The Negative Peace of White Moderation & How to Uproot it in Your Organization

Katherine: Thank you, Vu, for taking this time to talk. I know that your schedule is really busy with your new book, and I’m grateful for this opportunity to connect. I’d love to start by asking you what has called you to be so passionate right now about supporting nonprofits in the fight against fascism?

Vu: Well, right now everything is on fire. Nonprofits have always been really crucial for many of the civil rights wins that we’ve had in the past. And right now, I think it’s very important for us to focus on saving democracy and pushing back fascism, because it affects every single mission that every single nonprofit cares about right now.

Katherine: Can you share a bit about your personal background and what brought you to this moment?

Vu: I was born in Vietnam. I came over when I was eight. I got a master’s degree in social work and have been in the sector for a couple of decades now. I have run two nonprofits over a span of 13 years, so I’ve been in the sector a while. I love our sector and I think it does some amazing things. And at the same time, there are some challenges that we really do need to discuss.

Katherine: Can you share more about what those challenges look like, especially right now? Can you paint a picture of organizations you’re talking to who are grappling with how to respond to this moment?

Vu: Before everything that’s been happening over the past decade or so — all the crises, the poly-crises that we’ve been dealing with — nonprofits have always had a bunch of challenges. There’s a lack of appreciation for overhead. There’s this idea that we want all the money to go directly to programs, not on staff salaries or rent or other things that are vital. Boards have always been challenging. Fundraising has always been challenging. There’s never enough money. A lot of foundations only give out 5% of their endowments every year and hoard the rest — saving for a rainy day — while nonprofits are constantly trying to fundraise.

We have donors who need to be catered to. And then there’s the fear of advocacy, where a lot of funders don’t want to fund nonprofits to do advocacy work, or systems change work, or lobbying — things that will actually change the systems and not just address the symptoms of what we’ve been trying to deal with.

That’s what’s been happening even before the poly-crisis. But right now it’s gotten much worse, with the attacks on DEI, the administration attacking nonprofits, people calling us frauds. It’s been very frustrating, and a lot of funders have not been stepping up to give out more money so we can handle these threats and continue doing our work.

Katherine: Can you talk more about the fear of funding policy work and advocacy — what those conversations within organizations look like, if they’re even having those conversations?

Vu: When I say funders, I primarily mean progressive, liberal-leaning funders — and they are terrified of policy work. They think it’s beneath them, they don’t want to get into the fray. Whereas conservative funders understand that policy work is how you get change done. Liberal funders refuse to do that, so they only want to fund addressing the symptoms of problems. They think anything is political, so they’re allergic to anything remotely political — such as advocacy work, which doesn’t have to be political.

Over time, they have trickled down this fear to nonprofits. So now many nonprofits are terrified of doing advocacy work too, even though 501(c)(3)s can still do advocacy work. They can spend up to 10% of their budgets every year doing advocacy work. It’s completely legal, but many of them are so terrified.

Katherine: To be honest, as someone who’s done political organizing since college, I have a really hard time wrapping my mind around the statement “let’s not get political” or “let’s not work on policy.” It seems like the most important place to be focusing. Can you share more about the mentality of people who say that?

Vu: I talk a lot about white moderation, so we might as well go right into it, because I feel like this is one of the biggest barriers.

White moderation was what Dr. King called the biggest threat to justice. Not the people who are burning crosses and marching in white robes — it’s the people who are very nice, who are on the side saying, “Can we all just get along? I believe in your vision of a just world, but can we not ruffle feathers? Can you wait? Can you do it the right way?” And that is unfortunately how a lot of people and foundations think.

They would rather focus on creating what Dr. King called a “negative peace” — the absence of tension — than the actual attainment of justice, which would require some tension. When MLK was marching, civil rights leaders were beaten. They were upsetting a lot of people, even though they were nonviolent. But for many people, even that was too much. No tension at all.

And I think this is why there’s been such fear and disdain of political engagement. We don’t want to make people mad. We don’t want to upset people. If we become too political, it’s going to upset people, and we want to be seen as the good guys.

Katherine: So it’s equating “good guys” with people who don’t upset anyone.

