A Spectacle by Design: A Racialized Performance for Donor Dollars

• In Event: The Dynamics of Philanthropy: Racialization, Representation, and Research Equity

Abstract

Utilizing critical and participatory ethnography, this paper explores the racialized power dynamics between a youth-serving community-based education non-profit, and the philanthropists that keep it afloat. Given the non-profit’s position between the public and private sectors, this paper interrogates how the organization tightropes between private donors and the needs of public school students.

This paper analyzes the performance undertaken by the non-profit for its private donors. A conceptual framework built on Marxist theorist Guy Debrod’s society of spectacle and Cedric Robinson’s racial capitalism illustrates how the non-profit performs racialized, classed, and gendered acts to meet the short-term and fleeting interests of benefactors. My findings capture the complex dynamics and democratic implications of the relationship between youth-serving community-based education non-profits and philanthropists.

Author

• Abbie Cohen, Colby College