Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility (DEIA) at AFP Advancement Northwest
“Institutional racism relies on the active and pervasive operation of anti-black attitudes and practices. A sense of superior group position prevails: Whites are ‘better’ than Blacks. Therefore, Blacks should be subordinated to Whites. This is a racist attitude and it permeates the society, on both the individual and institutional level, covertly and overtly.”
Kwame Ture (AKA Stokely Carmichael) and Charles V. Hamilton
Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America, 1967
AFP Advancement Northwest is one of the largest chapters in the international Association of Fundraising Professionals organization. As such, we are using our voice and influence to state our commitment to eradicating institutional racism within the philanthropic community and workforce.
We acknowledge that:
- Institutional racism, also known as white-dominate culture, is a hierarchical caste system in which the dominant narrative is anti-Black oppression enforced by laws, customs and behaviors.
- Anti-Black racism exists within non-Black communities of color who are also marginalized by race-based oppression.
- Black, Indigenous, Asian, South East Asian, Pacific Islander, Mexican, Hispanic and Latino communities need to work together to eradicate all forms of racism to create a multicultural society in which intercultural understanding is a sustainable reality.
- The history of philanthropy is complicated and racialized.
- Philanthropy is a powerful tool with the great potential to make the world a better place by dismantling institutional racism.
However, acknowledgment on its own is insufficient without affirmation and action.
AFP Advancement Northwest will:
- Support and mentor fundraisers of color in achieving their full potential as leaders who sit at the decision-making tables throughout the philanthropic community.
- Thoughtfully recruit and retain people of color for the AFP Advancement Northwest board and encourage nonprofits to do the same.
- Maintain an active DEIA committee that will serve as a barometer for our progress and as a valuable and respected resource for our membership.
- Recognize that the “benefactor” and “beneficiary” relationship in philanthropy was often the result of colonization and institutional racism and work to ensure that people receiving services have a voice in how those services are offered and implemented.
AFP Advancement Northwest will take action against institutionalized race-based oppression within the philanthropic community and understands this will not be easy or comfortable for many of its members. We ask for your understanding, perseverance, respect, courage, collaboration, kindness, and hope. Our country was founded upon institutional racism and it is time that we dismantle this debilitating structure.
“It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.”
James Baldwin, 1972
For historical context and furthering your education, we suggest the following resources:
African Civilizations
Books
- The African Americans — Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Documentaries
- Africa’s Great Civilizations — Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade in Colonial America
Articles
The New York Times’ 1619 Project — observing the 400th anniversary of American slavery and its implications:
- Our democracy’s founding ideals were false when they were written. Black Americans have fought to make them true. — Nikole Hannah-Jones
- If you want to understand the brutality of American capitalism, you have to start on the plantation — Matthew Desmond
- Myths about physical racial differences were used to justify slavery — and are still believed by doctors today. — by Linda Villarosa
- America holds onto an undemocratic assumption from its founding: that some people deserve more power than others. — Jamelle Bouie
- For centuries, black music has been the sound of artistic freedom. No wonder everybody’s always stealing it. — Wesley Morris
- What does a traffic jam in Atlanta have to do with segregation? Quite a lot. — Kevin Kruse
- Why doesn’t the United States have universal health care? The answer begins with policies enacted after the Civil War. — Jeneen Interlandi
- Slavery gave America a fear of black people and a taste for violent punishment. Both still define our prison system. — Bryan Stevenson
- The sugar that saturates the American diet has a barbaric history as the ‘white gold’ that fueled slavery. — Khalil Gibran Muhammad
- A vast wealth gap, driven by segregation, redlining, evictions and exclusion, separates black and white America. — Trymaine Lee
- Their ancestors were enslaved by law. Today, they are graduates of the nation’s preeminent historically black law school. — Djeneba Aduayom
“The Slave Who Sued For Freedom” — American Heritage
“A Slave Named Gordon” — New York Times
“The Making of Asian America” — New York Times
“A Northern Family Confronts Its Slaveholding Past” — Smithsonian
“The Profound Significance of ‘High on the Hog’” — New York Times
Books
- A People’s History of the United States — Howard Zinn
- 12 Years a Slave — Solomon Northup
- Closer to Freedom: Enslaved Women and Everyday Resistance in the Plantation South — Stephanie Camp
- Roots — Alex Haley
- Inseparable: The Original Siamese Twins and Their Rendezvous with American History — Yunte Huang
- The Great Negro Plot: A Tale of Conspiracy and Murder in Eighteenth-Century New York — Mat Johnson
- Uncle Tom’s Cabin — Harriet Beecher Stowe
- Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas — Frederick Douglass
- Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo” — Zora Neale Hurston
- Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl — Harriet Jacobs
- The Making of Asian America: A History — Erika Lee
- Four Hundred Souls — Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N Blain
- Strangers From a Different Shore — Ronald Takaki
- Slaves in the Family — Edward Ball
- The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story — Nikole Hannah-Jones
- Caste — Isabel Wilkerson
- The Chinese in America: A Narrative History — Iris Chang
- Most Blessed of the Patriarchs: Thomas Jefferson and the Empire of the Imagination — Annette Gordon-Reed and Peter S. Onuf
