Konda Mason: Holding love capital sacred (ep332)
How has philanthropy traditionally worked to uphold the extractive economic system? And what does it mean to recognize the various forms of capital that we have beyond financial capital?
In this episode, we welcome Konda Mason, a social entrepreneur, Earth and social justice activist, spiritual teacher, and the president of Jubilee Justice, a nonprofit working to bring economic equity to BIPOC farmers and ecological sustainability by introducing an innovative way of growing rice, while convening deeply transformational journeys, exploring the intersection of land, race, money, and spirit.
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Musical feature: Trust The Sun by Little Girl by Lil Idli
“There are all kinds of capital, and financial capital is something we did not have a lot of growing up. But our currency was love, and that currency is way more powerful than any piece of paper that we agree on that has some kind of meaning to it.”
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Transcript:
Note: *Our episodes are minimally edited. Please view them as open invitations to dive deeper into each resource and topic explored. This transcript has been edited for clarity.
Konda Mason: I'm from Southern California and was raised in a very loving family. Everything begins with my family. My mother encouraged our active and engaged participation in life in ways that supported people who had harder times than we had. She was a big influence in my life, and so was my older brother, who was very politically and spiritually active. He really taught me how to think critically. I followed in his footsteps and went to UC Berkeley as an undergrad. So that's where my whole life got started, working towards the bigger community.
A pivotal moment was coining "land, race, money, spirit.” I was on a train coming back from Sacramento, California and on my way back home to Oakland, where I was living. I just was looking out the window in the Sacramento Valley, and I remember thinking that that's what's important: the beautiful land out there. The term "land, race, money, and spirit" just came to me, and it resonated and stuck. That was exactly the intersection that I was about at that point in my life.
Kamea Chayne: To preface the rest of our discussion, I find it critical to explore the historical context that set the stage for where we are today, where, as you noted, there's a leak of 30,000 acres a year that's being lost by Black farmers. How do you situate this present reality in the rich history of Black farmers, and what is really happening here?
Konda Mason:
We say "loss," but actually, land has been confiscated from Black people through collusion between the US government, the USDA, private business, individuals, and primarily, the system of white supremacy.
A basic tenet underlying white supremacy is that Black people are not supposed to own land or any resources that allow us to live on this planet in a way that is healthy and whole. When we have land which they built, and thus that we have no right to, the collusion begins to figure out legal and illegal ways to take the land. This is done legally by creating laws that push us out of neighborhoods—redlining, the Heirs Property Laws. It's been legally sanctioned, as has always been, with the institution of slavery.
There are so many ways that Black land is being taken. For example, almost all farmers in the United States get an initial loan to plant from the USDA. You say what you need, you get your loan, you plant, and you harvest, and you pay that loan back, and you get another one, and it's a cycle.
What happens with Black farmers is that oftentimes, first of all, they don't get loans at all. They're told that there's always something wrong. There's always a higher bar for them to cross than for their white counterparts. Then if they do get a loan, it is often given late, after planting time.
So their white counterparts may have their crop in the ground while the Black farmer is just getting theirs, meaning they're playing catch up. They get out of season and they start to get in this loop where they harvest later, plant later, harvest later, etcetera, and that continues until they fall off the wagon. The loans are collateralized with their farms and…
What happens is this system sees Black farmers given too little too late, so they end up defaulting, and land is taken away from them. It happens over and over and over again to Black farmers.
Kamea Chayne: Sometimes people ask, "how can a system be racist?" and everything that you just spoke to explains that.
Konda Mason: When people think of racism, they think of individuals and whether someone is a racist or not a racist. That is honestly the least of our worries. The ideology of our entire governmental system is based on racism and white supremacy. Within all American institutions, whether it's the medical institution, the educational institution, you name it—as a Black or brown person, a person of color, access to the system is more difficult. (Or it's easier, of course, if it's the penitentiary system.) It is just built that way so that white access to all the good things on the planet—whether it's green spaces, loans, homes, a good education, a supermarket with healthy food—is there.
On top of that, there are racist people, no doubt. But the system is what is our problem. It denies and keeps Black and brown people from a life of wellbeing.
