American Enterprise Institute’s Accidental Defense of Fearless Foundation

American Enterprise Institute, no great champion of affirmative action or DEI,  has itself  hopelessly tied in knots trying to defend Fearless Fund’s quest to remediate racial and gender discrimination without admitting that Fearless Fun’s efforts don’t constitute discrimination. 

By striking down the Fearless contest, the courts could undermine the basic tenets of what the conservative Philanthropy Roundtable calls “philanthropic freedom”— grant makers’ discretion to decide what problems they want to address.  Quite simply, the Fearless Fund prize is awarded by a 501(c)(3) nonprofit foundation. As such, it should have the discretion to conduct its grant program as it chooses. . . .  would any grant program that had the effect of targeting Black people fall in the same category? What about Julius Rosenwald’s famous support for schools for rural Southern Black children during Jim Crow? Or a foundation that limited its higher education support to historically Black colleges and universities? Should philanthropy not have discretion — including the right to over-emphasize race in its decision making?

One doesn’t need to approve of the Fearless prize to accept the organization’s right to award it. Indeed, nothing would preclude the Alliance, or those who sympathize with its efforts, from criticizing Fearless — not in a court of law but in the court of public opinion. As in the college admissions case, a strong argument could be made that any disadvantaged Atlanta residents seeking to start their own businesses deserve help — and that race and disadvantage are not always synonymous.

AEI is after some other goal I think.  But it unknowingly admits an important distinction between injury and cure.  A person who makes an incision to treat a stabbing victim, isn’t the same as the person who stabbed the victim in the first place.  Fearless Fund is making incisions, alright.  But it ain’t stabbing nobody. 

darryll k. jones