- The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family — Annette Gordon-Reed
Documentaries
- Enslaved — Simcha Jacobovici
- Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North — Katrina Browne
- High on the Hog: How African American Cuisine Transformed America — Roger Ross Williams
Film/Television
- Roots: The Complete Television Miniseries — Alex Haley
- Amistad — Steven Spielberg
- 12 Years a Slave — Steve McQueen
- Harriet — Kasi Lemmons
Websites
- Dred Scott Case also known as Dred Scott v. Sandford
- Fortune’s Story in 18th Century Waterbury, Connecticut
- Hidden Museum Treasures: Fortune’s Bones18th-Century Slave Gets New Life, New Recognition
- “The American Colonization Society”
- Tracing Center
- “How a Movement to Send Freed Slaves to Africa Created Liberia”
- “Building the White House”
- “Enslaved Workers on the White House Grounds”
- Websites on Benjamin Banneker — Biography.com and WhiteHouseHistory.org
- “Witchhunt in New York: The 1741 rebellion”
Video
Civil War
Books
- Giants: The Parallel Lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln — John Stauffer
- The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery — Eric Foner
- Lincoln on Race and Slavery — Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Film/Television
- Glory — Edward Zwick
- Lincoln — Steven Spielberg
- Gone with the Wind — David O. Selznick
Emancipation
Books
- Nothing But Freedom: Emancipation and Its Legacy — Eric Foner
- On Juneteenth — Annette Gordon-Reed
- Andrew Johnson — Annette Gordon-Reed
Documentaries
- 13th — Ava DuVernay
Websites
Reconstruction
Articles
- “100 Years Later, What’s The Legacy Of ‘Birth Of A Nation’?” — NPR
- “The Worst Thing About “Birth of a Nation” Is How Good It Is” — Richard Brody; The New Yorker
- “How ‘The Birth of a Nation’ Revived the Ku Klux Klan: D.W. Griffith’s controversial epic 1915 film about the Civil War and Reconstruction depicted the Ku Klux Klan as valiant saviors of a post-war South ravaged by Northern carpetbaggers and freed blacks” — Alexis Clark
Books
- Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880 — W.E.B. DuBois
- Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow — Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
- Nothing But Freedom — Eric Foner
Documentaries
- Reconstruction: America After the Civil War — Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
- Slavery by Another Name — Samuel D. Pollard
- The Birth of a Nation (1915) — D. W. Griffith
Websites
Jim Crow Laws & Separate But Equal
Articles
- Plessy v Ferguson — C. Vann Woodward
- “Pauli Murray Should Be a Household Name. A New Film Shows Why.” — New York Times
Books
- The Souls of Black Folk — W.E.B. DuBois
- Song in a Weary Throat — Pauli Murray
Film/Television
- The Great White Hope — Jack Johnson
- Imitation of Life (1934) — John M. Stahl
- Imitation of Life (1959) — Douglas Sirk
- Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner — Stanley Kramer
Civil Rights Movement of the 1950 - Present
PubArticles
Books
- When Affirmative Action Was White — Ira Katznelson
- White Bread: A Social History of the Store-Bought Loaf — Aaron Bobrow-Strain
- Seattle in Black and White — Joan Singler, Jean Durning, Bettylou Valentine, Maid Adams
- Hum Bows, Not Hot Dogs — Bob Santos
- Bernie Whitebear: An Urban Indian’s Quest for Justice — Lawney L. Reyes
- The Whiteness of Wealth: How the Tax System Impoverishes Black Americans – and How We Can Fix It — Dorothy A. Brown
- The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America — Richard Rothstein
- The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together — Heather McGhee
- The Alchemy of Race and Rights – Patricia J. Williams
- No No Boys — John Okada
Documentaries
- Eyes on the Prize — Henry Hampton
- Interviews from Eyes on the Prize
- Through a Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People
- 4 Little Girls — Spike Lee
- Fannie Lou Hamer: Stand Up — Mississippi Public Broadcasting
- John Lewis: Good Trouble — Dawn Porter
- I am not your Negro — Raoul Peck
- The House I live In — Eugene Jarecki
Film/Television
- Selma — Ava DuVernay
- Sounder — Martin Ritt
Website
- “We’re On Our Way” speech — Fannie Lou Hamer
Race as a Social Construct is Why a Post-Race Society is a Myth
Articles
- “The pernicious myth of a Caucasian race” — Joel Dinerstein, LA Times
- “John Boyega: ‘I’m the only cast member whose experience of Star Wars was based on their race’” — Jimi Famurewa, GQ Magazine British Edition, September 2, 2020
- Black With (Some) White Privilege — Anna Holmes, New York Times
Books
- Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents — Isabel Wilkerson
- The History of White People — Nell Irwin Painter
- The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness — Michelle Alexander
- White by Law: The Legal Construction of Race — Ian Haney López
- When She Was White: The True Story of a Family Divided by Race — Judith Stone
- Passing — Nella Larsen
Documentaries
- The Loving Generation — Lacy Schwartz and Mehret Mandefro
- Lenox Hill – Season 1
Philanthropy
Articles
- “Give small, make a big difference” — Bill Clinton, The Guardian
- “Shifting Philanthropy From Charity to Justice” — Dorian O. Burton and Brian C.B. Barnes, Stanford Social Innovation Review
Books
- Decolonizing Wealth: Indigenous Wisdom to Heal Divides and Resource Balance — Edgar Villanueva
- Slumming: Sexual and Social Politics in Victorian England — Seth Koven
Websites
- “African American Philanthropy: A Culture of Generosity” — Stanford Social Innovation Review
White Allyship
Articles
- “Why my “good intentions” aren’t enough to dismantle white superiority” — Francesca Moroney
- “5 Phrases Your Black Friend Wishes You’d Stop Saying: If you start practicing now, you can probably eliminate these words from your vocabulary by Black History Month” — Ajah Hales
- “What is intersectionality, and what does it have to do with me?” — YW Boston Blog
Books
- White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard For White People To Talk About Racism — Robin DiAngelo
- So You Want to Talk About Race — Ijeoma Oluo
- How To Be An Antiracist — Ibram X. Kendi
Video
- The Urgency of Intersectionality — Kimberlé Crenshaw
Websites
- Critical Racial & Social Justice Education — Robin DiAngelo
- Boston University Center for Antiracist Research — Ibram X. Kendi