SPEAKER_02 0:37

Hello, you're listening to the Philanthropisms Podcast. This is the podcast where we try to put philanthropy in context. I'm your host, as ever, Rodri Davis, and this week we have a great conversation with Maribelle Mori. Now, Maribel is a historian of philanthropy in the US. She's the founding executive director of the Miami Institute for the Social Sciences, which launched in 2020. She's also one of the co-editors of Histphil, a website that pulls together a work from academics in sort of blog form and articles about the history of philanthropy, alongside Ben Soskis, who we had on the podcast not that long ago. And also Maribelle is the author of a new book, which is what I had her on the podcast mainly to talk about. And that book is called White Philanthropy: Carnegie Corporation's An American Dilemma and the Making of a White World Order. And it's a fascinating book. It's a look at a sort of particular story in the history of philanthropy, but I think it speaks to lots of much wider issues and debates that are going on today, as you'll hear during the conversation. And Marin Bell and I talked, you know, about the book and about what an American dilemma is for people who sort of don't uh know the history of that particular report. It's a report that was very sort of influential in terms of setting the landscape for um policies around race in the US in the first half of the 20th century. Um we talked about some of the criticism of the um of American dilemma that's subsequently been made, and in fact was made at the time, but perhaps not appreciated. And uh the sort of centerpiece of Maribel's book is about the perhaps underappreciated role of the Carnegie Corporation, not just as a funder of that piece of research, but actually in terms of shaping the direction of the research and the project and actually the kind of narrative that it was putting forward. Um and as part of that conversation, we also then talked sort of about the particular role that the people who work in philanthropic institutions, the philanthropoids, uh to use a phrase, might play and how that is historically often underappreciated and whether it's something we need to pay more attention to. We talked about the tension that's very much apparent today between kind of incrementalism and radicalism when it comes to philanthropy, which is very much part of the story of um of the book White Philanthropy. Uh, we also talked about the idea of sort of upstream philanthropy and philanthropy that is designed to fund the generation of knowledge or to kind of to compete in the battle for ideas, um, and again, whether actually the story of the funding of an American dilemma is a really interesting example of that phenomenon. We touched on the sort of the problematic topic of the role that philanthropy has historically played around the field of eugenics, whether that's sort of social eugenics or biological eugenics, um, which again is something that's touched upon in the book because the Carnegie Corporation certainly kind of flirted with that, as a number of foundations in the early 20th century did, and it's a very problematic area of philanthropic history that I think it's you know it's important that we acknowledge and face up to. So it was great to have a chance to talk to Maribel about that. Uh, and then we talk more broadly about the role that history plays as a tool for understanding philanthropy and how it can kind of inform philanthropic practice in the here and now. Um, so without further ado, let's go into the conversation. I hope you enjoy this one. Again, I certainly did. And I'll be back at the end for the usual bit of housekeeping and advanced. Okay, great. Uh, well, I'm here with Maribelle Maury. Hi, Maribel. Hello, Roger. Thank you for having me. Uh it's great to have you on the podcast. Delighted to have the chance to talk. Um, and for those who uh don't already know, Maribel is the founding executive director of the Miami Institute of Social Sciences, but more importantly, for the purposes of what we're here to talk about today, she's the author of a new book called White Philanthropy, uh, Carnegie Corporation's An American Dilemma and the Making of a White World Order, um, which is a fascinating book that I can certainly recommend to anyone. And I will put links in the show notes to where you can get hold of a copy. Um, but it's great to have you on the podcast, Maribel. I'm really excited, having read the book, to have a chance to talk to you about it. Um, I guess the best place to start for people listening is just for you to say a bit in your own words about you know what led you to write the book and kind of what it's all about.

SPEAKER_00 4:48

Yes, thank you. So my interest in an American dilemma uh predated my awareness of philanthropy. So researching this project led me to an interest in the history of philanthropy. It goes back to when I was an undergrad studying in Paris, and I started going to the archives of Simone de Beauvoir. And interestingly enough, when she was writing The Second Sex, she relied on this book to make an analogy between um racial segregation and domination and sex-based um segregation and domination. And that was fascinating to me because I thought, wow, why would she lean on this person? One, first of all, he's a Swede writing on about a US context, um, and second, he was a man. So, what are these politics that go on in the production of knowledge? Why would this, who I assumed was this genius in France, have to rely on this man whose own role in understanding race was complicated and interesting and complex. And so I kept holding on to this project over the years since I was an undergrad. Um, what is it, over what like over 20 some years ago? And over time became fascinated when I was in law school too, how Ruth Bader-Ginsburg and the US Supreme Court decided to cite this book instead of Simon de Beauvoir's own, in order to make that race sex analogy. So, what was it about this book that made it so popular, so dominant, that even people who were inspired by Beauvoir's work would cite Neardal again instead? Um, and that's little by little when I was in grad school, I saw that it was financed by Carney Corporation of New York. And so I found this to be a really great case study for me for these several reasons. One already explained understanding my own role in the academy as a Latina woman, even if I created groundbreaking work like Simon de Beauvoir, would a white, you know, a white man, a kin, you know, very proximate to Anglo-Americanist, be cited instead, no matter how great my work was. And then two, trying to understand philanthropy, because uh growing up Cuban in Miami, it was either profit maximizing capitalism or communism. Those were the two models of political economy. So I was very, very fascinated to understand this group, this network of people who were very much embedded in a capitalist society and yet they weren't necessarily about profit maximizing. And instead, they wanted to solve social problems and yet they didn't want to get too on the spectrum very close to communism. They were definitely not Che Guevara or Fidel Castro, but rather pretty elite people in a capitalist society. So, for again, for those two reasons, I became very um captured with understanding the intellectual roots of this project, to humanize a study that has been put on a pedestal, and also to understand these funders behind it.

