DeVos Election funding in 2020 is primarily about the funding of White Supremacy

Over the past two weeks, we have posted 4 articles taking a look at how the DeVos family has utilized their wealth during the 2020 Election Cycle. 

In Part I of this series, we looked at how two of the companies the DeVos family owns, Amway and RDV Corporation, have provided significant funding to candidates in the 2020 Election.

In Part II, we looked at candidates in Kent County who have received funding from then DeVos family.

In Part III, we looked at how the DeVos family members were influencing electoral outcomes through their campaign contributions at the state level.

In Part IV, we looked at how the DeVos family members were pumping millions into the federal elections through their campaign contributions.

The total amount of money coming from the DeVos family in the 2020 election cycle comes to roughly $12.7 million. During the 2018 election cycle, the DeVos family campaign contributions were comparable, which means that have easy contributed over $20 million during the Trump administration. 

Now if there is anything that we have learned about this administration in the past 4 years, we have learned that much of what the Trump administration has been about is the perpetuation of White Supremacy. Now, if we use the definition that is used by the group, Challenging White Supremacy, then that definition would be:

White Supremacy is an historically based, institutionally perpetuated system of exploitation and oppression of continents, nations and peoples of color by white peoples and nations of the European continent, for the purpose of maintaining and defending a system of wealth, power and privilege. 

This definition of White Supremacy is the very ideologically driven motivation for the DeVos family’s insertion of millions of dollars in every campaign cycle since the Reagan era, and it is the over-riding factor during the past 4 years of the Trump administration. 

Over the past 4 years, we have witnessed the expansion and promotion of mass incarceration, the widening of the wealth gap in the US, the further gentrification of our communities, the growing use of police power to suppress any resistance (especially resistance from the Black community) the xenophobic cracked down on the immigrant community, and the growth of domestic terrorism in the guise of “patriotism.” During the COVID 19 crisis we have seen this administration use White Supremacy to bailout out Wall Street, while throwing crumbs to the millions of Black, latinx and even poor white families that are facing unemployment, eviction, sickness and even death. This is what the DeVos family has been funding over the past 4 years.

Besides the direct funding of the Republican Party during the last four years, the DeVos family has also utilized the following entities to perpetuate much of White Supremacist policies that have been adopted at the federal, state and local level:

Grand Rapids Chamber of Commerce, the West Michigan Policy Forum, The Right Place Inc., the Acton Institute, the Mackinac Center, the Michigan Freedom Forum, the Great Lakes Education Project, Grand Action 2.0, Talent 2025 and all of the various family foundations they operation, which we have written about. All of these entities also utilize DeVos family funding and the considerable political influence that the DeVos family has to make sure that policies and practices are in place that are driven by White Supremacy – the maintenance and defense of a system of wealth, power and privilege. 

This is what the DeVos family has done for the past several decades and most clearly during the Trump era, the promotion of White Supremacy. Therefore, I ask you how can you even consider defending or supporting in any way the work that is being done in Grand Rapids through the numerous non-profits that that DeVos family contribute to? In addition, how can you support the numerous DeVos created entities that also operated in Grand Rapids, such as ArtPrize, AmplifyGR and Start Garden? The DeVos family bludgeons people with White Supremacy, especially Black people, and then offers entrepreneurial programs, as if to say, “your problems are not structural, you just haven’t been given the opportunity to shine.” This is managerial racism at its finest.