Vu: That’s part of it. We focus on things like civility and politeness. For example, when Beto O’Rourke was speaking after another school shooting, he got so riled up that he used the F word. And more people were upset that he used the F word than they were about the fact that children are being massacred in schools every single week in our country.

Katherine: White moderation — people being more upset about the cussing than about the murders.

I want to help listeners identify white moderation in themselves and in others — with kindness and compassion, from a place of “I have good intentions, I want to do better, I see this showing up in myself.” What things might people be doing that come from a place of white moderation?

Vu: On my blog, nonprofitaf.com, I write about this a lot. There’s a checklist of 21 things. Some of them include: refusing to name things — refusing to say “white supremacy” or “racism” because that’s uncomfortable and might upset people. But how do we address injustice if we’re not willing to name it?

Another is the obsession with credentials and standards that we equate with quality. I have a master’s degree and I value education, but I don’t like it when it becomes a gatekeeping factor. A lot of jobs don’t require a formal degree, and there are many qualified candidates with amazing contributions who may not have a bachelor’s. That’s a form of white moderation.

There’s also “doing things the right way.” We see it in how people responded to protests after George Floyd was murdered by police. People were more focused on buildings that were burning than on the thousands of people being killed every year because of injustice.

Katherine: I love that you included that quote from the Minneapolis restaurant owner whose business was burned.

Vu: Yes. He basically said — and I’m paraphrasing — that this is more important than me. Justice is more important than my restaurant. And if my restaurant needs to burn, this is not as important as the fact that people are getting murdered by an unjust system. That takes a lot of generosity of spirit to be able to see something like that.

Katherine: It’s really uncomfortable sometimes to name the thing. It can feel scary, because there could be real ramifications. What if we lose funding? What if we burn bridges and our organization ceases to exist? What advice do you have for folks who are in that place of fear?

Vu: Well, first of all, the fears are valid. I’ve led nonprofits. I understand. If you upset donors or funders, you could very well lose funding. That is not something to be taken lightly.

And at the same time, a lot of these fears are based on assumptions that may not prove to be true. The assumption that if we say something, it’s going to upset donors. The assumption that if we upset donors, they’re going to leave. The assumption that if they leave, we won’t be able to make up that funding through other sources.

What I find is that many of these assumptions are not always proven to be true. An example: here in Seattle, right after George Floyd’s killing, the staff of one organization wanted to send a letter to their thousands of donors saying, “We support Black Lives Matter.” This was when Black Lives Matter was still controversial to say publicly. They also wanted to say they supported defunding the police.

There was a conflict, and there was a lot of fear. Some board members said, “If we do this, we’re going to lose a bunch of donors.” But they stuck with their values and sent out the letter. They did lose donors. But they gained five donors for every one they lost, because many of them were like, “Wow, I really appreciate that you’re standing up for your values.” That was probably their best fundraising year ever.

Another example: a Girl Scouts chapter had a donor who offered $100,000, but only if they promised not to use the money to support transgender girls. Of course, they turned it down. $100,000 is not something to sneeze at. But they went to their community and said, “We had a donor offer this, and we refused it because it’s not aligned with our values.” And I think they raised about three times more — because everyone I know is excited to support an organization like that.

Katherine: I’m curious about the role you see human service providers playing in the fight against fascism. In your wildest dreams, what would nonprofits be doing right now?

Vu: When we talk about fighting fascism, there are multiple ways to do it. I look at artists and their work right now. The arts have always been a vital component in fighting fascism.

I think about what happened in Houston when the governor of Texas banned rainbow crosswalks — because apparently they’re so terrible for the community. So he made them illegal. And artists started painting rainbows everywhere. Churches started painting their steps rainbow. Artists started using laser projectors to project rainbows across the sky. An amazing way to fight fascism using the arts.

Building community is also a great way to fight fascism. There are people out there connecting with one another, giving out food, providing resources and support, driving each other’s kids so they can avoid ICE agents. There are lots of different ways to do this.

I don’t want service providers to feel like the only way to fight fascism is to tackle it head-on. If you’re providing services, you’re building community. I was talking to someone in Minneapolis who was delivering food to elders who were terrified of going out. One elder told her: “I was eating cereal with water because I had no milk left. I felt like no one cared. The fact that you delivered food and milk to me made me feel like I’m part of this community.” That’s really important for fighting fascism.