SPEAKER_02 7:49

Yeah, absolutely fascinating. I always find it really interesting to hear how people end up studying philanthropy because it's there doesn't, there's not really one sort of uh straightforward path into it. And often it is a sort of you know happenstance or something that that catches somebody's interest and leads them into it and they stick with it. So it's fascinating to hear that's how you got in. Um just just to focus sort of um at the start on American Dilemma itself, I'd like to zoom out afterwards and kind of think a bit about what the book and the particular example that it focuses on says more broadly about some of the kind of inherent tensions and dynamics within philanthropy. But um, for people who aren't really aware of what the report is, um, an American dilemma, could you just say a bit kind of about what it is and its place within American history and particularly the history of kind of US policies on race?

SPEAKER_00 8:42

So it's two volumes long. It was directed by Gunnar Myrdal, a Swedish economist, who was commissioned and selected by Carney Corporation of New York, an organization founded in 1911 by Andrew Carnegie. It is most famously remembered in the US as being cited by the US Supreme Court and Brownview Board of Education, uh a case that was uh from 1954, that basically called any state sanctions segregation on the basis of race in public education to be unconstitutional, according to the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection Clause. And so it's been heralded as a key study that helped shape the psyches of many uh leading white Americans to embrace racial desegregation in the second half of the 20th century. Now, that's the dominant narrative. There's also been long-standing critics of the study. So after Brown uh predictedly, there was much more pushback from more staunch advocates of racial segregation who started associating the US Supreme Court with this study, an American Dilemma, and suggesting that the court and other white Americans um were being influenced by outside sources, like a Swede, a Swedish economist, a Swede who was part of the Social Democratic Party in Sweden, um, and really criticizing the study for being, again, uh part of the uh cause of this national movement towards racial desegregation from people who were much more committed to maintaining racial segregation in public schools and other uh public and social uh settings. At the same time, there were also critics who said that the definition of racial equality in the text was very narrow. And the fact that it was a book that was targeting white Americans as a principal audience and the principal change agents in quote-unquote race relations just showed how it was really embedded in white supremacy. And so you have critics such as uh Ralph Ellison, you have critics like Slokley Carmichael and many others that we can talk about as we get further in the text of white philanthropy.

SPEAKER_02 11:07

It's really interesting, yeah, that you note that there were those those criticisms at the time, although they were subsumed, I think, largely by the positive reception and the subsequent influence um of uh of an American dilemma. Um, I think um one of the things that that was really interesting um to me in the book, I mean kind of interested obviously in the context around early 20th century um uh philanthropy, because I think if you're interested in philanthropy at all, you you sort of have to be. Um but reading it uh uh from a UK perspective, um, one of the things that you do a lot of in the book is try to put the origins of an American dilemma in much more of an international perspective and including the sort of perspective of colonial thinking that was going on at the time and the the desire to maintain a kind of white world order in other parts of the world. Maybe you could sort of say a bit about you know what you what brought you to that angle and kind of what you found that was surprising.

SPEAKER_00 12:03

Yeah, no, thanks, Rodri. So that's been one of the more quote unquote controversial parts of the book because um many US uh readers in the Academy, particularly I would say white liberal readers, are very uncomfortable in connecting a book that's been associated with the US civil rights movement with any colonial um thinking in the 1920s and 30s. So how it happened was, and you you mentioned the word happenstance before and how we get to the study of philanthropy, it was happenstance in some ways how I got to this international lens. I was trained as a US um historian, but when I was in the archives, I thought, no, these philanthropic actors are definitely thinking internationally. Um, the way that they talk about whiteness and blackness is international. Um, and it's not so different from today when people talk about in the philanthropic sector about scaling their funding practices. And so they would think about hey, maybe we can really apply this funding practice from the US, such as the educational model for Black Americans, um, in um throughout British Africa. And this is something that Andrew Carnegie suggests himself, and then also his staff members after his uh passing, who run uh Carnegie Corporation. So I'm looking at the files and thinking, okay, maybe just maybe, and this takes time. This this is a luxury of spending years in the archives because you're not just going there strategically and looking only at the files that you know are relevant, you're going through files that you think might be relevant or might be a waste of time at the end of the day, day after day in the archives. But I thought, you know, I think maybe the Carnegie Corporation's president trips to Chatham House and those files and how they're funding projects throughout the British Commonwealth could be relevant. I think it might be. So just sitting through those archives, um, those folders and seeing it, because it was through his interactions with quote-unquote Chatham House advisors in the 1930s that the president, Frederick Keppel, starts asking around for someone just like Malcolm Haley, who had completed or was completing an African survey through Chatham House, if someone just like Malcolm Haley or Haley himself could direct a US analog to the project. And so that starts connecting the dots and going backwards into what was what were his interests in funding throughout British Africa in the 1920s and 30s, um, and seeing its connections to his funding of this US project later in the 30s.

