5 Criteria for Being a Racially Literate Program Officer
Philanthropic organizations play a critical role in shaping equitable opportunities and resources for racially minoritized communities. Ensuring their program officers are racially literate is essential to challenge the inequities perpetuated by racial illiteracy.
Racial illiteracy is not an absence of capacity but often reflects a choice or failure to prioritize the knowledge and critical reflection necessary to challenge racial inequities. By labeling themselves as “racially illiterate,” program officers risk maintaining the status quo under the guise of inexperience or ignorance. However, as Foucault argues, knowledge is power.
Philanthropic organizations hold tremendous power in determining who and what gets funded and whose stories and needs are seen. Racially literate program officers can better recognize structural inequities, racialized language, and how funding choices either reinforce or disrupt those systems.
Furthermore, philanthropy’s color-blind practices—where grants are distributed without consideration of racial disparities—can perpetuate inequities by ignoring structural racism.
By valuing racial literacy as a core competency, philanthropic organizations can hold program officers accountable for identifying and addressing racial inequities within funding practices. This ensures that funds and resources reach those who need them most. Philanthropy cannot afford to hide behind racial ambiguity or illiteracy; doing so undermines stated commitments to equity.
What does it mean to be a racially literate program officer?
A racially literate program officer has the knowledge, skills, and awareness to view every grantmaking practice through the lens of whiteness and through the lens of racially minoritized individuals.
Example: A program officer’s rejection of a recommendation to build racial equity capacity among predominantly white organizations provides an excellent example of 1) awareness that the recommended grantmaking practice would benefit predominantly white organizations and 2) that it would be another instance of ignoring the capacity of equity first organizations.
2. A racially literate program officer can recognize lack of racial knowledge and awareness in the ways grantees conceptualize problems and solutions.
Examples: Being able to notice that a grantee, despite claiming a focus on “diversity” “inclusivity” “equity,” frames its approach/methods to address a problem based on research or concepts that are race neutral or that position racially minoritized students as deficient, at-risk, disadvantaged.
Noticing that the grantee is unable to problematize a problem that is rooted in structural racism from a racial perspective.
Noticing that the grantee(s) do not acknowledge their whiteness as a potential limitation or that they do not explain how they will compensate for it.
3. A racially literate program officer understands, in herself and in her grantees, that there is a difference between having racial opinions versus having racial knowledge.
Example: A common example of “racial opinion” is when individuals attempt to shift the discussion from race to socio-economic status by saying things like, “it is a greater disadvantage to be poor” or “poor white people are not privileged.”
“Pulling the “generalization card”: challenging sociological knowledge of race with the notion that not all whites benefit from racism” (Zeus Leonardo, Race, Whiteness, and Education)
“Claims that race and racism are declining in significance” (Zeus Leonardo, Race, Whiteness, and Education)
4. A racially literate program officer recognizes that racial literacy is based on a body of knowledge, including history, social science, humanities, art, and science that enables program officers to talk about race, racism, white supremacy with directness.
Example: Being able to point out that “policies” and “practices” framed as color blind are in fact centered on whiteness. Questioning whether the individuals involved in the grant have the capacity to ask questions, e.g., data questions, from a critical race stance.
5. A racially literate program officer knows to always ask: 1) what is the racial identity of the proposer(s) and in what ways will their racial identity inform the work; 2) what evidence is there that the proposer(s) and their organization understand racism as a structural phenomenon that will impact their work; 3) how will the investment be centered to benefit the needs of Black, Latinx, and Indigenous populations; 4) are outcomes for Blacks, Latinx, and Indigenous populations delineated clearly and are they measurable?
