Giving Compass' Take:

• Allison R. Brown argues that irresponsible reporting about donations to Black Lives Matter will hurt Black-led organizations, preventing them from reaching and sustaining the type of funding their white-led peers receive. 

• What are you doing to support Black-led organizations? How can you be a better donor for them? 

• Learn about the impact of disparities in funding for leaders of color. 

The New York Times recently printed a story about the movement to save Black lives. That story is misleading, superficial, and irresponsible. Using words like “deluge,” “flood,” and “flush with cash,” the story would purport to tell an objective story about the large donations that some Black-led movement organizations are seeing right now. Instead, the story paints a false picture of organizations drowning in a tidal wave of cash, unable to find their footing.

The New York Times story was flippant, unnecessary, and dangerous to a movement that has done so much to make this country what it claims to be in its own words: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That Black-led movement is filled with people who are resilient and strong, yes, and they also are insightful and brilliant, capable and competent beyond measure. This story would have you believe they are less than that.

Rather than a close examination of the tremendous impact these donations are having as lifelines (finally!) to a movement that is hell-bent on freeing us all from the chokehold of racism, this story glibly suggests through erasure and insinuation that (a) the groups are too small and inexperienced to know what to do with money they receive, and (b) money may be ‘squandered’ unless policed in some way by people (read: white people) who merely by virtue of their being white are more knowledgeable. This is a paternalistic and patronizing take.

Divide and conquer remains a viable tool of (the myth of) white supremacy, one of the oldest tactics used since well before COINTELPRO to destroy Black-led movements for justice. To destroy Black people’s efforts to just live, without interference, without persecution, without state-led attempts on their lives. The New York Times story offers no context or history or empathy and simply launches a grenade into a movement. As a result, groups will be under surveillance and scrutiny like never before, forced to do the work of defending themselves to a people it is their mission to set free. Philanthropy will require more onerous reporting and evaluation of outcomes within white-centered frames. The ones who will lead us, who must, will be waterboarded with irrelevance, distractions, minutiae.

Well-funded, historically white-led organizations like American Civil Liberties Union, Planned Parenthood, and Human Rights Watch understandably enjoy gleaming physical and procedural infrastructure, deference to their leadership and expertise, celebration of their victories, and forgiveness of their losses as necessary learning opportunities in a quilt of work that ultimately will inform the future to keep us all warm. Despite the “flood” of resources, these things are still not yet within reach for today’s Black-led movement.

Read the full article about donations for Black-led organizations by Allison R. Brown at Medium.