SPEAKER_02 14:33

Yeah, and I found that that fascinating. And I think it, you know, a real kind of example of the value of exploring some of the wider historical context around how decisions are made within philanthropy. And one of the things I guess you you mentioned there, Frederick Keppel, as a figure who's a kind of key figure in the book. And I found, you know, who wasn't somebody I was that aware of, and not sort of that up on the history of the Carnegie Corporation before I read the book, but I found it fascinating to learn more about both Keppel and other figures who are prominent in the book, like James Bertram, because it feels as though some people looking at the book from the outside might assume it's a story about Carnegie himself and the institution he created. But actually, he's out of the picture by the time we're talking about. And what we're talking about is the institution that he's created and the people who are tasked with administering his wealth and interpreting his wishes in perpetuity. Um, and this this to me, it feels fascinating because you know I get a sense um maybe that the role of those administrators or philanthropoids is often one that we don't hear as much about when people are looking at the history of philanthropy. Did you know is that a sense that you have? And were you kind of keen to try and you know unpick some of what their role is and the influence they had?

SPEAKER_00 15:49

Absolutely. And I think it takes so much time. It does take so much time. So, one, as far as the administrators, even getting to understand their different leadership styles, because not everyone leads in the most obvious ways of writing um, you know, a very clear memoranda or clear memorandum on how they plan to execute their specific goals in the next five to ten years. Sometimes it's much more nuanced than that, but they are still leading and they're still thinking about how they should leave the organization and their different roles. So, to this point, the literature on an American Dilemma and Carney Corporation long has undervalued Keppel as a leader. So it's long described Keppel as someone who just didn't really have a leadership style and wasn't thinking about how to lead the organization. And therefore, when Muradal took over this project, he just had full reign in how he was going to direct it. But in reality, this was a project that was clearly commissioned by a president who's clearly looking for someone specific to run it and was overseeing it in the day-to-day to the point of renting an office for Muradal, just walking distance from his own at Kearney Corporation and receiving updates weekly and then very routinely, much more routinely, um, throughout the project, but then also during the writing stage and giving specific feedback on the writing stage. So very hands-on. Uh, one of the luxuries, again, was time. And so I sat through uncataloged boxes of Keppel's uh collection. So at the time of doing this research over the span of 10 years, his collection, which I think was at like 60 boxes, I forget the exact amount, but I went through every single box, every single file, it was uncatalog to get a sense for Keppel, a deep sense for him. And that's when you start seeing his his also the networks of people around him saying he didn't, he wouldn't say up front what he wanted, he would always use somebody else to uh suggest something. So, for example, if he wanted to move the board of trustees towards a project, he would much prefer to use, for example, uh an advisor's letter suggesting exactly what he wanted, than actually saying out loud that's what he wanted. So this was done with a memo from J. H Oldham, which is mentioned in the book, um, which suggests that the organization should take a bigger uh look at British Africa and its funding. It was done when he wanted to do this US project. He presented a US social scientist memoranda, Donald Young's uh memorandum. And Young, when he learned that Keppel had done this, asked one of his colleagues, how is this possible? Keppel just asked me if you were to do a project in the US, how would you do it? I didn't say you should do a US project. Um so yeah, I think it's really important to look at administrators and taking the time to understand that leading and what it means to be a leader in an organization is something that different administrators are going to have a different lens on and we'll approach it differently. So we have to be patient in the archives and in looking through the material to tease out that point of view.

SPEAKER_02 19:08

Yeah, absolutely. And I I think you know, certainly the book does a very good job of you know shifting that that perception of Keppel's role because it it constructs a very clear sense that he had a worldview and was very much a sort of driving force behind um this this whole project and stayed very closely involved in it. I I think it you know it's really interesting to think about that question of whether too often, you know, historically the the people, the the sort of administrators of philanthropic wealth are viewed slightly passively as if they they're kind of handed down the the will of the philanthropists on tablets of stone, and it's very clear how that should be interpreted, and it it really isn't, and actually we need to understand what agency they have. Um, I mean, this might be slightly speculative as a question, but do you do you get a sense from from your kind of reading of it and your you know very meticulous going through the papers of of Keppel and others that they they themselves felt as though they were genuinely trying to interpret Carnegie's wishes? Or do you think they were kind of quite deliberately using their role as an amanuensis to to sort of impose their own worldview, but but using the legitimacy that came from claiming it was it was you know reflective of Carnegie's worldview?

