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.

Racial Equity in Arts Philanthropy: A Work in Progress

July 12, 2016 by Monica

In a recent blog post, Arleta Little, program officer for the arts at The McKnight Foundation, discusses racial disparities in arts philanthropy and how McKnight and other organizations are working to address it:

Given historic inequities and shifting demographics, increasing arts funding alone does not address the structural issues affecting how these funds are distributed. We must change the minds (leadership and decision making) and the mechanisms (the institutional policies and practices) that prevent more equitable distributions of resources. This is racial equity work.

July 13, 2016 by Monica

Alternate ROOTS, First Peoples Fund, National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures (NALAC), and PA'I Foundation have collaborated to create the Intercultural Leadership Institute (ILI), a new year-long personal and leadership development program for artists, culture bearers, and other arts professionals. The four partner organizations have created ILI out of a shared commitment to pursue cultural equity and to support artists, culture bearers, and other arts professionals as change-makers in their communities.

July 5, 2016 by admin

The Initiative

July 5, 2016 by admin

Over the past five years, Theatre Communications Group (TCG) has taken an active and vocal position on the need for a more equitable, diverse, and inclusive theatre field. We have been approaching this challenge on multiple fronts, and our thinking has evolved dramatically over time as we learn more about equity, ourselves, our history, and the deeply embedded structures of racism and other forms of oppression in our theatre field and larger society.

Expanding Cultural Family

July 5, 2016 by admin

Understanding and embracing transformational change are ubiquitous in cultural policy circles. Research on dramatic demographic shifts, seismic alterations in technology and audience consumption, and postrecession political realities compel arts leaders to master not only their genre but the sticky notion of change itself. Grantmakers in the Arts' own equity work, EmcArts Community Innovation Labs, and ArtPlace’s placemaking practices are all attempts to recalibrate the arts funding ecosystem to respond and adapt to change.

April 12, 2016 by Monica

The fifth and final State of the Work report has been released by the D5 Coalition. The coalition is a five-year collaboration of foundations, donors, associations, and organizations with an aim to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion in philanthropy. The final State of the Work report focuses on “stories of people in foundations who have taken action to advance [diversity, equity, and inclusion].” A separate forthcoming report will reflect on sector progress over the past five years of the coalition's work.

April 7, 2016 by Monica

In an article posted in The Chronicle of Philanthropy, Phillip Henderson of Surdna Foundation and Rip Rapson of The Kresge Foundation discuss how some of their programs have helped to address economic and racial inequities.

For a nation whose majority population will soon be people of color, [economic] inequities loom large over the future prosperity of cities and their surrounding metropolitan regions — and pose a major challenge for philanthropy to tackle.

The Risk of Hopelessness

March 4, 2016 by admin

On June 2, 2015, Alternate ROOTS Executive Director, Carlton Turner, presented the following as a keynote address at the Grantmakers in the Arts Racial Equity Forum in Atlanta, Georgia.

Introduction: Georgia Men

“Black people did not come back from Georgia.”

“A man or woman that had learned that they might be taken south might do anything.”

“A man who had to see his son stand naked before buyers might do anything.”

Telling It Slant

March 3, 2016 by admin

Art is not magic; most artists are not all that different from other people. However, many of them developed a skill or asset that most of us haven’t: a fascination for the undercurrent in our society, in our social encounters, in our practices, in our organizations.
Jaap Warmenhoven, Stanford Social Innovation Review

March 3, 2016 by admin

Grantmakers in the Arts is committed to promoting racial equity in arts philanthropy and increasing support for African, Latinx, Arab, Asian, and Native American (ALAANA) artists, arts organizations, and communities. Our statement of purpose for this work, published in March 2015, comes after five years of internal discussions, workshops, articles, and forums led by a small learning group consisting of social justice funders and those concerned with social justice.