Toward a More Just Nonprofit Sector: Leveraging a Critical Approach to Disrupt and Dismantle White Masculine Space

Abstract

This article examines the utility of deploying a critical framework–grounded in critical race theory (CRT), feminist theory, and intersectionality–in nonprofit and voluntary studies. We argue that these theoretical perspectives, which emphasize lived experience and sense-making, while simultaneously situating these experiences within broader socio-political and historical contexts, offer a useful analytic lens for centering the narratives and experiences of marginalized or muted voices, which serve to disrupt and dismantle the hegemony of Whiteness and masculinity in nonprofit spaces.

Keywords:

• Critical methodology
• critical race theory
• feminist theory
• intersectionality
• nonprofit studies

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Jamie Levine Daniel, Prentiss Dantzler, Lehn Benjamin, and Jennifer L. Martin for reading and commenting on earlier drafts of this manuscript. We would also like to thank the editors and reviewers for their comments and suggestions. And finally, we would like to thank Javadbay Khalilzade and Michael Palmieri for their research assistance.

Notes

1 Interestingly, 130 of the 315 were “social welfare and social justice” organizations.

2 768 respondents, representing various grantmaker types, provided demographic data on 8,311 full-time professional and administration staff.

3 Organizations not associated with an identity group. For example, this might be a human service organization.

4 E.g. the myth of meritocracy (Delgado, Bernal & Villalpando, 2002).

5 For those interested in further exploring this concept, we recommend reviewing the literature on representative bureaucracy. While outside the scope of this article, we view this literature as an important complement to the concept of “white masculine space;” e.g Bishu & Kennedy, 2019; Kennedy, 2012; and Kennedy, Bishu, & Heckler, 2019.

6 Much of “mainstream” feminist theory has been critiqued for its exclusion of non-White scholarship—especially that of Black feminists and womanists—whose work was ignored in dominant debates. Black feminist thought emerged both independent from and in response to the hegemony of “White Feminism.” Other feminisms, such as inclusive feminism and intersectional feminism, have also emerged to counter mainstream (liberal) feminism.

7 Counter storytelling has gained significant traction in the contemporary period with the Black Lives Movement and through the work of Ibram Kendi, Ijeoma Olue, and Isabel Wilkerson. Counter storytelling in this context exposes and acknowledges the racist experiences of BIPOC as real.

8 There are debates among scholars about the degree to which storytelling methods are empowering or emancipatory. Here, we remain agnostic. For some the process of telling their story as part of a research project may be powerful; for others it may not.