The enemy is inside: Feminists of color navigate the nonprofit industrial complex

Abstract

Based on interviews conducted with racialized and Indigenous activists in Vancouver, British Columbia, this article examines the structural racism that defines experiences of systemic exclusion in feminist nonprofit organizations. This article offers a critical methodological intervention in critical race studies and methods of interrogating systems of White supremacy. This article uses critical race theory's composite counter storytelling to build the character of Beti, who embodies the multiplicity of participants' experiences. This article spotlights the nonprofit industrial complex (NPIC) and its deep commitment to and reliance on institutional whiteness. Illustrating how the NPIC operates in and through Beti's life, I outline how whiteness cements the experiences of racialized activists and perpetuates a never-ending cycle that maintains institutional whiteness at every level of the organization, preventing meaningful change.