The political economy of accountability: Philanthropy’s ‘double dispossession’ of racial justice organizations under racial capitalism

Abstract

Prompted by the Black Lives Matter movement, and COVID-19’s deepening of inequalities, philanthropic foundations are increasingly claiming racial justice as a core part of their mission and strategy. This study uses a racial capitalism lens to examine racial justice organizations’ (RJOs) accountability relations towards the philanthropies that fund them. Drawing on interviews with leaders of Canadian RJOs, we unveil how the racial partitioning of leaders, fantasy and partners in these relations materially and symbolically dispossesses RJOs and the communities they represent. Our study complements the extant literature, which focuses on the depoliticization and co-optation effects of RJO–philanthropy accountability relations. Instead, we show how these accountability relations enforce ‘double dispossession’, thereby reproducing the racial capitalist political economy on which philanthropy is predicated. Our analysis indicates that philanthropy for racial justice, as it is currently practised, is impossible. We further identify the conditions under which it could become feasible.