I'm Jeff Trexler, Wilson Professor of Social Entrepreneurship at Pace University, where I study law and personal identity. It's good to be here at JustMeans. Uncivil Society is a blog I maintain about values, design and corporate identity, with a particular focus on social enterprise. The Blingdom of God is where I write about spirituality and material culture....
Blast from the recent past
This week in my social enterprise class we looked at some recent texts regarding innovative financial practices. Among the highlights: praise for cutting-edge loans that made ownership accessible to otherwise unqualified buyers while hedging risk for charitable investors.
Whoops.
Material such as this is a potent reminder of what we lose when charity merely parrots the latest trends, whether in business or government. It's not just that we're only as strong as the weakest fad--we can actually exacerbate social problems in the name of doing good.
Helping to flood the market with subprime loans isn't morally equivalent to the eugenics movement of a century ago, but the underlying pattern is the same. Charity gains support by co-opting the zeitgeist, but in so doing sacrifices its credibility as a prophetic voice.
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