SPEAKER_00 20:22

Right. So um both. I think both are happening at the same time. I think that you mentioned the two main characters, um, at least in most of the book, would be Frederick Keppel and James Bertram. And I see them always having this nuanced dance between them, um, shaping what the organization can do. And for the read for the listeners who don't know about James Bertram, which would be, I would assume, 99.999% of the world. Um, James Bertram was a personal secretary of Andrew Carnegie, who would oversee uh letters that would come in requesting philanthropic support from Carnegie. And he became a lifetime member of the Board of Trustees at Carnegie Corporation during um Andrew Carnegie's lifetime. Carnegie appointed three people who were um assistants as lifetime members, and he was one of them. And over the years after Carnegie's passing, he played an outsized role in defining for the organization and for Keppel, who took on the presidency in the 1920s, uh what the British colonies exactly meant, because at the time the geographic scope of the organization spanned to Canada, the US, and the British colonies. And the question that many of them on the board had were how to define these geographic expanses. And Bertram said, I know that we rely on lawyers for certain parts, but I do know that what he meant by British colony was communities of white people, and specifically uh communities of white people in the British Empire that could dominate that region. Uh so that meant for him that you could. Fund projects in South Africa, East Africa, New Zealand, Australia, but not West Africa and never India. So it was not only moving away from what the lawyers in New York City might say, but also from what the British government might define as a colony at the time, formally. So yeah, so they did both. So Bertram was always saying this is what Carnegie meant by British colony. So he took, there was power in that. It was exhausting for other members of the board. So he could have been true. Yes, I do in the book, and I explain how Andrew Carnegie's own writings corroborate Bertram's vision. However, Carnegie also had a broader vision of a world order. So one, you could be really loyal to a very micro definition of British colony. Two, though, it's are you still living up to that founder's broader vision of world order? So he could have had a much more expansive vision of British colony or let go of that commitment to whiteness in his definition of British colony and still lived up to Carnegie's hopes for a white Anglo-American world order. So I think there's a two different levels that one could analyze. What did my founder in my organization intend?

SPEAKER_02 23:28

Yeah, it's really interesting because I guess where there are questions of interpretation, um, as you say, when particularly they're shifting um the areas in which they fund and kind of in response to the changing nature, I guess, of um the challenges uh around race in the US, there would be different ways in which you could emphasize different aspects of generalized statements from Carnegie. And as you say, it seems as though that was very deliberately done in one direction that led uh even more strongly to a sort of uh work that was designed to uh to kind of strengthen and cement um white, you know, white order and and kind of division along a colour line and the idea of a sort of global um uh network of white dominance across different countries, whereas it could have gone in a different direction. I mean, probably not a sort of you know uh hugely rad more radical direction, but one that that might have put the emphasis quite differently. Um one of the things I I really wanted to ask you about, because I it was something that kind of kept coming through the book, I think, and the the story recounted in it and felt very timely, I think, to a lot of debates that are going on in the moment, is you were when you were saying before about the the nature of an American dilemma itself and and some of the critic criticisms of it, some a lot of those, from what I understand, centre on the idea that it very much kind of uh exemplifies a vision of equality for for black people or for minority communities that requires them to give up their blackness as far as possible and to kind of um assimilate into a white order. So they're allowed to be equal in as far as they sort of stop being black and give up any idea of you know black culture or uh black identity. Um, and this, you know, it's a particular case of it, but it seems very relevant to a lot of the debates I see at the moment about the tension between within philanthropy, about the need to kind of accept the realities of existing systems and to work within them as much as possible and to adopt a sort of incrementalist approach, or the need to actually kind of challenge much more fundamentally those systems and structures and to sort of look from outside at ways in which we can fundamentally change them. Do you think it is a story that sort of says something important to the present moment?

SPEAKER_00 25:52

I do. I um obviously it makes it it was the book was written for people for me and for other BIPOC people, other members of the global majority, who have felt that the dominant definition of equality in the US at least is lacking, that there's something lacking. Um, since I was young, and knowing that uh the history of the US that I was supposed to consume was very Anglo. I couldn't see myself in the history books because my family came from Cuba in the 60s. So, what was this making of the US that rooted itself with you know pilgrims or something? Um, and also knowing that equality would require me to accept the superiority of Anglo-American-ness at the expense of Latinida, and to assume that knowledge and excellence in the intellect was Anglo versus the corporal and uh of the of Latinida. So uh really questioning it over time. Um, so that's the main audience for the book, it's for us, and to make sense of this leading definition of equality, of racial equality, um, that affects so many of us as we walk through life and seeing for what it is is so rooted in white supremacy. Um now that said, uh there are lessons to be taken for another audience, which would be actors in philanthropy. And um, one is that knowledge is really important, has consequences. So many times I think a lot of attention in the philanthropic sector is placed on service providing organizations. Uh, but the knowledge that's being funded, again, as we see in this book, white philanthropy, has consequences for so many of us over generations and also in the immediate in how we think about equality in this case. So I would say that for those in who are invested in really honestly tackling racial equality and justice, the question is do you really think that the knowledge you are funding is leading towards a status quo or towards change? So when you mention existing systems, working within exist existing systems or challenging systems, uh what makes it so attractive to work within the systems? Like what are you scared of ending? So it was very comfortable for these actors, um, Keppel, uh, for example, to work with his colleagues at Chatham House. Why do we think that was? Was it was he ever intending to change a status quo by working with colleagues at Chatham House who were equally invested in figuring out a solution to maintaining um you know Anglo-American unity? So in that spirit, I would say these are two central questions to ask when you're in philanthropy. One, especially in funding knowledge, one is what do you consider to be radical? Who do you consider to be radical and why? Because these actors, when I mentioned Keppel and his colleagues in US Foundations, they considered people as simply as W.B. Du Bois to be radical. Just because someone like W.B. Du Bois was stating that black people in the US and other colonized groups across the world deserved equality now. And he showed their full humanity in his scholarship. So what makes, in your perspective today, certain groups radical? Because honestly, they are tomorrow's W.B. Du Bois. They can be. And then, second, on the alternative, what makes the groups that you uh uh use as advisors that you have as grantees comfortable to you? What about their work, what about their goals seems comfortable? Because considering our own education and the our career choices, comfort might likely be reinforcing the status quo of inequality.

