Ever feel like no matter how hard you shake the money tree, the fruit only falls for certain folks? 💰🌳
On the latest episode of Nonprofit Lowdown, Garrett Neiman riffs on how subtle (and not so subtle) biases in philanthropy make it dramatically easier for privileged people to fundraise.
Garrett knows this song by heart. As a former nonprofit founder and author of Rich White Men he’s on a mission to help level the playing field.
He reflects on his journey from a conservative upbringing to recognizing the systemic barriers and biases faced by marginalized communities. Garrett realized the need for a power analysis in social change work – one that calls on white men to stand up for equity and justice.
The conversation touches on topics like the War on Wokeness, fundraising disparities, and the importance of understanding privilege.
Garrett’s prescription? Get more people with power – especially rich white dudes – talking openly about equity. 🗣️ He encourages privileged folks to determine their unique position, commit to lifelong learning, and take daily action to promote justice.
Ready for frank convo on race, class and cash? Garrett brings nuance and heart. Get your headphones and an open mind.
Important Links:
Book: Rich White Men: What It Takes to Uproot the Old Boys’ Club and Transform America – https://a.co/d/f8OQdco
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/garrettneiman/
Episode Transcript
RHEA 0:00
Welcome to Nonprofit Lowdown. I’m your host, Rhea Wong.
Hey podcast listeners, Rhea Wong with you once again with Nonprofit Lowdown.
Today, my guest is Garrett Nyman. He is the founding CEO of College Spring. He is also the author of the recent book called Rich White Men. What it takes to uproot the old boys club and transform America. Garrett, welcome to the show.
GARRETT 0:28
Hi Rhea, thanks so much for having me.
RHEA 0:30
let’s just start at the beginning. This is a very provocative title for this book and actually when I was publicizing it, a lot of people have a lot of feelings about it. What was the impetus for this book?
GARRETT 0:39
Yeah, absolutely. And I think to answer that question, I have to go all the way back in my personal life because this has been very much a personal journey for me, even though the book is very much about societal issues. I grew up in Orange County, California, white affluent, pretty conservative suburbs.
So that was my initial upbringing. When I was little, my younger brother died in an freak accident home. I was six, he was two and a half, completely turned our family’s whole life upside down. You know, one of the many impacts of that experience was that it led me to realize that life can be short, life is precious, wanting to live a meaningful life, and part of how that showed up for me is it instilled in me a public service orientation, a desire to do work that was meaningful, but at the same time, I didn’t have any systemic analysis related to race or class or gender or anything else growing up, so I very much got recruited into a charity.
orientation that I volunteered growing up. My family adopted my younger sister from China. I raised money for her formal orphanage when I was in high school started college spring, which is a national college access nonprofit while I was a student at Stanford alongside Jessica Perez, that we were students together.
Stanford really really pitches a certain kind of approach to social change that It’s very much social entrepreneurship oriented and basically things like government and policy and social movements just weren’t even on my radar. As a college student, I very much got recruited into this particular model of social change within the broader umbrella of a charitable approach and ran CollegeSpring for 10 years.
Love that work and proud of that work. The organization is still running and doing well, and my successor, Dr. Yoon Choi, but at the same time, every year I was in that work, I became more and more frustrated with the deep systemic barriers our students faced and how ill equipped programs like ours were too.
address those barriers at their roots. I was also seeing how much bias many of the philanthropists have that I was interacting with, that I would basically split my time as is common in the nonprofit world between corner offices of wealthy white folks, and high poverty communities of color.
And Realize that there was a lot of ignorance and in some cases, some overt bigotry that those philanthropists had about the students we were serving. And basically, that was the beginning of me having a power analysis that, if there’s bias at the very top of the system in terms of who controls the resources, who makes the decisions that impact people’s lives, that bias is going to trickle all the way through.
I’ve been on a journey ever since to them. really try to understand what we do about that, that what does it look like to do social change work with a power analysis. And for me, as a straight white man raised in a wealthy family, what is my role in that work? That growing up, I was taught that leadership meant controlling institutions, maybe even starting in controlling institutions and I basically became disenchanted with that model, and I’ve been exploring alternatives ever since.
