The New 40 Acres and A Mule (Issue #10)
Companies have promised unprecedented billions to the cause of equity. But American promises to Black folks don't exactly have the best track record.
It’s been so long! Miss me? Sorry to be out of touch. We’ve had some life events that have kept us from our Grinchy duties. But we’re back! Your latest installment of nasty Grinch goodness starts now.
Most of you probably know the history of the “40 acres and a mule.” No, not Spike’s Lee movie production company, the promise to formerly enslaved Americans:
“… each family shall have a plot of not more than (40) acres of tillable ground, and when it borders on some water channel, with not more than 800 feet water front, in the possession of which land the military authorities will afford them protection, until such time as they can protect themselves, or until Congress shall regulate their title.”
What happened to that promise? Andrew Johnson—Lincoln’s successor, and racist confederate-sympathizing-ass—happened! He overturned the order in the fall of 1865. The land allocated to formerly enslaved people was returned to the original owners. Yes, the same owners who declared war on America and had their treasonous asses handed to them.
Well, unsuccessful apathetic promises to marginalized communities may still be very much in style.
Last year, corporate leaders pledged a lot of money. Like, a lot a lot. $3.7 Billion from 42 of the leading tech companies and $49.5 committed from America’s 50 largest public companies. Recent articles from Fast Company and the Washington Post draw back the curtain on where all that pledged money went, and expose the shortcomings of throwing money around without any real intentionality.
No clear vision
One glaring issue: Companies were spurred to pledge all that money in response to the compounding violence and inequality exposed by the pandemic, police brutality, education disparities, and job insecurity—but where that money went showed no clear direction of what the private sector wanted to accomplish as a collective.
Yale prof (and co-founder of the Center for Policing Equity) Phillip Atiba Goff, cuts to the bone with this chillingly clinical take: “[Companies] are constrained by things they feel they need to do to manage their brand in a world where Black liberation does not have consensus.”
A world where Black liberation does not have consensus is a result of the deliberate obfuscation of the impact of racial oppression. It’s no surprise that companies have no clue what part of this pervasive issue is theirs to solve. So we get a blend of financial commitments driven by guilt, branding opportunities, and angry customers and employees.
To be fair, it might take some time before we truly know whether or not this influx of capital will result in material change that benefits us. But my Grinchy-Sense is telling me that companies are drawn to small, incremental change rather than big, needle-moving change because it benefits them.
Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen reminded us last weekend that when societal good and profit margins are at odds, companies have a really shitty time doing the right thing.
A lack of self-reflection
Another striking thing about all this pledged cash is that companies are almost exclusively channeling the money externally. If where they put their cash shows where companies think the problem is, it ain’t them, according to them.
Just $218.7 million of the cash committed by tech giants is focused on internal/other initiatives, the smallest for any category surveyed. Companies clearly don’t see that internal work is required to make meaningful change. Without seeing your own place in the structures of oppression, you’re not going to get far trying to dismantle them.
Not that these billions should all be spent on implicit bias training for employees (especially since that probably doesn’t do shit anyway), but what if companies said, “We now see that income disparity is something we ourselves perpetuate, and we’re going to look into how that’s reflected in our salaries, and fix it right now”?
But instead of acknowledging the plank in their own eye, companies assume they’re qualified to be gatekeepers of this mountain of anti-racism cash.
Says Chloë Cheyenne Rogers, Founder/CEO Of Activism Platform Community, “The problem with money, especially donations, is that donations don’t change attitudes and they don’t change policies.” And you sure can’t change if you don’t even know you’re part of the problem.
Unintended consequences
That WaPost article also talks about what happened when JP Morgan, headed by the kneeling Jamie Dimon, made an effort to increase minority homeownership in Minneapolis: further gentrification by white home buyers. To be fair, there are legal restraints to targeting loans by ethnicity.
But that brings us to the essential problem: Can institutions who have enabled systematic oppression be trusted to dismantle it? In this case, can we really expect banks—the architects of red-lining—to improve the material conditions of Black Americans?
