Racial Equity and Other Lenses

A racial equity lens can be used with other lenses. A racial equity lens sheds light on racial dynamics that shape social, economic, and political structures. Other lenses illuminate other important dynamics that shape issues grantmakers seek to address. “Intersectionality” — of race, class, gender, sexual orientation — is key to identifying the dynamics at play in a particular situation and how they combine and converge. One grantmaker described how gender and racial equity lenses can intersect to provide a more complete view of a complex situation, such as the response to Hurricane Katrina. Funders need to understand the influence of racism, she argued, yet “a gender analysis complements our understanding of what is happen- ing around race and helps inform funding strategy in really important ways. If you apply a gender lens to Katrina, you see that black women are having the hardest time return- ing to New Orleans. Many of them have children, so they need to have the infrastructure rebuilt around things like childcare and stable schools.”