So this book is fundamentally a opportunity for me to explore these questions more deeply, but I also hope in finding that that what I’ve learned along the way is also helpful for others.
RHEA 3:35
That is really good context. fun fact for those listening is that Garrett and I met each other many, many moons ago when you were first trying to expand into New York.
And I think this is probably before your awakening as it were. So many questions here, but as a self described rich white man yourself, you think it’s important for you to carry this message? Because I was reading your book and a lot of it was stuff that folks of color have been saying forever.
what is the significance of you as a rich white man calling it
GARRETT 4:01
out? Yeah it’s a really good question. And it is very much. fundamentally the case that this book is a re articulation or reformulation of ideas and approaches that, like you said, that white women and people of color have been pushing for centuries.
but I think part of how I see it is like that for those of us who care about social justice, like if we’re trying to move a rock up the hill, and there’s like a lot of people of color pushing that rock up the hill, there’s some white women pushing the rock up the hill, and there’s barely any white men who are showing up for that conversation, that, if more white men show up and participate in that work, we’re going to be able to push the rock up the hill faster, particularly given the power that white men wield in society, you know, it’s not about white men having a uniquely important role or anything like that.
It’s just that it’s a piece of the puzzle that has been largely missing. And, for the book it is a really sad reality that I think it can be challenging for privileged people to hear someone else’s lived experience and connected to their own that there is something helpful about, hearing from somebody who has a similar lived experience to you and having that expressed and.
I take pretty self critical lens in the book, that it’s much less about me criticizing specific rich white men, or rich white men on the whole, and a lot of it looks at, what are the ways that I was complicit, what are the things that I was ignorant about, what are the things that I didn’t realize or know, and I think that My experience has been that it’s easier sometimes for for privileged people to pick up that learning when they see it through somebody else’s eyes versus if I were to, attack them for that ignorance that, might not get very far with that person.
RHEA 5:33
I know that you talked about like key moments of your own sort of awareness building, something that occurred to me is as we’re speaking just yesterday, there was the first GOP debate and what was. Fascinating. I didn’t watch it because I felt like I couldn’t stomach it.
However, I did see the highlights. And I’m just really wondering, how are you interpreting this sort of war on wokeness that seems to be constricting the nation
GARRETT 5:55
Yeah it’s a good question. And I think the way I fundamentally come to see it is really through the lens of how Ibram Kendi talks about it and stamp from the beginning that I think one of the things I found really helpful about.
How he chronicles our history with racism is that this idea that basically from the beginning America has been a very racist and very anti racist country. It’s been a very oligarchy, type nation and also a very egalitarian nation at the same time, but there’s these competing forces in America that have been baked into this country from the beginning, and my understanding is that those dueling forces are always there, and that’s how we end up with some really bizarre things that show up in our culture, like that, at the same time that there’s the, anti wokeness movement as you put it, there’s also unprecedented momentum for reparations building at the, and The local and state level, and to some degree at the federal level, so it’s there’s the.
Bizarre inconsistencies that I think are very much rooted in our history and show up all the way through. And I believe that addressing some of the issues we see on the far right are important. with my own work, I try to very much adopt a sphere of influence type orientation.
Who are the people in my life who I’m best positioned to influence? I’m a wealthy white guy who has lived on the coast, so for me to go to Kentucky and try to tell working class white folks how to live differently, I’m not the person who’s best positioned to do that, but there’s plenty of people in my family, in my community, in my backyard who I can potentially influence.
that’s where I put my focus.
RHEA 7:24
let’s turn to fundraising, because this is, after all, a non profit lowdown. And I know you and I were founders, we fundraised what I found very interesting is, I was successful in fundraising. And then what I did afterwards is I was contracting and helping Rich white men fundraise who had founded their organizations.
And it was astonishing to me how much more easily the money flowed with rich white men at the helm of organization. So I’m just curious from your perspective, a, could you speak to your experience of fundraising for your nonprofit as a recruitment and B, what do we do about these inequities? Because we know that.