SPEAKER_02 29:54

Yeah, and and that feels hugely relevant, I guess, to a lot of the debates, or I mean not debates, but sort of discussion at the moment around the role that philanthropy can play, and institutional philanthropy particularly in supporting sort of grassroots social movements, which I think you know, the the prominence of the Black Lives Matter movement over the last few years has really kind of amplified. And that whole question of whether funders, even well-meaning ones, come in and sort of select those grantees that they feel most comfortable with, and that reflects their own sort of existing biases and things, is a very sort of practical um example of that. Um, do you do you think um, in terms of the lessons um, as you say, there from uh the role that Carnegie Corporation played in funding um uh an American Dilemma, that there are um any any kind of lessons that we can learn? And I suppose from from them, you know, what the mistakes that they made or what we might perceive as mistakes, or from the ways in which any of their contemporaries funded similar pieces of work or pieces of work um around similar issues in ways that are kind of uh that would be um more resistant to these kinds of criticisms. I don't know if there are other funders at the time that were kind of funding work on race in the US that that you would you would feel were sort of doing it better, even if not perfectly.

SPEAKER_00 31:23

Right. So one is that the context here is knowledge production. So thinking about just how funders function in the academy and um what the lessons learned from it can be in the academy and outside of it. Uh, because we know that someone such as W. B. Du Bois, who's central in the book as well, went in and out of the academy. Um, and for reasons that his work was not really uh, it was admired by many leading white Anglo-American scholars and yet also put on the periphery, um, much like the funders. So he's writing one-on-one with Keppel, and Keppel, and let me explain to listeners, at the time, the 1930s, um Du Bois was trying to get funding for an Encyclopedia africana that uh he was uh long had wanted to finance. But and in the 30s, there was a chance that some of these leading funders might be interested. Ultimately, though, the funders backed out. They were cautious about Du Bois that as much as they admired him, they also feared him. They feared that he was part of this rising black consciousness across the Atlantic that they genuinely feared. And they feared it since the 1920s as part of a threat to international order. These are um people like Keppel and his advisors, such as Oldham and others at Chatham House as well, who saw the First World War and just wanted to avoid a second world war, um, and viewed um rising racial consciousness amongst black people across the Atlantic as one threat to world order because they assumed too that they themselves would meet that rising consciousness with violence. Um so I would say that there is, I wrote a piece in the Atlantic, I think it was 2014, where as far as the mistakes made with an American Dilemma, there's potentially room in the world for the Encyclopedia Africana and an American Dilemma. The reality is that An American Dilemma was financed as a project to uh meet an audience of white Anglo-Americans and policymaking in a way that Du Bois um could not because of his race and the not his race, the prejudice of white policymakers and accepting knowledge by black scholars as reliable. So there might be room for a study that um even as much as it uh placates and and comforts white supremacy, pushes the white reader to be that much more kind, perhaps, on their own volition, even if that's super limited to um groups that it has uh dominated and subjugated. Uh and it's a similar role for an African survey from Malcolm Haley. But I don't think in the UK context, we always say that an African survey is an end-all-be-all to how people deserve to be treated in this world. And so there's so much more room for scholarship that is not just narrowly focused on helping a dominant um group that long has victimized groups to be a little bit more uh kind. Um, and there's so much more scholarship to be created and to be financed that is talking about those subjugated groups' humanity and the various and more robust definitions of equality and dignity that they we deserve. Um, so that's the kind of work that Du Bois was trying to do and did without funding. Um, and as well as Carter Woodson. So I would say a lot of the work that we look back on and describe as robust um and really showing the full humanity of subordinated and subjugated groups, many times it's not even funded.

