Darren Walker's new book is still hopeful despite growing inequality as he leaves Ford Foundation

Independent

5 days ago

Darren Walker needed to be convinced of his new book's relevance.
The outgoing Ford Foundation president feared that 'The Idea of America," set to publish in September just before he leaves the nonprofit, risked feeling disjointed. In more than eight dozen selected texts dating back to 2013, he reflects on everything from his path as a Black, gay child from rural Texas into the halls of premiere American philanthropies to his solutions for reversing the deepening inequality of our 'new Gilded Age."
'To be clear, not everything I said and wrote over the last 12 years is worthy of publication," Walker said.
A point of great regret, he said, is that he finds American democracy weaker now than when he started. Younger generations lack access to the same 'mobility escalator' that he rode from poverty. And he described President Donald Trump 's administration's first six months as 'disorienting' for a sector he successfully pushed to adopt more ambitious and just funding practices.
Despite that bleak picture, Walker embraces the characterization of his upcoming collection as patriotic.
'My own journey in America leaves me no option but to be hopeful because I have lived in a country that believed in me,' he said.
Walker recently discussed his tenure and the book's call for shared values with the Associated Press inside his Ford Foundation office — where an enlarged picture of a Black child taken by Malian portrait photographer Seydou Keïta still hangs, one of many underrepresented artists' works that populated the headquarters under his leadership. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Q: Upon becoming Ford Foundation's president, you suggested that 'our most important job is to work ourselves out of a job' — a 2013 statement you include in the book. How would you grade your efforts?
A: The past 12 years have been both exhilarating and exhausting. Exhilarating because there's never been a more exciting time to be in philanthropy. And exhausting because the political, socioeconomic dynamics of the last 12 years are very worrisome for our future. Philanthropy can play a role in helping to strengthen our democracy. But philanthropy can't save America.
I would probably give myself a B or a B-. I don't think where we are as a nation after 12 years is where any country would want to be that had its eye on the future and the strength of our democracy.
Q: Is there anything you would do differently?
A: In 2013 and those early speeches, I identified growing inequality as a challenge to the strength of our democracy. And a part of that manifestation of growing inequality was a growing sense of disaffection — from our politics, our institutions, our economy. For the first time, a decade or so ago, we had clear evidence that working class white households were increasingly downwardly mobile economically. And the implications for that are deep and profound for our politics and our democracy.
We started a program on increasing our investments in rural America, acknowledging some of the challenges, for example, of the trends around the impacts of the opioid epidemic on those communities. I underestimated the depth and the collective sense of being left behind. Even though I think I was correct in diagnosing the problem, I think the strategy to respond was not focused enough on this population.
Q: Many people credit you for using Ford Foundation's endowment to increase grantmaking during the pandemic. Is that sort of creativity needed now with the new strains faced by the philanthropic sector?
A: One of the disappointments I have with philanthropy is that we don't take enough risk. We don't innovate given the potential to use our capital to provide solutions. I do think that, in the coming years, foundations are going to be challenged to step up and lean in in ways that we haven't since the pandemic.
The 5% payout is treated as a ceiling by a lot of foundations and, in fact, it's a floor. During these times when there's so much accumulated wealth sitting in our endowments, the public rightly is asking questions about just how much of that we are using and towards what end.
Q: Where do you derive this sense of 'radical hope' at the end of your book?
A: As a poor kid in rural Texas, I was given the license to dream. In fact, I was encouraged to dream and to believe that it will be possible for me to overcome the circumstances into which I was born. I've lived on both sides of the line of inequality. And I feel incredibly fortunate. But I'm also sobered by the gap between the privileged and the poor and the working-class people in America. It has widened during my lifetime and that is something I worry a lot about.
But I'm hopeful because I think about my ancestors who were Black, enslaved, poor. African Americans, Black people, Black Americans have been hopeful for 400 years and have been patriots in believing in the possibility that this country would realize its aspirations for equality and justice. That has been our North Star.
Q: Heather Gerken, the dean of Yale's law school, was recently named as your successor. Why is it important to have a leader with a legal background and an expertise in democracy?
A: She is the perfect leader for Ford because she understands that at the center of our work must be a belief in democracy and democratic institutions and processes. She is also a bridge builder. She is a coalition builder. She's bold and courageous. I'm just thrilled about her taking the helm of the Ford Foundation.
It is a signal from the Ford Foundation Board of Trustees that we are going to double down on our investment and our commitment to strengthening, protecting and promoting democracy.
Q: Youtold AP last year that, when you exited this building for the last time, you'd only be looking forward. What does 'forward' mean to you now?
A: I have resolved that I don't want to be a president or a CEO. I don't need to be a president of CEO. I think leaders can become nostalgic and hold onto their own history. Now there's no doubt, I know, that my obituary is going to say, 'Darren Walker, the president of the Ford Foundation." That's the most important job I'll ever have. But hopefully I'll be able to add some more important work to that.
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