Black lives matter.
June 4, 2020
Stupski stands in solidarity with protesters calling for an end to systemic police brutality against Black Americans. The killings of Ahmaud Arbery while jogging, George Floyd while buying cigarettes, and Breonna Taylor while sleeping in her bed are heartbreaking and horrifying. These are just a few of the racially motivated murders resulting from a history of white supremacy culture in America.
These racist killings magnify the reality that institutional and cultural racism and other forms of oppression continue to create disparities for people of color in our country. As a grantmaker working with grantee partners in communities of color in the Bay Area and Hawaiʻi, we stand in solidarity with the Black leaders in our communities to name and condemn the systemic racism and oppression that keep our communities from thriving.
Philanthropy must do its part in disrupting racism.
If we are to be a part of supporting real change, we must commit to deep, long-term racial equity in every aspect of our work. Doing so means heeding the call of Fred Blackwell, the CEO of the San Francisco Foundation: “I call on our donors and on all of philanthropy to meet this moment of need, crisis, and transformation.” We hear this call, and we commit to transform our practices. We commit to join our peers in refusing to return to business as usual.
Our support cannot be episodic. We must commit to do the work.
For the past year, we have worked as a team to reflect on and develop racial equity in our culture, operations, and grantmaking. We have much to learn as an organization and as individuals about racism and other forms of oppression. Below, you’ll find some of the resources that are informing our work. If you have resources you’d like to share with us, please connect with us on Twitter @StupskiFDN.
We are committed to standing alongside Black leaders to identify, interrupt, and work toward dismantling systemic racism in our sector so we can enter a new social contract—one that truly values Black voices and Black lives.
In solidarity,
The Stupski Foundation
These resources are informing our thinking.
- “America’s Other Virus,” Fred Blackwell, CEO of the San Francisco Foundation
- “Black Lives Matter,” Storme Gray, executive director of Emerging Practitioners in Philanthropy.
- “For George Floyd: Fire,” Adrienne Maree Brown
- “Pushing Back Against Habits of White Supremacy During a Crisis,” Kad Smith, program director of Compass Point
- Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates
- How to Be an Antiracist, Ibram X. Kendi
- Mindful of Race, Ruth King
- The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin
- The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander
- White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism, Robin DiAngelo
- “Seeing White”, Scene on the Radio
- “Code Switch”, NPR
- “Intersectionality Matters” with Kimberle Crenshaw
- “The 1619 Project”, New York Times