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These days, when we hear about philanthropists, people generally praise them and call them heroes or “angels”. When wealthy people use their money to help those in need, people are expected to give utmost gratitude and praise them for their selflessness. People or communities, more often than not, accept them wholeheartedly without uncertainties because of the need to have the financial or material support to address their dire condition possibly caused by disasters.
Philanthropy, as defined in Merriam Webster, is the practice of giving money and time to help make life better for other people. From this definition, it really sounds humanitarian that deserves nothing but gratitude. However, philanthropy, specifically in a democratic environment, should be questioned and critiqued. Philanthropy, especially when practiced by big and private conglomerate individuals, is characterized by their need to boost their personal appeal and eventually gain a control of power and influence over the people. And by giving it nothing more than gratitude, we are allowing power that has tyrannical potential to take over us. Rob Reich, director of the Center of Ethics in Society at Stanford University, states that “big philanthropy is an odd encouragement of plutocratic voice in a democratic society.” According to him, philanthropy defined as the deployment of private wealth for some public influence is an exercise of power. And in a democratic society, all power deserves scrutiny, and not gratitude.1 Another thing to pinpoint here is how wealthy people use philanthropy by creating private foundations in order to gain more wealth, because foundations are tax-subsidized. They use helping to address the needs of people as an excuse to diminish the amount of their taxes. With the tax that is supposed to be given to the government subsidized, there is now lesser funds that should be used to create more public services. It now becomes a power play used to put on pedestal the privileged and further oppressed the poor. It creates greater inequality.
However, philanthropy, as accepted wholeheartedly by people, is not a new thing. We cannot really blame the people for not being critical about its power dynamics. They see it as the most accessible help they could receive due to the incapability of the state to address all the needs of its citizens. For people, it is better to be subsumed by unchecked power than to continuously suffer for not accepting their support. At this point, the need for continuous education and conscientization is important. As what Reich have said, “instead of extending our enormous gratitude to the greatest philanthropists among us, we should be scrutinizing them, not because philanthropy is bad but because it is an exercise of power.”1
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