With the stroke of a pen less than a week after his inauguration, President Biden did something no amount of philanthropic dollars could accomplish. He signed four executive orders to combat racial inequity. In quick succession, these measures strengthened anti-discrimination housing policies, ceased new federal contracts with private prisons, increased tribal sovereignty, and initiated government efforts to fight xenophobia against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.
These were just first steps toward the administration’s larger efforts to promote racial justice in the United States, but they should send a signal to philanthropy: All the increased giving to address systemic racism, as welcome as it is, can never substitute for the power and purse strings of the federal government. Nor should it.
Instead, philanthropic leaders should heed the words of President Franklin Roosevelt when a prominent labor and civil-rights activist urged him to take bold action against the Depression-era economy: “Go out and make me do it.”
At the same time, as philanthropy increases its own investments in racial equity, it can use its influence to insist on the bold solutions and government spending needed to close deep racial disparities in wealth, health, and education and put an end to discriminatory policies and practices in our criminal-justice system.
That bold action should stop at nothing short of a major federal racial-equity stimulus package.
Historically, when our nation has faced challenges so severe that normal self-correction was nearly impossible, policy makers have infused cash into the economy to stave off financial hardship and alleviate American suffering.
A little over a decade ago, the more than $800 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act helped pull the country out of the worst economic crisis since the Depression. The Biden administration’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package, if passed by Congress, will bring total federal pandemic stimulus spending to nearly $5 trillion in less than a year.
‘More Difficult Than Rocket Science’
Eliminating 400 years of systemic racism certainly deserves a targeted economic stimulus of its own. Achieving such massive change requires a significantly greater level of resources than philanthropy has at its disposal. During the Clinton CONTINUE READING: Foundation Leaders Should Use Their Cash and Connections to Advocate for a Federal Racial-Equity Stimulus | Schott Foundation for Public Education