Folks of color led organization, black led organizations are funded disproportionately far less than white led organizations. two barreled question there, probably
GARRETT 8:03
a lot to unpack. it’s a really good question. And I think, what’s interesting is that I think that it’s very tempting for many of us, like including those of us who have a lot of privilege to, focus on, the power we don’t have or.
How things don’t come easily to us versus how our experience might compare to others. one thing I want to emphasize up front is that through my entire experience fundraising in the last 15 years I found it to be hard. I found it to be pulling teeth and frustrating and difficult and stressful and all these sorts of things.
And, like you said there’s an additional truth, which is that it’s dramatically easier for someone in my position and location to raise money than it is for many other folks in this country and, it’s challenging for many people to hold both of those things.
I think that’s one of The issues we run up against with privilege in general is like this notion of like, well, my life isn’t perfectly easy, so therefore I’m not going to acknowledge my privilege. Whereas the reality is there’s some above, there’s ways that the nonprofit system is structured just to be direct, to be oppressive with the organizations they serve.
Some people call that the nonprofit industrial complex. There’s a power dynamic between funders and fundraisers. Regardless of what identity characteristics I bring, and if I share the identity characteristics of the funders, and I appear to be someone who’s quote unquote trustworthy, or who reminds them of their kid, or who reminds them of their college buddy, or we had the same alma mater.
Those sorts of things, all play a role in where dollars eventually flow, and also, a lot of people, give to people who their friends give to so, like, if it’s easier for me to get money from one rich white guy, It’s going to be easier to get more money from the second and the third and the fourth, there’s whole ways that even if the bias of philanthropist has a subtle, sometimes it’s not, but even if it’s subtle, those subtle biases can really show up in ways that.
Really have a snowball effect that make it much easier for the most privileged to raise money versus others.
RHEA 10:00
Yeah, it was interesting. The notion around, the privileges that compound over time, which I think is probably true also in fundraising, like the ways in which you’re able to make the connections, have the network, those introductions compounding over time.
As I was reading this book, I was really struggling with who’s it for? And what’s it for? Because it was interesting. I’m in New York City. I think you’re in New York City. I grew up in California. And so I think there’s this idea of there are like straight up racist people who Are very comfortable being racist, saying that the races and that’s what they’re going to do.
What I find more insidious are the people who think that they’re not racist and yet espouse racist ideas. Can you talk a little bit about what some of those ideas are?
GARRETT 10:37
Yeah, absolutely. basically what you expressed that’s how Dr. King talked about it, that it really was the white quote unquote liberals who, were his sensible allies and, made his life really difficult on a day to day basis he’s very explicit that it was those folks who caused him a lot more pain personally, than the other folks who had a more overt version of racism.
And that’s not to say one is worse than the other, but I think there’s a tendency in liberal spaces to think of racism as something that other people have. And like you were saying, like those ideas. very much integrated into the culture on the whole. the way I’ve come to see it is it comes down simply to notions of superiority versus inferiority, do I believe that a certain group of people is smarter or more hardworking or makes better decisions or cares more about education, all those sorts of things.
there may be variability within individuals. I think there’s a lot less than people claim, but even if there are some differences in individuals, that if you try to make those claims about groups that one group is superior to another, I think of all of those now as racist ideas, and I think, it’s so hard for privileged people to get on board with equity is that many privileged people still don’t believe that, Systemic discrimination explains disparities that there’s other reasons like ways that groups are inferior that explain those disparities.
it really is. I think the fundamental hurdle on equity is that someone needs to have a, sophisticated enough analysis or empathetic enough perspective. To really get behind the idea that the systemic discrimination is severe enough to explain the disparities we have in our society, because if you don’t, then equity is actually unfair.
It’s actually giving lesser people things they don’t deserve that it actually takes an orientation of no, we’re really equal, and therefore the disparities we see in our society are the result of society being unequal, not people being unequal. So
RHEA 12:20
that’s actually key point because I think,
it was in your book that said those who have privilege are the least likely to Recognize privilege and we talked about this groundwater metaphor that you used which I thought was powerful Which is you know, if a bunch of fish are dying, right?