SPEAKER_02 35:22

Yeah, absolutely. And it again, it feels very relevant now because as you say, the it certainly from the point of view of most philanthropic funders who realistically reflect the the kind of power structures within the societies where the wealth has been created, and the people working in them are obviously uh, if not part of the elite, are sort of people who have prospered within that structure. It's always easier and more palatable, both for them and the audiences they're presumably um uh looking to. If you can make a case that fundamentally the problem around something like race is not a structural one about the whole system within which they prospered, but it is about the fact that they are fundamentally good people and well-meaning and concerned about this, and all that we need to do is focus on individual morality and and the will of the people who are doing well within that system to sort of just be a bit kinder and nicer, um, rather than the more challenging um analysis, which is, you know, no, fundamentally these systems and structures are iniquitous and and you know, we cannot uh get the change that we need without kind of fundamentally addressing them. Um yeah, that does feel very um very relevant now. Um I wanted to ask as well, you were sort of saying before about the importance of kind of shaping ideas, and I guess the the example very clearly um in the book um is one in which that has been done negatively. So, I mean an American dilemma was influential, but in presenting a view of race that is sort of problematic because it essentially was designed to kind of um uh maintain white supremacy. But but sort of putting aside the the content of it, is there is there a way in which just the the the example can be understood as almost an example of why philanthropy needs to think more about engaging with very kind of upstream support for things like social science research, because actually there is a tendency to go straight to the service delivery because it's more tangible and it's easy to measure the impact. But if you genuinely want to, you know, shift thinking on a problem and have a long-term impact, upstream is where you want to be to be doing it. So there's almost a kind of positive uh message to be taken, even if what they were actually doing is is obviously not so positive. Um, do you think that's one way in which kind of people in the world of philanthropy could read read the book and take a lesson from it?

SPEAKER_00 37:52

Absolutely. I think so much more attention should be placed on what's going on in social science research. Um, it's there's so much inequity um that is still playing out. Um so we see it in this book, White Philanthropy. I saw it in my own life when I was writing this book. So I'm here I am. I get two-year research sabbatical from Carney Corporation of New York to do my research. Um, and this was one of the projects. The second one is a continuation of this one into the second half of the 20th century. And I thought, what role am I playing in the academy? I'm a Latina, but not a non-Black Latina, and I'm getting funding to write two books on the experience of Black Americans in elite philanthropy. And then also in the process of publishing the book, I was repeatedly asked to write a different narrative. UNC Press is the third press this book went to. Um, the first one said that I was doing a disservice to the memory of Gunnar Myrdal, and which was fascinating to me because I also learned Swedish in order to write this book and spent many years in Sweden and still have deep connections there. And even in Sweden, they don't uh defend Myrdal this way. He's part of a complicated history of eugenics and um in the country. So just seeing how um, you know, in my we all know it's not a meritocracy, but just seeing it in our face just straight up how the academy itself is so committed to white Anglo-American supremacy and the narratives that it finds critical to defend uh was very off-putting to me. And it was not just a problem um at a certain level of universities, it was systemic. Um and so that's again, we were gonna mention it, but uh that was the beginning of the founding at the Miami Institute for the Social Sciences. So I resigned from my uh tenure track job immediately after my um two-year research sabbatical, though, with I did give uh a warning, a two-year warning. Uh so there was plenty of time to find the replacement and that sort of thing. But I do, I think, I think philanthropy does definitely need to still look at knowledge production in the academy because uh these ideas have consequences. We know it from the past, we know it from uh white philanthropy in the book, just how this project, the US project directed by Gwyner Mydel, was going to be different than something directed by Du Bois, and that it wasn't just about Myrod. It was that this project had deep roots in colonial administration. Uh, so it had its own purpose. So both there are systemic issues in philanthropy and its spouse, which is the academy. The academy and philanthropy are absolutely intertwined. And so, if we want to address problems in philanthropy, we have to address problems in the academy and vice versa. So, how do we get to a place where knowing that ideas matter, ideas are serving a positive goal in society as a public good and one that helps bridge people rather than create systems of domination?

SPEAKER_02 41:00

Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, you're saying obviously there the focus on it being um the relationship between philanthropy and and the academy, is there one aspect of this which is about the um a greater kind of democratization or willingness to engage with other forms of knowledge as well? I mean, I think there's definitely work to be done, obviously, within the academy to democratize there and to allow people from minority communities and those sort of representing views that are more challenging to the status quo to get equal voice. But but maybe even just as an interim measure, is there also a role for philanthropy in sort of not necessarily deprioritizing the academy, but giving equal voice to other forms of knowledge and from minority communities and and for those with sort of lived experience and trying to kind of use those as well to build the knowledge base at that sort of upstream point?

SPEAKER_00 41:55

No, absolutely. That's a really great point, Rodre. Um that's something that at the Miami Institute we're doing too. It's questioning what is knowledge and who produces it. Uh, and that's very deep at the same time. So the way I think about it is let's focus on it at these different levels. There is an issue with the academy itself. And how can we think about how our different fields define social problems, how data is uh collected? And the Miami Institute brings people together across the global majority to think about these questions and how would we address these inequities? What would be our more robust forms of knowledge production in our fields that really reflected these fields as public goods at a national and international level, inclusive of everyone, that it's not just for a small segment of policymakers, um, but actually our fields would be responsive to the collective. What would that look like? Um, at the same time, like you said, questioning at its core who does produce knowledge. And it's not just someone who gets anointed with a PhD, because that would be pretty narrow. And again, that's an anointment within a problematic system. So absolutely, I think that's uh that's critical. And they should be coexisting at the same time, these two questions.

