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Keywords: Racial justice, organizing, equity, diversity, youth, communities of color, self-determination, board of directors
Introduction
On May 29, 2009, at the Bishop Desmond Tutu Conference Center in New York City, the trustees and staff of the Edward W. Hazen Foundation were contemplating a revised mission statement. The statement, while consistent with the values the foundation's donor had articulated in 1925, when he established the foundation to help young people, also reflected the challenges, opportunities, and experiences of contemporary young people. In January of that year, the country had inaugurated its first Af rican-American president; in many circles, the euphoria that greeted this momentous event was quick ly followed by a fear that progress in combating racism in the United States could stall. The risk that the success of one black man in America would imply that the playing field was level for all people of all races seemed great: that affirmative action plans could be discarded as "unnecessary," that the term "postracial America" would be used in the media to describe the present state, rather than a vision for the future.
As a part of the foundation's strategic-planning process, staff and trustees had analyzed data, surveyed and interviewed grantees, and heard directly f rom young people of color in communities around the country. It was evident that despite the potent symbolism of a black president, young people living in Detroit, South Los Angeles, or the Mississippi Delta still faced substantial obstacles to full participation in the political and economic life of their communities and country. The Hazen Foundation wanted to insure that any revisions to the focus or language it presented to the public was true to that reality and would make plain the foundation's commitment to the ongoing struggle for racial justice. It settled on the following mission statement:
The Edward W. Hazen Foundation, a private foundation established in 1925, is committed to supporting organizing and leadership of young people and communities of color in dismantling structural inequity based on race and class.
The Hazen Foundation, a national foundation with a focus on youth of color, provides an instructive case study of a foundation's evolution into a racial-justice organization whose structural analysis and grantmaking practices embody a commitment to self-determination. During the...