Kamea Chayne: Yeah. And you've shared that someone you work with, Robyn O'Brien, says that we can't change a broken food system with a broken financial system. I think that really sums up what you just said. So with this term "racial capitalism," do you think capitalism itself necessarily is racialized, because of the historical backdrop of everything?
Konda Mason: Absolutely. When you think about this country and you think about capitalism…
If you take out the institution of slavery, what would capitalism be in the United States?
I have no idea what it would be. It was premised upon stolen land, stolen people, and free labor. That labor, those millions of enslaved Africans, their hard work over 200 years here in this country allowed the United States to be the "economic superpower" of the world.
Just think about it. If you look at any business right now, labor is one of your most expensive line items. Imagine putting a zero on that line item, after buying it. By the time you amortize that over the life of an individual, you have hardly paid anything for their labor, and yet you reap all the benefits of their work. Capitalism in this country was based on that. Racial capitalism is absolutely the correct way to describe capitalism in America.
Kamea Chayne: Right. And there's no way to separate the two, because they feed into each other and have been systematized, as you mentioned. Another big piece of the puzzle in seeing money's influence on the food system is philanthropy. I think people are increasingly aware of, for example, Bill Gates buying up a lot of farmland in the US, while having a keen interest in influencing what the future of food looks like with his foundation's work in agriculture.
Whether you prefer speaking more specifically to Bill Gates and his foundation, or to philanthropy more broadly, how might they actually be a part of the problem in upholding racial capitalism, and in the end, still do more harm than good? And perhaps it's also worth exploring and questioning what doing "good" even means.
Konda Mason: When I think of philanthropy, the way it has traditionally worked is as an extension of the plantation in many ways. I am seeing players now turning it upside down and changing the way it's worked, changing the dynamics.
But the way it typically runs is that the money, that little 5% that is required for foundations to give of their capital, they may have that going towards NGOs or nonprofits doing something good on the planet. The other 95% of that, on the investment side of the equation for the foundation, is doing everything to undermine the good that the 5% is doing. It is invested in the world of venture capital that tends to kill businesses, that is harming the planet, that is in fossil fuels, that is in the incarceration of individuals; it's in all these horrible parts of the planet.
So they've got this little 5% for them to tout and say, "look at how good I'm doing," while 95% of their assets are going into things that are harmful just by being in the stock market alone. The stock market is not a friendly place to be. It is friendly for money, but it's not friendly towards the planet and the people.
And then there's the fact that—going back to the conversation earlier about capitalism being built on the backs of the people who were enslaved, and the Indigenous lands that were taken—when I look at the wealth in this country, it belongs to the people who actually made it happen. When organizations, foundations or individuals have given philanthropy to Black people, to me, that's just our money in the first place.
Money is given with so many strings attached. Philanthropy is taking the people who are on the ground, doing the good work, and coming in to say to them, "I'll give you a piece of this pie, and you've got to prove to me that you know what you're doing." They want to see the reports, they want all of these different deliverables—which then take the people away from the work! It's as if those with the money have the answers, and those on the ground should be questioned about how they do that work and whether it's legitimate or not, even though it's their money in the first place.
Philanthropy feels like an extension of the plantation mentality, with its power differentials. It is still is about the power of the person with the money dangling it in front of you and having you jump through hoops in order to get it.
I am not characterizing all the players in philanthropy, I'm saying that that's the system of philanthropy. The players can be different and they are different, and I find a lot of them being different now. They are seeing and recognizing the inherent inequality and power differentials that exist and are addressing it in very creative, wonderful ways. Actually, I'm hopeful about philanthropy. Even the word reparations is now on the table. People with the resources and the wealth—not everybody, obviously, but a lot of them—are waking up and saying, "I want to do it differently."
It is the system that I've described, but the players have a choice. And I see a lot of wonderful choices being made now.
Kamea Chayne: People are definitely attempting to push back, which is always inspiring to see. I'm thinking back to the 5% that philanthropies are required to give per year and the rest that they typically invest with. This is sort of systematized because when they place that investment somewhere, they usually will choose to put that money in places that they feel are safe. And in this extractive system, that tends to be in the hands of the big corporations: big money, big agriculture, big oil, and so forth. So that's a systemic challenge, and I don't know how we would be able to work past this when philanthropy is upholding the problems while funding only a small percentage to support the solutions.
