Bryan Stevenson on Narrative, Courage, and Meeting This Moment

Phil sits down with Bryan Stevenson, founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, for a wide-ranging conversation on what this moment of backlash demands of individual and institutional donors. Stevenson places the current retreat from racial equity commitments within a much longer arc: the recurring pattern stretching from Reconstruction through Jim Crow to today, in which periods of racial justice progress in America are met by a deliberate counter-narrative, and progress stalls until a new narrative takes hold.

Drawing on his own personal history, Stevenson makes the case that philanthropy's work on racial equity has too often been reactive rather than grounded in real historical learning, and argues that donors who invest in understanding this history will be far better positioned to fund effective, defensible strategies, from addressing the legacy of Black displacement during the Great Migration to reframing what accountability should have looked like after the Voting Rights Act passed. He also responds directly to donors who worry that a racial equity focus alienates potential allies, distinguishing the problems of poverty from the problems of racial bias while insisting the two shouldn't be conflated.

Stevenson reflects on his years serving on the board of the Ford Foundation, and what he learned about the gap between funders and grantees, and why he believes that foundation boards need more representation from people with direct nonprofit experience.

Resources: 

Equal Justice Initiative

The Legacy Sites (Legacy Museum, National Memorial for Peace and Justice, Freedom Monument Sculpture Park, Montgomery Square)

Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson

The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together by Heather McGhee