Diversity Capitalists: How Firms Use Ethnic Community Support as a Form of Reputation Management

Using insights from Black Culture Inc: How Ethnic Community Support Pays for Corporate America (Stanford University Press 2022), this talk examines how businesses rely on philanthropy and sponsorships related to ethnoracial minorities as a form of diversity capital. Investigating the case of giving to Smithsonian museums and drawing on content analysis of public relations and advertising texts on corporate support, I show how gifts to the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) provide distinct image benefits for firms. More specifically, I elaborate how companies mobilize gifts to NMAAHC to project an image that they are inclusive and equitable. In a sharp departure from NMAAHC, gifts to “mainstream” Smithsonian museums are used to make claims about non-racial aspects of corporate identity. I conclude by discussing how this case advances the scholarship on race and cultural capital as well as the literature on race and organizations. Practically, this case highlights the promise and perils of corporate giving as a tool to address racial inequality and other social problems.

Biography

Patricia A. Banks (Harvard University P.h.D. & A.M./Spelman College B.A.) is Co-Editor-in-Chief of Poetics and Chair and Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Mount Holyoke College. She is the author of four books including two books on philanthropy and race: Black Culture Inc: How Ethnic Community Support Pays for Corporate America (Stanford University Press 2022) and Diversity and Philanthropy at African American Museums (Routledge Research in Museum Studies 2019). Banks serves on the editorial board of Cultural Sociology, the advisory council for the Donors of Color: Giving Trends project (Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, Indiana University), the advisory council for the BIG Philanthropy project (Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, Indiana University), and as Secretary-Treasurer of the Sociology of Consumers and Consumption section of the American Sociological Association.

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