We have to ask is it the groundwater rather than just individual fish? but I think fundamentally the core of it is that If we are going to build a more equitable society, we are asking people with the most privilege to give something up. Are we not? We know people don’t like to give up stuff that they like.
how might you, inspire or spark this conversation if we know fundamentally people don’t like to give stuff up?
GARRETT 13:00
Yeah it’s a really good question. In my experience, it’s actually really important to be honest about that there might be some of those losses for folks that having less unilateral power or if you’re on the very high end, having less money in your bank account, after tax policies change, I think one way.
We can sometimes get into trouble on social justices to deny that those losses exist like that. Oh, equity is good for everybody, so therefore you should just embrace it. I believe equity is good for everybody and I believe that those losses are real. what I’ve tried to do through my work is to.
Basically make the case that all of us as a society including the most privileged have more to gain from equity than we have to lose, so when I think about, things that I’ve gained from trying to. Live an equitable life is, I have deep relationships across differences that I didn’t have growing up.
I hurt white women and people of color in my life a lot less I’ve reconnected with my spirituality and ancestry that I had been very much assimilated into whiteness. And as started to look at, my history before someone like me was racialized as white, like that led me to Become more interested in my ancestors, wisdom and Judaism and spirituality and all of these other elements as I started to have an analysis around patriarchy, bell hooks talks about how, men really suffer in patriarchy because they.
In some ways, they’re pressured to deny their emotions and feelings and being able to express that more honestly, has been great for reducing my anxiety and being healthier and so forth. So there’s all of these ways that at an individual level. That we do benefit.
And then there’s the societal pieces too, right? Like that equity is a stronger democracy, a stronger economy it’s healing, it’s less, social unrest so there’s all of these societal benefits, individual benefits it’s trying to make the case to folks, look, like we have more to gain if we move toward equity than we have to lose, right?
And how do we grapple with those losses? for example, when I was CEO of college spring, I had a lot of autonomous power, I was the final decision maker, our decision making framework was very top down. Like it’s the case in a lot of organizations and I’ve had anxiety since I was a little kid, I think since my brother passed away, so I actually didn’t really have to face my anxiety cause I could just control my environment as best as I could.
And then when I started doing equity work I really had to learn to manage my anxiety because the last thing you want to be is a white guy in a social justice space is controlling, if I’m feeling anxious and I don’t manage that, I’m going to show up in a controlling way that’s not going to work in an equity space, but it might work if I’m in a dominant space.
that’s just one of many examples of how yes, there was a loss in that power. But as I took other steps like therapy to work through my anxiety. I didn’t end up paying a big penalty for quote, giving up that power having power is actually, it’s a lot of pressure, it’s a lot of responsibility, it’s a lot of loneliness, so as I’ve done work that’s more power sharing, more collaborative I actually feel more resourced and more nourished in that work than I did before, and also I’m a healthier person as an individual, so that’s just one example of how all of these things are interconnected in my experience.
RHEA 16:01
Thanks for sharing that because actually I will say, having never been a white man myself, and being in spaces that are predominantly folks of color, I think I had this perception of if you’re a rich white dude, like you’re golden, like you are living your best life. the chapter about like rich white men are also in pain was like very.
Illuminating to me. And if I really thought about it, I guess that would have made sense. I would have gotten there, but it just was not a perspective that I had really considered because I think, as folks of color, we’re so focused on the pain and trauma that we’re experiencing at the hands of rich white men that it’s hard to get there.
talk to a little bit about how one squares with
GARRETT 16:35
Yeah. it’s so complicated, and Like all of us have a unique experience, we can’t generalize about groups of color, but also I try not to generalize about rich white men, too.