This would require exactly the kind of accountability for past harms that companies so assiduously avoid. That all-important inner work. Lisa Rice, president, and chief executive of the National Fair Housing Alliance, says banks should, for example, look at their own lending data to discover and fix the top triggers for loan denials to Black borrowers.
Solutions
Your Grinch isn’t just about complaining and grumbling. I am a solution-oriented Grinch! So here are some steps these companies that have pledged all that money can take if they’re serious about equity and liberation.
1. Cut the strings
Companies could learn something from trust-based philanthropy, which is about redistributing not just cash, but agency. And why should companies that have been part of the problem be the arbiters of who’s actually solving it? That means cutting the strings and simply handing money over to organizations that have already been doing the work, and ceding any authority of oversight. No board, no dog and pony show from your grantees. Like how MacKenzie Scott is doing it.
2. Accountability structures
Pledges are just words. They are not cash until the cash is handed over. But there’s no way to make sure that happens.
“There isn’t any one entity that will be holding these organizations accountable,” says Una Osili, an associate dean at Indiana University. A good analog to the kind of accountability structure for pledged BLM money is what the company Canvas is doing with diversity hiring: collecting, and making public, the relevant data. This should be the standard operating procedure for anyone pledging money—an accompanying public plan for accounting for the pledges, with dates attached.
Organizations like OneTen.org can create a collective of companies committed to creating change, with the essential component of an external governing body that creates the accountability these organizations need. More companies should be looking to form or join these collectives.
3. Ensure money is getting into the right hands
Speaking of Canvas, if companies are going to throw around these mind-boggling amounts of money, they need to pay just a little more attention to who’s getting it. Ben Herman, Canvas CEO was a prime example of privilege jumping the venture funding line when his company, tasked with making it easier for companies to hire diverse talent, raised $50 million.
Sure, supporting diverse hiring is good, but this move is deeply problematic. Because even diversity dollars aren’t going to diverse founders. Venture capital funding to black founders in Q1 2021 exceeded $1 billion for the first time ever, but is still a fraction of the $72 Billion allocated that quarter. And if you are wondering if there are black founders building diversity platforms, the answer is hell yes. There are plenty: Inclusion, Tribaja, HireRuner, Positive Hire, WeSolv, etc. What’s more ironic (AKA shitty) is that Canvas wasn’t even looking to raise capital, but "the inbound interest was strong."
More, even most, of all the new equity money should go to organizations with diverse leaders. And while I love the rise of venture capital funds focused on investing in minority founders, a bigger problem is that most minority businesses are small and mid-sized (SMBs), and not considered venture-scalable. That’s why it's important that not only are your dollars earmarked for minority-led orgs, but also ensuring that those dollars are making their way down the corporate stream to smaller companies.
4. Empower your internal truth-tellers and creators
In failing to look inward, companies also fail to empower the employees doing the most innovative work in equity, with Google setting the pace by the ouster of their experts in AI bias. Instead, truth-telling creator employees who pursue accountability and real solutions are squeezed out of companies on a daily basis.
Instead of seeing these people as troublemakers, take their words as a challenge, not an attack. That all-important humility that’s so hard to come by when corporations try to do equity work—it should also be a guide to how to treat people who put their own professional prospects at risk by speaking out. Instead, those people are routinely harassed and squeezed out.
Wait! One more thing!
Your Grinch has a quick favor to ask! That’s the surprise I promised. The surprise is a favor. From you. I am a Grinch after all, what did you expect??
Could you take 90 seconds or so to take our Grinchy survey? We’re trying to figure out how to continue and expand our Grinchy expressions and storytelling, and your honest opinion would be a great help us. Thanks a ton!
Oh, and one more thing: the Grinch made Fortune magazine! The article is paywalled, but here’s the part about us.
By the way, you know what Jamie Dimon did immediately after that kneeling photo-op? This.
Grinch you next time.