Racial neoliberal philanthropy and the arts for social change

Abstract

Major philanthropic organizations are increasingly turning to the arts for social change [AFSC] to address racial injustices ranging from racialized poverty and mass incarceration, to health and educational disparities. This article problematizes the emergence, and increased celebration, of AFSC philanthropy by situating it within successive articulations of racial neoliberalism. Focusing on the Canadian context, I argue that this ‘progressive turn’ in arts philanthropy is the product of a series of neoliberal political-economic and ideological shifts that uniquely punish(ed) the racialized poor on a material level, while simultaneously producing these same communities and their artistic practices as attractive sites of investment for a primarily white and increasingly empowered philanthropic base. Drawing on a series of examples, I show how contemporary approaches to AFSC philanthropy – particularly those that mobilize ‘business-like’ strategies, priorities, and tools in pursuit of social change – function to extend and legitimize the ‘post-racial’ ideological foundations of the racial neoliberal project, resulting in a paradoxical phenomenon that I term ‘racial neoliberal philanthropy’. In addition to making the case for centering race in extant critical work on the political economy of philanthropy, this article – as well as the concept of racial neoliberal philanthropy – highlights how well-intentioned organizational responses to racial injustice can, in fact, reify racial inequities through policies and programming that are seemingly ‘beyond race’.