THE AMBIVALENT GIFT

Abstract

AbstractThe question of who holds responsibility for racial uplift within African American communities is an enduring one. This paper investigates the understanding of racial obligation on the part of Black elite philanthropic donors. Through in-depth interviews with twenty elite donors, I investigate whether African American elite donors use philanthropic activity to realize their racial obligations by supporting Black nonprofit organizations and charitable causes that directly benefit Black people. I find that Black donors are deeply ambivalent about their position as members of a racial group that is marginalized while they are individually privileged because of their class position. They attempt to reconcile this ambivalence through their philanthropic giving. Donors at times embrace the importance of their racial identity as a principle that organizes their giving practices, but in other instances the very same donors reject race as a factor orienting how they think about their charity. Donors express this inconsistency through three different giving strategies. First, Black donors advocate for what they consider to be Black causes within mainstream organizations—initiatives they believe will directly and positively benefit Black people. Second, while they may support Black nonprofit organizations, they qualify the types of Black organizations worthy of their support. Third, donors reject race as an orienting principle altogether. Indeed, while there are few distinctive patterns among Black elite donors, no matter how they give they do so with an eye towards maintaining a mainstream sensibility that emphasizes integration, efficiency, and success. It is perhaps the diversity of contradictory strategies that poses the most fundamental challenge to the notion of community that permeates discussions of race and responsibility. I conclude by arguing that the ability to define when and how race matters to them is a particular privilege of the Black elite.