and the US senator says, Hey, davon, how you doing? Man, you know, like people get addicted to that, right? Because, because of that eagle starvation, right? It's like you're recognized and you're important. White people know that, and they and they play on that. They play on inflating the egos of folks in those spaces, right? Because it's part of how they maintain their power really quick.
And I definitely want to let you fully explain this more you. So do you feel like people don't know the difference between being pandered to and like what is like, legitimate like, for example. And one of the images that you've used is folks taking the knee in the Kente call. Well, I saw that I laughed so hard, because if I did anything else, I would want to punch somebody like I laughed so hard. Or ain't your mama that changing? Or the NFL change it, not NFL, sorry, the NBA, yeah. Like all, all of these different Do you feel like because some because, initially upon seeing, seeing some of these things, I was like, you ain't fooling nobody. We see through you. We see through this performative allyship. But I'm wondering, you know, if they're doing it, it must be working for some people.
I think it works for people, and it works at multiple levels. I think, I think that on a larger scale, black people aren't used to seeing white people put so much energy into talking and thinking and, you know, protesting about racism. And so I think so. So with the socialization, right? It's easy to say, Oh, wow, this is great, right? And to kind of valorize that, but on the other side of it, the piece around just the the ego starvation part, I think people emotionally struggle with our I mean, we all struggle with ourselves. Mm, hmm. And I actually think for a lot of people that are doing activism, or any kind of advocacy on these issues, it's very important to be very grounded and centered and develop that kind of independent of the work, because, like I said, I've observed the way in which it serves as a mechanism for perpetuating certain kinds of power. So so what happens is, in the piece you're referring to, the colonization of radical politics is on lbs, baltimore.com the influx of progressive white people in political space talking about issues that impact black people we talked about earlier, how, for many white folks, what they understand about black people is that we're suffering. That's the primary thing that they understand about black people, which means the kinds of solutions that they will support are things that reinforce that, even without knowing. So this is why, for instance, so So when you think about like Bernie Sanders right or the left of the Democratic Party, that's that talk about, you know, more, essentially, more social programs. Part of my concern is, is that, well, the expansion of these social programs doesn't lend itself to black people being self sufficient as the basis for the kinds of things that we need in our community. And in fact, there are white folks for whom their livelihood is dependent on this dynamic, right? And so, so being self sufficient would take away a lot of jobs that people are used to having and feel entitled to, right? And so, so what has happened is, is that a lot of these progressive whites that are now kind of flooding the conversation about racism, what we're seeing, and I would, I'm curious what other folks think about other folks think about this in many of the most recent popular text on racism, right? So whether it's like, you know Ibram kendi, you know, whether you know they're a whole slew of people, right? I what I observe in my reading of the lot of these most recent texts is not a conversation about black self determination, independent black institution building. They'll talk brilliantly about the sociology of black oppression and suffering, right? And that's important for us to know, like, the political economy white supremacy and how it operates, but in terms of, like this, this notion of, like, the spectacle of black suffering, and, yeah, that, and the piece around independent black institution building, you know, institutions that are accountable to our community, that is not the focus of a lot of these major works, my concern is that that then will empty into big societal demands around racism and the oppression of black people that result in a bunch of money going into white philanthropic and social service institutions as a solution to Our problems. And so I think that's a big part of so that's why, in terms of that, so there's that. And then the other piece that, the other thing I kind of touched on in the piece is to the point you raised people see performative things, performative cathartic things, at cathartic things as radical, as opposed to, what's your ability to actually confront power, right? Can you make a company that has all the power in the world? Can you, can you impact a policy decision against their interests? Right? Can you, can you levy consequences on major institutions of power. For me, that should be the metric that she used to determine, like, really how radical you are. But we're in a moment where the performance of rhetoric and protest those become and when that becomes the metric for radicalism, well, that's not threatening to white supremacy, and white liberals and progressives will support and fund and elevate that, which I think then does a disservice, because then we're not supporting the kinds of work that's about actually shifting power and resources into the hands of the masses of black people. They don't have