There’s patterns and things, but for example some wealthy white men have had really traumatic experiences in their life. Some haven’t, but some have, so things like, child abuse, sexual abuse, or a, verbally abusive, physically abusive parent, that there are these.
traumatic experiences that I think can really leave a deep imprint on anybody. And one of the things I’ve learned about power is that power is very much contextual. I’ve talked to a lot of philanthropists white women philanthropists, as an example, who, when they do work across differences, like with social movement partners, they’re extremely powerful, like they’re owning class folks, they have millions of dollars.
and they’re talking to folks who are in poverty, trying to claw their way out through social change, in that context, they have immense power, but in their families. It could be the patriarch in their family, seven year old white guy who yells and screams at everybody, has immense power in that context, it’s very much possible, I think, to be and feel powerful in one context and not another, and I think, There’s a lot of normalization that happens where that rich white men get used to their mix of rewards and adversity, and, find it challenging to see how their experience is different than other folks, and if there’s deep insecurities in that man, like I think there is in many of us, there’s anxiety, there’s fear, there’s feeling sad, all these unexpressed things that often that comes out as abusive behavior that is not necessarily intended it doesn’t make it non abusive, but it’s very much unintended in many cases.
And I think if we want to get to the root of those. Childhood experiences and other experiences that lead people to engage abusively I think is actually really important.
RHEA 18:24
Yeah. As you’re talking, I just keep thinking about the matrix. for those young ones out there who have not seen the matrix, you should watch the matrix.
it’s almost we’re all plugged into the matrix and the matrix isn’t working for anybody. And yet we continue to perpetuate the matrix and get really doubled down on the system. what would it look like to disrupt the matrix? Because let me add a little bit of context. I do a lot of fundraising training and some of what I hear, and this is particularly true of like young folks of color, which is capitalism is the problem and we just need to abolish capitalism.
I’m like, okay Cute idea, but what does it actually look like? there’s this tension of living in the matrix and having to disrupt the matrix at the same time. I’m curious. Does that resonate
GARRETT 19:04
yeah, I think this is another kind of both in reality where, there’s a lot of ways that our systems are very fundamentally broken, in a ways that they might not ever be fixed or ever become fully equitable.
And I think the. The lens of history as I understand it is that oftentimes it’s more of an evolution than a revolution in terms of how systems change. Sometimes there’s a revolution too and also sometimes there’s a revolution and it fails, so there’s so many different ways that this can go.
And I think. how I’ve wrestled with it is really try to think about what is it that we’re trying to do? What are the values and principles that we’re trying to protect more so than what is the label of the system? Capitalism, for example there’s a lot of flavors of capitalism.
I describe… U. S. The U. S. version using language that left roots came up with called racial monopoly capitalism. So it’s racialized. It’s monopoly, meaning like winner take all, like very few people get most of the rewards, and then it’s capitalism because it’s capitalism And that, that’s a very different kind of capitalism than there is in certain countries in Europe and so forth, so that’s one part of it is that we can’t generalize about what the system is and that same thing is true for socialism, like left roots, the same group I just mentioned, they talk about 20th century socialism really having some big flaws and that it created a, coordinator class, like the government class who is fundamentally privileged, and affording power in ways, you know, at the rest of the people’s expense. So, like, when I look at what are the shortcomings in both of those models I think what they share is… they have concentrated power What I think about my work and what it means to an equitable society. it’s about a democratization of power more so than it is, having system a versus system B. capitalism is really dangerous with concentrated power because wealth compounds.
if you’re rich, you grow up rich, like it just gets easier and easier to get richer. You don’t have to work at all and you keep getting richer because you just have your money invested. it’s a system that very much lends itself to having highly concentrated power. If we’re going to keep capitalism, in my view, then, what that would require is dramatically progressive taxation is really big resource distribution shifts to get closer to equity, and then, if we’re going to look at Alternative approaches.
I’m very excited about things like cooperatives and solidarity economy, efforts that are trying to look at community wealth versus individual wealth. the other side of this coin is how do we encourage that experimentation and alternative institution building?
It actually doesn’t have to be an either or, that I sometimes say now that America can be capitalist and socialist we can be reforming capitalism, and experimenting with alternative institution building at the same time, and then maybe at some point you post this, capitalism or the version that we grew up with and put it to rest and then replace it with something else, but we can do that iteratively In an experimental way, that makes a lot of people uncomfortable. But I do think fundamentally, that’s how we get to a more just society.
RHEA 21:56
Speaking of justice, I want to talk about reparations for a second. I feel like the very word can be incredibly divisive. I’m curious about your work.