Konda Mason: It's actually just going to take courageous people at the helm, who are stewarding this money. They need to be courageous in their leadership and be changing those dynamics. Nobody says that you can't do more than 5%. You have to do 5%, but you can flip that. There are all the stakeholders who are part of that money, and there's a big system, but here's the deal: we made it up.
This entire financial system is made up. The whole concept of money is made up. And if we've made it up, we can always remake it.
Nothing is monolithic and impenetrable. Everything changes, and everything is going to change. Either you're part of the change or you're a part of the problem. In order for it to change, we need committed changemakers at the forefront, leading the way. I'm looking at the Kataly Foundation, the Olamina Fund, Potlikker Capital, Liberated Capital—there are just so many wonderful players out there that are changing, pioneering.
And pretty soon, I hope that the weight of gravity goes towards those who are making the change. Then those who are following slowly behind and holding up the status quo will become irrelevant.
Kamea Chayne: I really appreciate the reality check that we made these systems and rules. We can certainly remake them because they're only a few hundred years old anyways. In the grand scheme of things, that’s like a drop in the bucket.
And in terms of agriculture, there's a lot of hype around regenerative agriculture right now, which largely focuses on healing and regenerating the soil in order to address the climate crisis. But what I've noticed is that much of the philanthropic work supporting regenerative agriculture is providing help for existing farm owners to transform their farms towards regenerative. So land ownership and access aren't really being addressed. Because you've connected the dots before between the soil and Black people, who have both suffered at the hands of this extractive system, what concerns do you have about the way that regenerative agriculture is currently being funded or framed as the solution to our ecological breakdown?
Konda Mason:
Regenerative agriculture is a new name, but really it is just Black and Indigenous ways of knowing and doing things that have been done for millennia.
For example, I think about the film Kiss The Ground which came out that was really all white. Some very dear buddies of mine were a part of it and they brought forward the importance of regenerative agriculture. But it seemed as if it was a white man's invention that's going to save the planet.
Regeneration is about the soil, about the planet, and about the people. There is not a line between us and the Earth. We are the Earth. And how we treat each other is how we treat that river over there, or that tree. One of the things that I think is grossly missing in many of these depictions of regeneration is the people aspect. Because that is an area that white people particularly have a hard time bridging, going there and not feeling guilty about. Whatever the reasons are, they stick with the ecological, environmental aspect of it, which is very important, but it can exist in a vacuum without the people component.
I have to say that my friend Paul Hawken has just come out with a book called Regeneration and I highly recommend it because I feel that Paul has really shown the full picture of what regeneration means. He has centered people and he has centered the voices of Black and Indigenous people. Even in the part on agriculture, he's explained George Washington Carver's role in regeneration. He was the person who actually taught America about soil and about a lot of the principles that regenerative agriculture embraces—though you rarely ever hear white people say that.
Anyway, this book has just come out and I recommend it because you really get a sense of what we have to do on this planet to reach regeneration.
Kamea Chayne: It does feel like some people in the regenerative space only focus on the ecological aspect without the people aspect, because to them it may feel less divisive and therefore less daunting. But for me, it furthers this binary and separation of Man and nature, that I feel has caused a lot of harm, could still have a lot of side effects, and ultimately won't lead us to collective healing.
Konda Mason: I agree. This separation is at the core of most of our issues as people, as a society, and as a world. We've separated ourselves from ourselves, first of all. And we've separated ourselves from the planet and from the other species that we share this planet with. We've created a system of hierarchy with people being on top, and then within people, there are certain groups who are on top, which connects back to racial capitalism. This entire stratification dictates which groups have access and which groups have barriers to access.
Meanwhile, the soil, the basis of all life, is being destroyed. That's the food that we eat. Nutrient-dense food comes from nutrient-dense soil, which then goes into the gut of each and every one of us. It gives us life. When that soil is depleted, and the plants are depleted, so are we as human beings. It's all connected. Nobody's winning when we treat the planet the way that we do. It's a vicious cycle that needs a real change.
And again, I go back to the fact that I believe that we can change. We have to. We need more people feeling empowered, and understanding that they, as an individual, have a lot of agency to make change.
