Bill Gate and Warren Buffett: Will Their Philanthropy Affect Black Giving?
Frank A. Jones

For years I have worked toward planting the seed of philanthropy outside the church in the African American community, and that action is like pulling chicken's teeth, even after Hurricane Katrina.

I wrote that Katrina, if nothing else, should show Black Americans the dire need to develop Black philanthropic institutions. I have banged on the doors of local elected officials and gotten a dead silence from most, except two Berkeley City Councilmen. From those on the Oakland City Council and the Alameda County Board of Supervisors, the idea of building Black foundations has been an idea that they have paid a little lip-service to and that is about all.

Those Black elected officials in a position locally to possibly do something to enable the idea of building Black foundations would not give the idea, as coming from this writer, an audience, even though I almost hounded them to present a very plausible plan to their board--I just wanted the idea to be aired. Their refusal to give the idea any air is a dismaying picture on the foresight and attention these officials have toward the idea of Black self-dependence, as Black community foundations represent.

I would be disingenuous to broad-brush all Black elected officials by my response from this few. They in the San Francisco Bay Area, especially on the Oakland side, have not yet caught up to the vision. Maybe with them things are okay; maybe they are too busy with other important and pressing matters; maybe the idea was that they just did not like me; it could be that the idea should have originated from them. I have no idea why Black elected officials would not respond to the call to build Black foundations, but whatever the problem is for their failure to move on an excellent idea whose time has come, it has not happened on their tenure in elected positions.

A good idea does not trouble itself about who its birth parents are; it just wants to be born, grow, and come to fruition. But that is not necessarily the way people think, especially those ego-laden by positions and importance. Those affectations cannot be easily put aside for the good of the whole. Such a notion is far too big for many politicians.

The idea of developing Black community foundations of significant financial strength throughout the Black community was born within me when I took an aborted employment experience* with an agency in the Bay Area that had existed for 21 years and only gave itself big yearly parties but did little or nothing for the community, in whose name it advertised itself. It still exists and is still representing itself as concerned for the needs of the Black community, while doing nothing for that community.

Maybe this is the best the Black community can do, but it certainly does not seem to be so to me; maybe we must always have a white model to rise up and imitate for own good; maybe we are still at that level of mental weakness, that level of oppression, and that level of subjugation in our leadership that we can only follow the path prescribed by white leaders, knowing that no good idea can be authored by Blacks. I hope these assumptions are not so, but I fear they are, at least locally.

Seemingly, our Black community, in large part, is mesmerized by a mass media depiction of who we are and who we should be. And that mass media says capitalism is the path to our enlightenment--spend and buy on self is its message. And American capitalism has taken root deep in Black psyche resulting in many merely floating in the winds of vanity and have no real grasp on who we are as a people, how precarious our state is in this society, and what we need to do to protect ourselves from a callous nation that will forever see to our needs and well-being last, if at all. Maybe my young Black student from the inner city was right, "This [ghetto mindset]  is real life, man. This is what Blacks live, as I know it."

Many of our Black middle class will spend $250 for a Jazz Festival ticket or $85,000 for a Mercedes Benz car to go from here to there, but cannot see the need to move away from that conspicuous consumption to the weightier things of life. Some may, in fact, think those are the weightier things. But being expensive does not make it a weightier thing.

I applaud Tavis Smiley, whom I think is a very fine and responsible brother, for advancing his agenda/contract for Black America, but I notice that Black foundations were not listed in that agenda. Why is this need only realized by a few? Yes, Tavis has his foundation that helps, but his foundation, like other celebrity foundations, is only a celebrity foundation. Those are needed institutions, but the non-celebrity and those not well-to-do need foundations as well.

Foundations, aside from doing good, practical work in a community, also add an ingredient that is overlooked, yet essential for the tranquility and health of a community: they give a community continuity and self-esteem, which is vital for community health. We all know that the poor community needs community health; such health would help stop the killing of our young.

We have billionaires and millions of millionaires; we have two million businesses; we have a thriving middle class; we are 39 million strong; we are doctors lawyers, teachers, professionals of all types; we are in all levels of government--elected and administrative. In short, we have the resources to build Black community foundations of significance throughout our community across this nation, and the need is blaring at us. But we seemingly lack the will.

What will motivate us to come together, work with responsible Black and some white elected officials, Black churches who hold billions in buildings and financial resources, community leaders, the Black middle class, the whole philanthropic community, etc., and once and for all get to the needed business of Black foundation building throughout our community?

The biggest financial wizards of the nation have spoken and said by their actions that having money for money's sake is like having a theory in a book--it is no good unless applied. In a sociological sense, power is the ability to get one's will accomplished. John K. Galbraith, Anatomy of Power, writes that power is of three kinds: Condign Power, Condition Power, and Compensatory Power. If this is so, money is compensatory power to get our wills done. And what these outstanding philanthropists see is that life is about more than just having money to get their individual will done to aid them. Life is about something greater than ourselves--"my four and no more."

Abraham Maslow argued in his Hierarchy of Needs that the highest need of man is self actualization. Certainly those who have mastered all the lower needs have the power to self actualize. Why then is not our actualization magnanimous to others and in the form and likeness of God? Do not most of western philosophers opine directly or indirectly that humankind's aspiration is spiraling/evolving to the divine? Certainly Christian theology is toward others and like unto God. What then is our problem? Is this rare air of an idea of heavenly self actualization simply too rare for Black leaders to breath?

Haki R. Madhubuti, AKA Don Lee, is a noted writer, publisher, and professor. If I take the report correctly, he was once told of a man with much money, and his reply to that comment was swift and rhetorical: "What is he doing with all that money?" Implied in that question is the idea that money needs to be worked for the good of someone. How many, "Oh, he's very rich." statements do we need to satisfy our lofty egos? How many houses can we live in, cars can we drive, clothes can we wear, etc., before enough is reached and we reach out and help others in some lasting way? When will our reputations and supposed good names become less important than doing a lasting and significant good for others?

Will multi-billionaires like Gates and Buffett, in an open display of philanthropy, help others to see that one of the most important things that a man/woman can do in life is help someone else? Those who have never experienced the joy of helping others in some significant way have never experienced real joy. Maybe their entire lives have just been wasted in meaningless motion around their own lives.

[See Why build Black Foundations]

Frank A. Jones
7. 3. 06

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*I went to that agency because I thought it was really helping the Black community; I passed up other employment opportunities. They called themselves a Black Fund. As I worked there, I shortly saw that the board of directors controlled more than policy; they controlled every aspect of that organization and used that agency for their pleasure at yearly black-tie shindig, which they paid nothing for..

I ended my short stay there as that agency's CEO after 11 months; I saw a board of directors with convicted felons and elitist professionals who were defrauding the community in the name of that community. One board member said to me, "If the community knew how little we gave them, they would be outraged." Yet he was not conscience-struck by that wrong.

I am not too sure the community would be outraged because what was going on there without any transparency happens in far too many agencies. But I was outraged. Yet that tenured board member who said what he said to me continued on the board of directors year after year, doing the same thing--having parties that cost that agency, at least during the 11-months I was there, $85,0000 for a one-night formal affair.

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