And I know that you’ve founded an organization that’s really focused on reparations. Like, how do you talk about reparations? And do you see a, path forward for it? Because I think, especially when I. Think about, those that have the most wealth and power, like they hear reparations and their brains explode.
GARRETT 22:20
Yeah reparations is a great example of one of these words that is just it’s literally descriptive. It’s a United Nations term, to redress harm and with financial means being often one, of the components, so it’s just a term, in the same way, actually, like the title of my book, rich white men it’s just descriptive, that rich white men here and interpret it as an attack, but it really, just a descriptive term and reparations is like that too.
a lot of it is why do people experience this descriptive term reparations as an attack? because people aren’t really being attacked, right? They’re interpreting an attack that is not necessarily intended.
And so why does that happen? it’s fears, that’s fears about, if black people have more, or indigenous people have more, does that mean I’m going to have less? And if I have less, how’s that going to impact me, my kids, their kids? All those sorts of things.
that’s not a healthy thing. And I think a lot of. Racism can be characterized as anxiety because it’s like this excessive fear of you know, that like my experiences that black folks just want to live they don’t want to hoard resources the way that white folks have, but there’s still this anxiety that You know, the whole structure will flip upside down and it’ll be horrible for white folks if we move toward justice.
I really tend to speak to people, at the fear level. what scares you about this idea? how are you worried it might impact you? How would it impact the country? Those sorts of things. Talk about the fears. That’s one version. But also there’s another version where there’s a lot of people, white folks in particular, who actually…
support reparations or are at least open minded to it, but they think they’re the only one in their circles. Because it has that taboo ring to it there are not a lot of white people who are comfortable going to a cocktail party with other white people talking about how much they support reparations, so it’s also this weird thing happens where there actually is more white people who support it than express it, and that’s actually been A primary goal of my work recently has been encouraging white people and white men in particular to express their support for reparations in a public way, because, as we were getting liberation ventures off the ground, which is a field building effort focused on building power to reparations we were surprised, Aria Allen and I we were surprised there were some cases where philanthropists we thought were going to be against it, They actually, said, you know what it makes sense to me, like, when I look at our history, when I look at the racial wealth gap, when I look at what hasn’t worked to advance racial equity, I support this, but I didn’t think anybody else did, and because I didn’t think anybody else did, I didn’t believe it could ever get tracked soon, and we’ve been Really trying to visibilize that traction, so that those who are supportive, can really stand behind it, invest money in it and so forth.
RHEA 24:54
I’m going to assume that there are some rich white folks who listen to this podcast, or maybe not so rich or what do you think that they should do based on what you have learned, what you’ve laid out here, almost a bit a manifesto what are the things that they can do if they are hearing you and saying, Garrett, this is making sense.
And I really do want to be part of liberation. I really do want to move towards equity. What does that look like tangibly?
GARRETT 25:16
Yeah, there’s a million ways to answer this question. I don’t think any of them will be complete, but maybe I’ll try to answer quickly in a few different ways to get some ideas out there.
I think 1 is. To really try to understand what is your location position? Who are you uniquely positioned to influence? What are you uniquely positioned to do? for example, with the audience of this book, my entire career has been in nonprofits and working with philanthropists, I hope that, business leaders pick it up, learn something from it.
Where it has the greatest potential to make a difference is in the philanthropic sector, because that’s my position, and, we have position in our families, in our communities, in our neighborhoods, there’s our alma maters, what colleges do we go to, so there’s all these different ways that our position is created in society and being really clear about this is my position.
And this is what I’m uniquely positioned to do. I think it’s helpful. a second thing that comes up for me is like this sense that equity is a lifestyle, a lifelong commitment, a way of being versus something that. we do one time, it’s not read a book once or hire a diversity inclusion person or, write a chat, it really is a way of showing up in the world and in every moment, there’s a chance for us to engage equitably or inequitably, even with my spouse and I, for example, we have a relationship across gender and racial differences, there are times where, because of something I’m really struggling with, the equitable thing to do in that moment is to prioritize my needs. Not all the time, not the majority of time, but there are times where I’m really struggling and it makes sense for her to just support me or help me out for 20 minutes, and so, equity is actually very complex, this notion that it’s every single moment, is a chance to be equitable or inequitable is important, and I think the last thing I would say related to this is Malcolm Gladwell talks about 10, 000 hours being what’s needed to have some level of expertise or skill in a topic I’m trying to put in my 10, 000 hours to really dig deeply into these issues, I don’t know a lot of privileged people who are, and I think If you put in those 10, 000 hours and you figure out things like how to engage across differences, emotional intelligence working through your own triggers looking at your ancestry, looking at your wealth, how much money is enough, so like that exploration can generate a lot.
it’s something that is done, over years and year, not over single actions.