that's that's definitely something to think about, especially their piece around what what have these? What have recent writing really contribute towards institution building? And I think the other thing that you make me think about are the ways in which folks are going to workshops and that sort of thing. I host a few workshops, and they will cry in that space and even be able to identify racism outside of themselves, right? But or even white supremacy, but not attach themselves to it, not see what. Ways in which they are complicit in this, in this structure. And I find that really, I find it really interesting to say the least. And I think one of the things that you also said that would be a good, I feel like a good thing for me, to myself, incorporate in those conversations are, what is the Greek, the degree to which you are willing to, I guess, upset, upset, even for yourself, if you are, I feel like, if I say in the moment that that a white woman is feeling very, I don't know guilty or sad or past racism along to us, and I really put it specifically, you have benefit, benefited from this. What benefits and advantages are you willing to get up, give up to right, this wrong? I feel like those tears would dry up really quickly. I feel like it would definitely, absolutely be a shift. We're going to go over to the chat. Thank you so much everyone for tuning in. You have been watching the counter narrative show today. We are discussing white supremacy and nonprofit environments with Avon love, I'm going to go to Roland says that is deep rooted and need, deep rooted need and may be unconscious in some people. Another person said, Ask about Robin D'Angelo. All right, I'm gonna ask, if you say so earnest. I'm gonna do that because me and him had a back and forth about her. Asia says, as my sister once said, everyone wants to feel important. The good news is, everyone is important. And Jamila says, feeding ego starvation, precisely people want slash, need to feel powerful and or important. Thank you, everyone for your comments and everyone for watching. I'm going to go ahead and listen to my elder and ask you the question about, I think he wants me to ask you a specific question, but you could tell Give me your take on her generally, or I can ask you a specific question, which
we do prefer. So I've seen the commentary generally. Just all the money she's, she's, she's making on doing seminars. So I'm probably my opinion on this probably isn't very popular. There's all kinds of hustling happening on these issues, right? That's true, and I don't find her I don't find her particularly useful, like there are lots of people who have said things that she's writing. She's just writing them in a moment where people are certain kinds of people are paying attention. I think it is our responsibility as a community to be clear about who are our real leaders and our allies? Her behavior, to me, demonstrates the behavior of a person hustling to make a bunch of money, which, you know, I find to be problematic, but in terms of the energy to say, you know, people should pay up, you know, folks of color instead of her. You know, it makes me wonder. I mean, if white folks want to pay a white person to talk to them about white people, go for it. I think, I think a lot of the outcry about all the money that she's making, particularly from black people, for me, at least, has more to do with the fact that we're in need of resources, right, right? If we had the resources we need, what she did wouldn't matter. That's so true. You know, it's like, Fine, you're making your money. So I so I see it like I get, I get the issue. And again, like I said, I don't find her and I never met her or know her. I don't find her her work, and I've used to work. In fact, I quote her in the black people from 2006 because I used to read. I used to read her stuff when I was in college. You know, reading rights. White scholars talk about whiteness her. Tim Wise, you know, you know, no like not yet. So, you know, I've read her stuff before, and you know, in terms of describing whiteness, there are lots of people who do that. I know I will say this, I would say a big part of her being able to get more business now has to do with the dynamic that I described earlier, this influx of white progressives that are now studying themselves in conversations about racism and being the ones to curate which people we listen to, because if those of us who have rigorously studied and practice on these issues were the ones making the determinations of who was what, she wouldn't make the cut. I don't think, as a person who's read her stuff right, she wouldn't make the cut. There are other people, even white people like the other people that we would pick, right? But it's the corporate sector and the philanthropic sector that is making those decisions. So it's like, yeah, I get it. I get why. She'll be making all that money. It's a hustle, but it's a hustle a lot of people
participate in. So true. Uh, back to the Alexander said, Just keep doing what you're doing. Ty says we're going to need a part two. Rasheem and davon, you sort of got a part two. Um, so yeah. So actually, next week is grassroots community organizing, and then after that on August 22 davon will be joining us again as we discuss black pathology and the nonprofit sector. It sounded like we talked about it a little bit today. We did, but we'll take a deeper dive into black pathology and the nonprofit sector. By that time, I will have also read your most recent article, and so I'll have a lot, quite a few questions from that, um, and if that is all for the questions, did you have any final thoughts?
Um, not really. This is good, you know. I'm glad, glad that we get to do this. Me
too. Me too. I absolutely appreciate it. Um, so thank you so much for your time. Davon, thank you to everyone listening again. You have been watching the counter narrative show, and we have been discussing white supremacy and nonprofit environment. Feel free to share this out. It'll also be posted on YouTube soon. Um, thank you. Thanks again for listening and have a good night.
I need to know everything, who in the what in the where? I need everything. Trust me, I hear what you're saying, but I like this. Know what you're telling me. I'm curious. George, I happen to pause for five and a horse. I'm ready for war. I'm coming from froze to turn to a ghost. I need to know everything you