SPEAKER_02 43:13

Yeah, absolutely. Um there's there's a few I've I'm aware that I'm in danger of taking up altogether too much of your time. And there's a few other things I definitely want to ask you about. Um, one of them that touches on something you just sort of mentioned in passing there when you're talking about Gunnar Myrdal, um, was that he had a history um and is sort of recognised within Sweden as sort of part of a problematic history and narrative around eugenics. And there's there's mention of this in the book, although the book does acknowledge that in the end Myrdal kind of uh entertained the uh some eugenic ideas and the idea of sort of birth control um and population control as as part of the solution to to the um issue of race in the US, but sort of shied away from it because he thought it wouldn't be palatable. But but there is a wider history of philanthropy having a pretty problematic relationship with eugenics. Um Particularly sort of progressive foundations in the early part of the 20th century. I don't know, sort of, if you want to say a bit more about kind of what you are aware of of that. I've always found it fascinating because it seems to me like an amazing example of the sort of banality of evil, because it's not lots of people in a darkened room sitting around together deciding to be terrible. It just seems like a situation that arose sort of a sort of slow process of people trying to be more rational and bringing sort of you know a problematic worldview to the table. And the combination of all these things led them to entertain some pretty terrible ideas in terms of kind of forced sterilization and these kinds of things. You know, it is that something that that you've looked at in your work? And do you think it's something that people need to be more widely aware of as part of the history of philanthropy? Okay, there's so much there, but sorry, it's a thing I find absolutely fascinating. So I'm just keen to ask it.

SPEAKER_00 44:56

But absolutely. So one, I would push back on progressive organization.

SPEAKER_02 45:00

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 45:00

Just because um they're at the time, they're not considered necessarily, it depends from whose perspective would be considered the progressive. And second, it's really after the Second World War, at least in the US context with the Red Scare, that we start seeing this national conversation about um, you know, these organizations being part of a left or being part of, you know, socialist, potentially uh akin to socialism. So before that, um you just don't see that association. Um anyway, moving on to your central question, to Myrdom in Sweden and eugenics. Okay, so two, I would distinguish here between biological eugenics and social eugenics. And this is one of the issues that when um yeah, so I would say that we're still in a very prominent um history of social eugenics, of which an American dilemma is a part of, and uh its definition of equality, and a lot and you that's why you see a lot of pushback, too, from readers who want a more robust, more dignified definition of equality. So the book does not, as you said, the book pushes against biological eugenics. Um, and he and his wife, Alva Reimer Myrdal, who also won a Nobel Prize, and she was a scholar in her own rights, and they were collaborators. When they wrote their book in the 1930s called Krisi bei Volkingsrogan in Sweden, Crisis and the Population Problem, they suggested that you could create a national folk that was robust without basically executing people in the form of um, you know, like Nazi Germany. There was no need to actually execute Jews, for example, because they said groups like Jews in Poland, black people in the US, and less affluent Swedes in Sweden are all capable of assimilating into the national folk. So they like the other um, you know, like the Nazi German model assumes one folk for the national body, but unlike the Nazi model, suggests that people could assimilate themselves into this national body. So there's a general rejection for biological eugenics, even though they did suggest both in the Swedish context and the US context, that um uh birth control would be good means of of limiting population numbers. And over time they get associated with um the marginalization and persecution of the Sami, for example, the indigenous groups in um in Sweden. But I would say just generally, in what you see in American Dilemma is a pushback to biological eugenics that they already long had um in their in the Swedish context. And that said, they were proponents of social eugenics, cultural eugenics, uh, which we call, you know, you can translate as assimilation. And you see that clearly in the American Dilemma, where they say, look, this book is for white Americans, but you know, PS, black readers, you should be invested in anything that's whiteness, like just assimilate anything they want, just do it. And all forms of uh when we're talking about equality, we're gonna create a white, a white man's rank order of discriminations against black people, and we're gonna prioritize the things that they feel less that white people feel less committed to in their discrimination and violence against black people, and that's the first thing we're gonna tackle. We're going to talk about white people as particularly egalitarian. This is all about making white people feel good. We're gonna create a list that's comforting to them on how to lead towards equality. And at the end of the day, equality means being just like white people, which reinforces white people's sense of white superiority in all forms of life. So that social eugenics you see in the very definition of equality, of total disappearance of blackness. Um and yet that's something that's so ingrained, still very ingrained, in how many Americans assume about equality, that equality assumes social eugenics, cultural eugenics. But they just don't talk about it as eugenics, they just talk about it as equality.

SPEAKER_02 49:22

Yeah, no, it's I mean, it yeah, absolutely. And I think it's you're right to draw that distinction about um social eugenics. And I think, I mean, there is that kind of certainly wider history in which uh some other organizations, as far as I'm aware, were funding work that veered more towards biological eugenics, or if not, they were quite seriously entertaining the views of those who who sort of proposed them, um, and doing so almost in the context of it being quite a rational thing to do if you are concerned about some of these issues or things that were seen as societal problems. And with the benefits of hindsight, it seems hugely problematic. But it it always seems to me just a fascinating lesson in kind of almost a reductive ad absurdum of if you take a very highly rational approach to philanthropy and one that's very kind of top-down, where you as a funder are sort of deciding on what the solution is on behalf of the the communities that that you're um you're trying to sort of impose a solution on, that's where you can end up. And I think the more that people are aware of that within the world of philanthropy, I think it would sort of maybe hopefully I think maybe take people, sort of make people stop and pause a bit and think about some of the the sort of challenges of taking that top-down approach to funding. Um, I just the other thing I wanted to ask you before I let you go is just a more general question. I wanted to kind of ask, you know, what next for the book and uh particularly what you would like philanthropy practitioners to take out of it. But also just maybe to link that to a kind of broader question about, you know, this is a particular example of a very well, you know, meticulously researched book that looks at a particular um example of philanthropy's engagement um with funding, you know, a report that that has gone on to have its own history. Um, but but just kind of that wider question of what value do you think there is for practitioners in engaging more with the history of philanthropy? Um, there's obviously kind of issues around taking direct lessons without taking context into account and all those sorts of things. But it does feel as though there's a lot that we can usefully learn. Um, and and in the the, you know, in the particular example of this book, what would you like people to sort of take out of it that they can maybe use almost in their day jobs as philanthropy practitioners?