Even though it seems like things are just going to just be the way they are, that is not true. Everything changes. It is the principle of life. Everything changes.
Kamea Chayne: And this calls for an expansion of the ways that we look at wealth. I'm aware that, as you mentioned in the beginning, you've had the privilege of a lot of love capital in your family and in your community. This may be the first time our listeners are getting to hear about this term, "love capital.” Could you elaborate on what this means to you, and how it's perhaps changed or challenged the ways that you look at privilege?
Konda Mason: I say that term because there are all kinds of capital, and financial capital is something we did not have a lot of growing up. But our currency was love, and that currency is way more powerful than any piece of paper that we agree on that has some kind of meaning to it.
Having had the love that I was raised with and being able to be infused with that, that's how I see the world. I'm grateful to my family and my mother, who showed us what is really important in life. When I see the world, I see how we have taken that word out of everything that we do, unless it's something personal or it's some being that we love. There's no love in business or in anything like that. To me, that's why we have the world that we have. It all becomes transactional, and it's not about relationship.
Love brings about relationship, and it centers relationship. And relationship is who we really are, I believe.
When we center relationship as opposed to transaction, that changes things gravely. You can do any kind of transaction if you don't see the people that you're working with, or emotionally, personally invest in the people that you support. I had a business in Oakland, called Impact Hub Oakland, and people loved going into our space. It was a 12,000-square-foot space where we worked and we made it really beautiful. People would walk in and go, "wow, what is it? Why do I always want to be here?" And what it was was that they felt cared for and loved. That's what it boils down to, honestly. It is what we're all really looking for.
People have taken it out and compartmentalized it to like Sunday, at church, or whatever that might be. It's like that 5% versus 95% right? I can do 5% of this good stuff, but the 95% is about me.
This hyper-individualistic society that we live in that's about me, me, me, is a big problem when it's at the expense of the we.
And to me, love is when we broaden our definition of me to incorporate a lot more than just me, myself and I.
Kamea Chayne: That resonates very deeply with me. Something I've noticed, very broadly speaking, is that as a community's supply and demand of needs become commercialized, as the roles within a community become professionalized, and as the creation of products and services become industrialized, at the surface we might see that the community is growing financially richer, but there's not necessarily an increase in overall wealth, because through those processes, social, spiritual, and love capital seem to be exchanged for the currency of financial capital.
To give an example, I'm thinking about how when my grandma mends clothes for me, or when my mom cooks for me, or when a friend delivers soups and medicines to me when I'm sick. Those are invaluable forms of mutual love and relationship building that just can't be dollarized. They strengthen my community and are able to enrich me in ways that monetary value can't capture. But when all of those become services that I pay for, the financial capital becomes a more reductive substitute for the other forms of capital, so they tend to become more transactional.
And many people today are forced to partake in our economies in this transactional way, because maybe we've lost other forms of wealth and privilege, but it may be instructive in orienting us towards a more holistically enriching life and society.
Konda Mason: There's a lot in there to unpack. We have traded in that which is sacred for that which is transactional and that which buys things. We have traded in a lot of who we really are, what really makes us well, for what we can buy to make us (what we think) well, happy, and to have what we consider to be the good life.
And yet, as you said, there are no greater moments than those acts of kindness when they show up at our door—those are really what make us human.
This society, and capitalism, the racial capitalism and the greed that goes along with it…they are taking us away from being relational.
And also the communities, as you were saying, are not getting wealthier. People's money is going out of the neighborhood. That's why we have the local movement: if you're going to spend your money, spend it on a business that's right next door or right down the road, and have it go to your local entrepreneur. Keep the money circulating within the community. Otherwise, it goes right out of the community and the communities are depleted. Big box stores and big corporations continue to thrive off of our inability to see ourselves as local beings. Meanwhile, we have lost our neighborhoods.
But something that's happened with COVID is that it's opened up our eyes again a little bit more towards the local. We've started looking around, because we had to slow down long enough to just stop and depend on each other a little more than we ever had to before. That's one of the upsides of COVID, though I say that with all knowledge and reverence to those who have lost their lives to this horrible pandemic.
