America’s Overdue Reckoning with Racial Disparity

It is the sheer magnitude of the reality that stops us short. Woven into the United States’ history, into its very DNA as a nation, are innumerable strands of injustice that skew millions of lives and sap its potential. In the first edition of our new online magazine, Matter of Impact, we examine the enduring racial disparities that the Covid-19 crisis has made all the more glaringly obvious. And demanding of our attention.

The Rockefeller Foundation President Rajiv J. Shah says it is time to move beyond “enough is enough” and to rededicate ourselves to fighting racial inequity in all its many forms–a fight where philanthropy has a potent role to play. The Foundation’s Otis Rolley and Noah Cohen-Cline examine how the pandemic’s toll has exacerbated food insecurity among blacks and Hispanics. Even the New Deal, Rolley writes, codified inequality by excluding blacks from many its benefits. Wil Jones and Claire Raynes explore what it means to promote equity internally at a time when The Rockefeller Foundation has invested large additional sums in urban coronavirus testing, a new Health Corps program in Baltimore, and other initiatives promoting the changes we seek.

In Matter of Impact, we intend to cast a close eye on a single topic or issue with short features, video, and case studies. It is only fitting that this first collection focuses on our most pressing challenge as a nation. It comes out at a time of mass protests and amid real signs of change, and overlaps with Juneteenth, the annual celebration of the end of American slavery.