Ford Foundation President: Henry Ford was a racist, also first capitalist to tackle inequality

When asked whether the name of the Ford Foundation is still appropriate, Ford Foundation President Darren Walker says that his foundation’s original benefactor, Henry Ford, was an anti-Semite and a racist, but also a brilliant industrialist who was the first capitalist to name inequality as a problem. “Henry Ford was a complicated, flawed genius. I am able to hold both of those narratives…the duality of who we are as a people cannot be denied and we must come to grips with how to hold both of those narratives…I am comfortable, I do not believe that we need to be named anything other than the Ford Foundation because without Henry Ford…we wouldn’t be doing the work that we do in the world today.