SPEAKER_00 51:43

I would say, first of all, that um thoughtfulness sometimes is seen as not quantifiable enough. And I know that in the philanthropic sector, it's much more comforting to be given three points on how to fix a problem within a you know three-year span and move on and be able to quantify that um and say that's the value added from listening to someone or reading a book like white philanthropy. But white philanthropy is really an opportunity to think through one, how to be more thoughtful, to not run away from the the large task that it is to think about how to do good better. This is a sector that by definition, by the way that it speaks, um, the way that it speaks of its obligations to countries and to the world in general, and also in the US, too, it's its own organizational category, as mainly 501c3s, are supposed to be serving the public. So, how can organizations be running away from thinking more thoughtfully on how to do good better if their biggest obligation is to do just that within their countries and uh for many of them internationally? So, my hope is that um it's an opportunity to see themselves in these characters because I did I I didn't write about Keppel thinking that he was some sort of alien. I wrote about Keppel and Bertram as people um that any of us could be, much like Du Bois. I saw myself um even more in Du Bois, but these are if we're talking about the philanthropic actors in this book, they saw themselves as agents of equality, much like many of us see ourselves as agents of equality, and yet the work they were doing was reinforcing white Anglo-American supremacy. They're their comfort zones. It was hard for them to imagine a world of order, a world where they could thrive in order without people just like them and their colleagues leading it. I would bet that a lot of people in philanthropy and also uh their advisors feel that way too when they talk about China or when they talk about you know the continent of Africa or Latin America, that the world requires their leadership, their own white Anglo-American leadership. Why? Why is it so fearful? Why does it create so much fear to imagine a world order of shared leadership? So my hope is that it's a the book presents a time of reflection to think about how to do this really critical work of doing good in the world better, and in the process to let down some of these defensive guards, because none of us knows exactly how to do that. We're constantly hopefully leaning on the past, on individuals who really question ideas, who question our work, to do this work more thoughtfully. So that's that's my hope that less defensiveness and that we open our hearts and minds to really know that none of us has the answers and that we're always trying hopefully to figure out how to do this work better.

SPEAKER_02 55:03

Yeah, and I think that's such a good way of distilling you know the sense that I got from from the book, um, which is is certainly that you know, continually questioning whether we're to what extent we're just operating in our own comfort zones, because uh frankly, that's you know, that is always easier, that's why they're called comfort zones. But but actually, you know, if if you there's I think there's a lot of people working in philanthropy who probably talk about you know needing to move beyond that and to uh to kind of you know push things into and you know embrace discomfort, but to see a historical example of what it meant for people who thought that they were on the side of right, actually, when you look back to have simply been working to kind of reinforce the existing uh systems and power structures and to understand that you could be you know that person uh in the present moment, I think is a really kind of good way of making that that tangible. Um, I'll I will let you go at this point. It just remains to say thanks ever so much for finding the time to come on the podcast. It's been a real pleasure having a chance to talk to you about the book. I will put links in the show notes to lots of the things that that we discussed and certainly places where people can find the book. Before I finally let you go, is there anything you've got coming up, either in terms of the book or events or the Miami Institute that you wanted to make people aware of?

SPEAKER_00 56:14

Well, I invite everyone to visit our website, uh Miamisocial Sciences.org and on Twitter, Miami underscore institute, um, because we're trying to figure out how to do good better within knowledge production. So it's a continuation of white philanthropy in many ways in a practical sense.

SPEAKER_02 56:32

Great. Thanks very much, Maribel.

SPEAKER_00 56:34

Thank you, Rodrigo.

SPEAKER_02 56:44

Okay, great. Well, my thanks again to Maribel for coming on the podcast. It was absolutely great to have a chance to talk to her. I'll put links in the show notes to places where you can find the book and also some information about uh the Miami Institute and some other really interesting articles that Maribel's written and some things that I've written and done on the podcast that might be relevant. Do check out the website for the podcast, philanthropisms.com, where you can find all the previous episodes. You can find an email address where you can get hold of me. If you've got any ideas for uh topics we could cover on the podcast or people that I could talk to, do follow me on Twitter at Rodery underscore h underscore Davis or at philiteracy if you like stuff that's more about the sort of history and theory of philanthropy. Um, other than that, just like, subscribe, do tell all your friends about it. If you think there are people who would appreciate the podcast and find it interesting to listen to, do tell them, spread the word. Other than that, we'll see you next time. Bye, Mm.