Katherine: I really hear you saying that conflict aversion is one of the primary symptoms. Are there other symptoms you want people to be particularly looking out for?

Vu: One we don’t talk about as much is fatalism — this belief that everything is terrible anyway, so what’s the point of doing anything? Or toxic optimism, where it’s like, “Don’t worry, the arc of the moral universe will bend toward justice, we don’t really need to do anything.” And then there are people who are just so demoralized, which is also not good.

Katherine: What would you say to somebody who finds themselves drifting into fatalism? It’s a scary, sad time. What advice do you have?

Vu: First, acknowledge your feelings. Whatever you’re feeling, you feel it. You’re not alone in this awfulness and despair. Things are very hard right now, and many of us have never encountered this level of cruelty and chaos in our lives.

And at the same time, it’s important to acknowledge some other things simultaneously. For many communities, this is not the first time they’ve experienced this. When Hitler came into power, the first people he attacked were trans people. This is the playbook. So we have to understand that communities have endured this, and it’s important to listen to what those community members recommend and follow their lead.

I would also remind people to channel the courage of civil rights leaders in the past. They faced things that many of us can only imagine in terms of how awful they were — and they didn’t even have the tools and legal protections we currently have. We have wifi. We can communicate with one another. Harriet Tubman had to use quilts. We can resist and order DoorDash and keep resisting. I don’t want to make light of things, but we have some privileges we need to use, and we owe it to those who came before us.

And lastly, it’s important to acknowledge why these things are happening. In many ways, it’s because we’re finally confronting the realities of capitalism and white supremacy. The people in power realize that this can’t last. White supremacy and capitalism cannot sustain themselves. So they’re fighting tooth and nail to preserve the status quo. When an animal is cornered, it lashes back with everything it’s got.

In some ways, this is the last gasp of a dying world of brutality and cruelty. Something better will emerge from this eventually. It will be painful. Antonio Gramsci said it: “The old world is dying, and a new world struggles to be born. Now is a time of monsters.” As the old world dies and a new, more just and equitable world is being born, this tension is going to cause a lot of pain, and from it, a lot of monsters are going to rise. But as time goes on, we’re going to see fewer and fewer of them, because they die off. We can outlast fascism. We can build a better, stronger, more just and equitable world.

Katherine: I appreciate your hope, and I share it. And I think sometimes we can get stuck thinking of each other as the monsters and lose sight of the bigger picture. I have that experience when I see white moderation showing up in leaders in my community who have good intentions but are afraid to name things or invest in priorities that I think matter. I say I have an easier time getting sad at national politics and an easier time getting mad at local politics. What advice do you have for people who are thinking about leaders in their organizations or colleagues who are showing white moderation, and are tempted to think of that other person as the problem?

Vu: I appreciate that, Katherine, because I think it’s easy to point to people in power and say they’re white moderates and they’re just preventing progress from happening.

I wrote a blog post — “Hey progressives, can we stop using the language of justice to attack one another?” Many of my colleagues have left the field because they get attacked by their own team members. A lot of executive directors — many of them women of color — are burning out because their own team members are saying, “You’re in power, so you’re as awful as everyone else.”

There is this tendency, when we feel like we can’t do anything at the national or global level, to turn our frustration at the nearest source of power and make them a target. And that is one of the things that sustains fascism — we start attacking one another instead of seeing each other as being on the same team, trying to figure things out.

It’s easy to see people in power only through the lens of their formal power, instead of seeing them as human beings who are fallible. I always recommend that leaders try to de-idolize themselves, because there’s a tendency for others to expect leaders to be perfect. When I’ve been in leadership, I try to say: “I’m going to make mistakes. Please let me know. Because of my background, I will have blind spots. And it’s okay for us to have conflicts. It’s okay to make mistakes — as long as we don’t attack one another’s motives.”

Katherine: That humility, that inviting of critique and feedback — that’s the antithesis of perfectionism. White moderation is rooted in a supremacy structure that says there’s a right way to be and I need to attain it. Part of dismantling that is saying: I am fallible, I am learning.

