The Gratitude is Overwhelming

Accounting equity is well-defined.
Woke "equity" is a muddled mess
and will never be attained.

In San Francisco a new guaranteed income program of $1,000 per month per person to help struggling artists has been beset by identity politics:[bold added]

City leaders say YBCA [Yerba Buena Center for the Arts], was chosen because it was best equipped to take on the pilot program, which was funded with $877,000 from the city’s Arts Impact Endowment, money that comes from the hotel tax, along with $60,000 of YBCA’s budget...

Curator, visual artist and organizer Rhiannon Evans MacFadyen...says an organization with expertise working with people of color should have been put in charge of the program, not YBCA.

Below are representative criticisms from "marginalized" groups' spokespersons: [bold added]

"I think it’s just the typical white savior cluelessness.”

“There is a history of inequity in arts funding, where communities of color are not trusted with the funds to do the work we know how to do really well.”

But because of historical and structural racism, she said, bigger but not necessarily better organizations are more trusted to administer programs dealing with racial equity.

“It’s a case of might makes right,” she said. “A large, white-led organization that doesn’t understand and outsources equity is rewarded for their sheer lack of expertise in equity and then leverages it to benefit their organization.”

The gratitude is overwhelming.

One of the reasons I like private charity is that there's far less fighting over the expenditures. If donors to a private foundation want to educate kids of a certain ethnicity or support artists from another, they have the freedom to do so without controversy.

But the art program in question is mostly funded from taxes, and as with any government program, there are complaints that

1) It's not enough;
2) The monies are benefiting the wrong people (the YBCA put in a "randomizer" element to avoid charges of favoritism, but they heard complaints about that, too);
3) The wrong groups are in charge of the money;
4) Only certain specialists can truly understand the plight of the intended recipients.

For nearly 20 years I've participated in various food and shelter programs in the Bay Area. The beneficiaries know that the volunteers are giving their own money and time and have never expressed resentment about our efforts, modest though they often are.

When government dispenses aid on a much grander scale, the result is often resentment and division, and yet there are calls for even more money to be spent in this manner. The voters keep electing people who say yes, so the voters must like the picture that has been painted.