But if we can really slow down and be a part of each other's lives and care for each other? That's what wealth really is.
Kamea Chayne: Yeah, sometimes in the face of crises, we're called to remember what it is that matters most to us. It's really worth tuning into those messages and allowing them guide our path forward.
In regards to change for the future, you say that it goes deeper than the tactical ways of doing things. It's the mindset that created the problem that has to be changed. People, broadly speaking, often focus on the what, or the how, and not necessarily the worldviews, mindsets, and deeper spiritual states or senses of being that underlie all of that and shape the what and the how.
How did you come to see that this crisis we're facing is actually much deeper than what may be visible to our naked eyes, and what mindsets need to be shifted to then manifest in the more tangible and structural changes in our world?
Konda Mason: We have to look at what we value. One of the things that we value as a society, in a very toxic way, is growth that goes beyond the limits of what is doable for the planet and for ourselves. If you can't grow and expand, then people aren't interested. They're interested in how it scales. And the little moments of, like you mentioned, someone showing up on your porch with your soup? That, to me, is the real deal right there.
Instead of looking at things as scale, what if we looked at the potency of a moment, the potency of the depth that we go with each other?
We're so caught up in the dominant narrative. All we have to do is stop and pause and breathe, and have a little bit of a critical mind and critical thinking, and we can see that the problem is that almost everything that we’re taught is of value is actually the reverse. What we value and what we undervalue are the things that are sacred: each other, our relationships. There's a woman by the name of Donella Meadows who talked about the fact that in order to make transformation, we have to change the mindset that created the system that we want to change. Change the mindset and you change the system.
We have to change this hierarchical worldview that we dominate the planet, that we dominate all species, that we dominate each other, that we dominate different groups. If that is our worldview, our worldview is one of extraction, not of regeneration. Until we understand what that extraction and the harm that it has caused looks like on a personal level, on a societal level, or on a planetary level, we can't diagnose and fix it. Currently, our practices take life out rather than put life in. We suck the life out of systems, out of the Earth, out of each other, rather than putting life in. Regeneration is just that—it is life: being life and supporting life.
The world is at a very interesting precipice right now after the IPCC report. We have a few years to halve our parts per million of carbon in the air by 2030, and then we've got to do another half after that by 2050. To do that, we're going to have to put in a concerted effort, be looking at each other, working together, and valuing life again, and not money. Understanding that money has a place, that it is only an agreement that we've made with each other, that it inherently has no value. Inherently it's nothing but something that we have given value to. But we could change the kind of value that we give to it. Look at the gift economy, the barter economy.
There are so many things that are happening right now on the planet, that are trying to find out what a newer capitalism looks like, what the next capitalism looks like, what the next economy looks like. We need to do that, we need to value different things than what we value right now. We can do it. But we got to get on it. And really, we can try to gather up all the goodies, all the money and stack it in a bank, but as we go off the edge, what is that going to do? So we need to reprioritize.
I can tell you something, if we don't make it, the Earth's going to be fine, because she will regenerate. Whether humans are here to be a part of it is what the question is. I would hope so. I would like to think that the children who are being born right now are going to have a world that is regenerative and loving to be raised in and to continue to steward.
*** CLOSING ***
Kamea Chayne: What's an uplifting social media account or publication you follow or a book that's been really profound for you?
Konda Mason: Regeneration, the book. I'm in the thick of it right now. And a book that has been profound for me and my life is anything written by Toni Morrison, period.
Kamea Chayne: What is a personal motto, mantra or practice you engage in to stay grounded?
Konda Mason: Not me, not mine, not I.
Kamea Chayne: And what are some of your biggest sources of inspiration right now?
Konda Mason: The people that I work with. I work with the most amazing individuals that keep me inspired. They're so smart and they're so heart-centered.
Kamea Chayne: Konda, thank you so much for joining me on the show today. It's been an honor to be in conversation with you. What final words of wisdom do you have for us as Green Dreamers?
Konda Mason: I'm not familiar with the podcast, I have to be honest. But I love the name, and I have a sense of it. And through the questions you asked me, I have a sense of where you're headed. I think that the people who must listen to this podcast are already on a spectrum of doing good in the world, and seeing that it's all possible. My last words are that…