Vu: Perfectionism is definitely part of “doing things right.” People need to understand the difference between doing things right and doing the right thing, because there’s a significant difference.

Doing things right means you’re in legal compliance. You do things based on the rules that were set out. Doing the right thing means you do what is right, and sometimes that means you might have to break some rules or upset people.

A while ago, I was running an afterschool program. One day, it was snowing heavily, and kids would have had to walk two miles home in the dark, in the snow — which would have been very dangerous. We did not have insurance for our vehicle yet. So doing things right meant we couldn’t drive those kids. We could get sued. We could get into trouble. We could close the program. So do we drive them home without insurance, or do we let them walk home because that’s the policy?

The staff said: the kids’ lives and safety are way more important right now than legal compliance. So we drove them home. We took a risk. That’s the difference between doing things right and doing the right thing. A lot of white moderates are so focused on doing things right.

Katherine: I love that distinction. I’ve never heard anyone say it quite like that.

Vu: I don’t claim credit for it — someone much wiser put that out there.

Katherine: I think it’s really hard not to point fingers at individuals, and really hard to zoom out and look at systems. That’s part of how we’re socialized in a toxically individualistic culture. And yet we expect people to take on these leadership roles in structures rooted in white supremacy and white moderation, and do a perfect job in them. In order to really create change, we so often need to shift structures within organizations. What structural shifts do you advocate for to curtail or prevent the patterns of white moderation from continuing?

Vu: A lot of it comes down to awareness — having regular discussions about white moderation. The only time we talk about it is on MLK Day in January, and even then, most people focus on his words about the arc of the moral universe bending toward justice. They don’t talk about what he said about capitalism, or about white moderation. Ironically, that is itself a form of white moderation. We don’t want to talk about the difficult things.

So creating space for these conversations matters. And I think feedback is really important. We are very conflict-avoidant, and a lot of that is because we are not good at giving and receiving feedback — especially in certain geographic areas like the Pacific Northwest or New England.

We also don’t recognize what we do unconsciously. For example, triangulation — when you have a conflict with someone and instead of going to talk to them directly, you go and complain to someone else. Now there’s a third person in this triangle for no reason. It’s sometimes helpful to consult someone to prepare for a direct conversation. But the important thing is that you actually have that direct conversation. We skip that step. So now there’s just a bunch of people getting pulled into drama they shouldn’t be involved with.

How do we have conversations about white moderation and white supremacy when we can’t even tell each other that something small is bothering us? We have to be able to have those smaller conversations, because they create a foundation for deeper, more meaningful ones.

At one of my organizations, my co-leader Ananda Valenzuela really grounded us in feedback. We had regular, ongoing training and practice around giving and receiving feedback. We even did monthly feedback “speed dating” — everyone went around and checked in with everyone else for about 10 minutes. The training around feedback is vital. Without it, when serious conflicts do arise, we don’t know what to do.

I’d also say we don’t take into account neurodivergence and other factors. A lot of our conflict resolution skills are based on neurotypical tactics — like assuming that lack of eye contact means disrespect. That’s not necessarily true for someone who is neurodivergent. Our approaches need to reflect that.

Katherine: I love that. I ask you about the big structural stuff, and you come back to: just talk to each other. In local politics, I see the drama vortex all the time — people upset with someone, going to talk to someone else instead. Now I just ask: did you talk to that person directly? Nine times out of ten, they haven’t. And a large number of those times, once they do talk, it’s resolved.

Vu: Exactly. If we can resolve the minor problems, then we can actually start talking about the larger systems. I’ve been pressing funders about the lack of adequate funding going to nonprofits — the one-year grants, the burdensome grant applications, the siloed reporting requirements. All of this is wasting precious resources that should be going toward systemic change. When funders and people with power refuse to see anyone else’s perspective, it makes everything harder.

Katherine: And you address all of those systemic changes in your book — so once people learn to talk to each other, they can also read your book and learn about structural changes they can make in their organizations.

Vu: Yes, it’s called Reimagining Nonprofits and Philanthropy. I hope people find it useful.

Katherine: I highly recommend it. If you’re new to Vu’s work, you’re already getting a sense of his humor — and he brings that into the book. What could feel like dry material becomes enjoyable. The laughter I get from reading your work is medicine.

