The Ice Bucket Challenge: It is no mistake that ALS is said to be more common among white males, non-Hispanics, and persons aged 60–69 years (source: rappler/newsbreak/iq/67172-fast-facts-als-ice-bucket-challenge) According to the ALS CARE Database, 60% of the people with ALS in the Database are men and 93% of patients in the Database are Caucasian. (from ALS themselves: alsa.org/about-als/who-gets-als.html) It is not surprising that a disease that mainly affects aging white men is receiving money and attention. This is why it is interesting timing to be happening during the visible resistance in Ferguson because people are literally giving millions of dollars to spread awareness about a disease that mainly affects white men, while Black men are continuing to be murdered by police (vast majority being white police). The further humanization of older white men, and the further dehumanization of Black men, and Black people in general. But I would be surprised to see people raising millions of dollars to spread awareness about this dehumanization of Black people to white people for reasons spanning from racism, white privilege, white guilt, to not wanted to take action or not knowing how. Now this is not a call out on ALS Association alone. They happen to be the in charity right now which makes it easy to shed light upon it. The fact that salaries are incredibly high for administration in charity organizations is counterintuitive to the nature of service work and community education and organization (which is seen in the ALS Association; however, this is not the case in all nonprofits). In this society, we have attributed business strategies, profits over people, to an arena of society that is ideally supposed to be people over profits. This is a huge problem when the overarching goal in service work should be to work yourself out of job, whereas in business, people are working to solidify their standing among other businesses.. These contradictory practices cannot coexist.. For example, Roxanne Spillett, president, Boys & Girls Clubs of America, Atlanta, GA, makes $455,829 as her BASE SALARY! (10 highest paid nonprofit executives: thefiscaltimes/Articles/2012/12/20/10-Insanely-Overpaid-Nonprofit-Execs) ALS is one of thousands of examples of non-profits and charities, which people funnel money in, tax exemptions, and the heads of very well known, mainstream non-profits get extremely paid. profit is not made in the sense of business but do not be tricked into thinking that these cats deserve to be making six figures. To think that the non-profit industry is in place to redistribute wealth is illogical. There is a difference between nonprofits, and funding campaigns to support grassroots movements. I am not saying all of this to wash my hands of any responsibility, because I am also entrenched in the non-profit industrial complex. However, we need to be critical about giving in general. We need to be critical to whom we give and the impacts that money has on the larger context of society. We are not only giving of money, but attention. We must understand that everything is connected. Where we put our time and energy has impacts in places we may not intend.
Posted on: Sat, 30 Aug 2014 18:52:47 +0000
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