Are we part of the problem? Or the Solution? Or Both?

As part of the Non-profit industry here in the Bay Area, of course I want to believe that I'm part of creating solutions for social inequality.

But with so many young college-educated folks coming to the bay area the roles in non-profit orgs are really competive. So the people who are competitive for positions in organizations that work with/for underserved communities are often people who have had social privledge; white privlege, class privlege, educational privlege: that the people they serve have never had. What does it mean when our systems for creating social equality reflect the same inequality we're working against?

This article specifically addresses racial inequality in the philanthropy sector; what does it mean when the majority of people giving grant money are white? Just click on the title of this post. Check out the comments section, I though a lot of really thoughtful discussion is happening there.

In this discussion, often people can start to think of "privlege" as being a four-letter word. So I also want to offer this link:

http://www.classifiedbook.com/index.html

This is the homepage for a book about how we can own privlege and basically use it for social change. Check it out!