Vu: Thank you, Katherine. I appreciate that.

Katherine: I want to ask about the attacks on DEI. I think about the protests in 2020 and how inspired I felt. And also, I remember listening to a Code Switch episode where someone said, “Yeah, y’all white people who are so excited right now — it’s going to get bad again.” I remember not wanting to believe that. And then watching the promises of investment in DEI after George Floyd’s murder, and now seeing so many people losing their work, all the whitewashing of words off websites — I name that with a lot of sadness. What would you like to say about that?

Vu: There’s a reason there’s been such a strong attack against DEI. It’s because it’s working. It’s not always perfect, by any means — I myself have been frustrated with how DEI has been done over the past several years. But the reality is that there has been a lot of progress. Everything the civil rights leaders did — that was DEI. What MLK did was DEI. And it works. That’s why they are so scared of it. Fascists are scared of equity and equality and diversity. If it weren’t working, they wouldn’t be attacking it.

We need to understand their strategy. When Hitler came into power, the first people he attacked were trans people. He burned down the Institute for Sexology, which was providing advocacy for LGBTQ people. They burned books. They forced people into concentration camps. Because they knew: if people won’t protect trans people, then they can step it up and attack others — disabled people, and so on. That was their strategy. And this is the same strategy being played out right now.

We have to be supporting trans people just like we would be supporting disabled people, gay people, Black people, everyone. Because the strategy is to break us, to splinter us. DEI is not just about being nice anymore. It is a very strategic thing that our sector does to achieve the just and equitable world we want.

Now, I understand that some organizations — if you receive a lot of federal funding — are in a difficult predicament. You have to think about how to continue doing vital work while navigating an administration with fascist tendencies. Do what you can. But for many people who were complying in advance, when no one was even attacking them — why did you remove DEI? The administration was punishing universities for DEI work, and now they’ve dropped that lawsuit. We need to take a stand when we can.

Katherine: You’ve called out DEI in the past. Is there something you’d want to say about what effective DEI work actually looks like?

Vu: One of my friends calls it “fake equity.” Another friend calls it an “equity offset” — like a carbon offset, where you plant a tree so you can keep polluting. You do a book club, and now you think you’re great. But do you actually analyze whether your staff of color are being paid equitably? In most organizations, they’re not.

Real DEI is much more challenging. It requires people to move outside of their comfort zone. One of my white friends said he’s never going to apply to be an executive director of a nonprofit in a neighborhood that is primarily people of color. That takes a lot of self-awareness — not just reading a book to shift your mindset, but actually taking a stance on who gets hired for these leadership roles. It is a sacrifice, and it’s an important one. Real DEI means looking at real structures.

Katherine: Is there anything else you’d want listeners who are grappling with conflict in their organizations to know?

Vu: There are various tools we use in resolving conflicts, and I think it’s really important to apply an equity lens to them. Do these tools work for people of different cultural backgrounds or different neurotypes?

Probably the most profound experience I’ve had was a training on conflict resolution where we did an empathy exercise. We were paired with someone, and we just looked at them while they had their eyes closed — and started thinking about everything they’d been through. All the pains and heartaches. All the dreams they’d had, and some they’d had to abandon because of life’s changing circumstances. All the struggles they might be wrestling with that no one else knows about.

We don’t take enough time to think of people as full human beings. We just think: here is a person I’m in conflict with. I find it helpful to remind myself that the person I’m in conflict with has hopes and dreams and heartbreaks and struggles — just like me.

And that framing is important for yourself too. We often have more grace for others than we do for ourselves. If we don’t have empathy for ourselves and others, we sever connections. And community is what we need to fight fascism. That’s the best weapon we have.

Katherine: If people want to learn more from you, how can they do that?

Vu: My book, Reimagining Nonprofits and Philanthropy, is available — please support your local bookstores. I write a blog at nonprofitaf.com. And I’m on Instagram at nonprofitaf.

Katherine: Awesome. I encourage people to read the book — I really enjoyed it, and I’m grateful to you for writing it and for sharing this time with me today.

Vu: Thank you so much, Katherine.