[00:27:30] Rhea Wong: As I was reading this book, being a woman of color, I first felt kind of relief. Oh thank God someone is saying it that is a white man. And then my second thought was how do we leverage this for change?
Like I kind of wanted to send this book to every rich white person I know, read this book. But tactically, what does it look like for folks of color and women of color to really help to start this conversation, which really like white people have to. Own and be a part of and start and initiate.
GARRETT 27:55
Yeah. it’s a good question. And it relates actually directly to the question you alluded to that. I think I didn’t answer around who is the audience for this book? That I think ultimately. I want to reach white men and wealthy white men in particular, and I don’t think that very many wealthy white men are going to pick this up on their own, like if they, they’re walking through Barnes Noble and they see it, that I don’t think there’s very many that would be like, Oh, this is like the book I’ve been dying to read and they just pick it up.
It’s going to be because their wife recommended it because One of their board members of color recommended it, or their staff person, or their direct report, or their sibling, whatever it is, where there’s these opportunities, often across differences that I think will encourage folks to pick up this learning.
the way I see the book connected to social change more broadly is, goes back to this idea of rolling the rock up the hill. And What I want white women and people of color to know about a project like this is there are white guys out there who are willing to roll that rock up the hill with you, and yeah if you find it helpful, give it to white guys and wealthy white folks, as an educational tool, but also email me, send me a LinkedIn message, and we can talk about how to do that together, because the reality is, powerful people, they’re not only influenced by people who share their identities.
I know for me, having relationships across differences has been invaluable for my journey and learning and so forth. talking to peers who have a shared experience is helpful, too, it really needs to be an all of the above thing, and that would be my encouragement is yeah, how can we do this as partners?
RHEA 29:23
Yeah, that’s such a good point and actually for those folks out here listening, perhaps you want to do a book club with your board because I think there are a lot of really important conversations that have to be had particularly around this insidious racism that is not overtly racism, but is embedded in things like exceptionalism and, I’m successful because I work hard versus like you’re the recipient of many generations of advantage and privilege.
Garrett, thank you so much. This has been really great. Thank you for writing the book. So for those out there, it’s called rich white men. I’ll make sure to put all of the information in the show notes and Garrett, I’m also going to put your LinkedIn profile if that’s okay with you. last thoughts as we sign off, anything we haven’t covered
GARRETT 30:03
Gosh, I think maybe one thing that’s just important to name because I think it’s a big part of this process is the book is structured as a royalties cooperative. I partnered with Alan Klaver de Frimpong, who’s a movement philanthropy strategist. We went through a consent based process together to identify.
6 organizations that would receive 6 7ths of what would have been my author royalties, social justice organizations. It’s all listed on my author website. it was really important to me that a project like this will not turn into another wealth and power consolidation opportunity.
sharing the financial benefits of the project, but not just sharing the financial benefits, but actually having that be an accountability mechanism. So these are true partners in the effort, and if I, say things that are harmful or whatever, like they can divest from our partnership, they can criticize me publicly, they’ll still receive the royalties.
it really is. intended to be a true accountability mechanism. just wanted to lift that up as a way of, trying to practice equity that these opportunities there, no matter what we’re doing, if we look for them.
RHEA 31:04
And I also appreciate, the many examples that you shared in the book of how you’re trying to walk the walk.
And I think that’s so important. Garrett, thank you so much for being on the show. Thank you for writing the book and folks, get Rich White Men. I know it feels at first glance I had an emotional reaction to it, but it was actually great and I recommend it. So thanks so much, everyone.
Thank you.
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