Q&A: Maribel Morey on her new book, 'White Philanthropy'

A Carnegie Corporation-funded study on U.S. race relations in the 20th century that has been hailed for promoting racial equality was actually intended to maintain white Anglo-American control globally, asserts Maribel Morey in the opening of her new book, “White Philanthropy: Carnegie Corporation’s ‘An American Dilemma’ and the Making of a White World Order.”

“An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy” was a study conducted by Gunnar Myrdal, a renowned Swedish economist and sociologist. Myrdal was invited by the Carnegie Corporation of New York to study Black people in the U.S., as the foundation was seeking ways to foster their assimilation into the majority culture beyond educational grants.

Myrdal’s work argued that racial discrimination and legal segregation were preventing the U.S. from achieving its democratic ideals, and it eventually helped guide Carnegie grant-making in the U.S. and Africa. Later in his career, Myrdal was appointed executive secretary at the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe and won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.

But Morey, a historian of U.S. philanthropies, said that Myrdal propped up the idea that racial equality can only be achieved by assimilation into white culture and systems. She argues that “An American Dilemma” — published in 1944 — was part of a series of studies commissioned and funded by the Carnegie Corporation that reflected its “longstanding practice of privileging the needs of white people in the Anglo-American world.”

Asked to respond to the book’s claims, the Carnegie Corporation told Devex in a statement that “Carnegie Corporation of New York is committed to the academic independence of its grant recipients and values their contributions to the scholarly conversation around important topics.”

Devex recently sat down with Morey to discuss her book, ongoing conversations about decolonizing aid, and how foundations can reckon with problematic legacies.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What made you want to reexamine this study and its legacy now?

This is one of the most celebrated grant decisions in the history of U.S. philanthropy: Carnegie Corporation’s decision to finance a study that became “An American Dilemma.” And to this day, that's how many foundations read it — and, of course, especially Carnegie Corporation. To this point, “An American Dilemma” was cited in the U.S. Supreme Court decision [of] Brown v. Board of Education, 1954.

I constantly see the contemporary echoes, because this study still shapes the dominant definitions of racial equality in the U.S. It's still very much heralded, and it has this history that has lessons for contemporary philanthropic practice.

What did you learn about the origins of “An American Dilemma” and the relationship between author Gunnar Myrdal and the Carnegie Corporation?

As a historian of philanthropy and social sciences, one thing that I'm looking at is a funder-grantee relationship. And I do not take for granted that simply because a funder intended something with a project, that the grantee is necessarily going to deliver. So, in the book “White Philanthropy,” I detail how that process occurred.

One was how they commissioned Myrdal. This was not something that Myrdal thought about on his own and applied for funding. This is a project that the Carnegie Corporation had in mind and specifically chose Myrdal to direct it.

Second, the funder and grantee in this situation were in absolute constant dialogue. So Carnegie Corporation rented [Myrdal] an office [within] walking distance from their own in midtown Manhattan. And he would report directly to the president on all uptake, basically, of this study: with whom he was meeting, what they were gaining from their different gatherings. And that feedback in the president's office increased during the writing stage of the project.

How do you think “An American Dilemma” and other Carnegie-financed studies influenced international philanthropy?

The projects they did, specifically including these studies — the first one being the “Poor White Study” in South Africa, an African survey conducted through Chatham House in London, and then its U.S. model, “An American Dilemma” — they’re all targeted towards helping white Anglo-American policymakers better manage, better control, better dominate nonwhite groups as key towards maintaining international order. And to this day, we understand that's still part of our world.

I think we all have to question: Is there still a fear of rising consciousness in the global south? Is there a fear of sitting at the same table with people across the world and sharing leadership? To what extent is the U.S. and generally the global north’s vision of international order based on domination of the global south?

How do you think your work contributes to current discussions about the decolonization of global aid or how foundations can reckon with legacies that have, in some cases, been linked to the movements that promoted white superiority?

I would say, if we were asking foundations to reckon with this history, they must first understand that these historical actors — as discussed in “White Philanthropy” — also imagined themselves to be champions of racial equality.

An easy knee-jerk reaction for anyone in the contemporary world is to say: “Ah, thank God, those were different individuals. And now we're us, and now we're different.” But in reality, the first step is to see we're all educated and nurtured in this inequitable world, in this world ... full of economic inequality, gender inequality. So, we internalize some of these assumptions. So we're all learning how to reckon with this history.

I would say specifically for the organizations to see themselves in these historical actors and to ... question: “What are some assumptions that I carry when I'm thinking about equality? What are the assumptions about our definitions of equality? What are the priorities? And what is the end goal of that project of equality?” Because we're not all on the same page.

I do not want to assimilate to white Anglo-Americanness. I'm Cuban. I speak Spanish. I like many things about Cubanidad. And a lot of other people across the global south enjoy things about their own ethnic, racial, linguistic cultures.

The title of your book and its contents could be considered provocative. Are you concerned about any sort of backlash?

This is the third press that I went to. This book was rejected, I would argue, for ideological reasons. I was encouraged along the way to write a different book. I wrote it for a lot of us to just see the truth. I don’t feel like this definition of equality feels right. I wrote it for those of us who want to hear those details about the construction of this study.