Netflix (NFLX) CEO Reed Hastings and his wife Patty Quillin are committing $120 million to the United Negro College Fund and historically black higher education institutions Spelman College and Morehouse College. The donation, the largest of its kind, was partly inspired by Robert F. Smith, CEO and chairman of Vista Equity Partners, who last year announced that he would pay off the student debt of about 400 Morehouse College students.
Smith joined Yahoo Finance to discuss the Hastings donation, education inequality, and corporate America’s push for diversity.
Smith said he still wrestles with racism today. “It affects every black person in America. I still feel it today, and it’s disturbing,” he said.
“In spending time with my teenage children, talking about the effects of racism on them, the effects of racism that I still see when trying to raise capital … those dynamics, unfortunately, they have been embedded. This is the whole point of ‘systemic,’ [it’s] embedded into the psyche of Americans and the institutions of America. And those are the things we have to eradicate.”
Smith said it’s important today to take advantage of the awareness around the current social justice movement. “It affects every moment of an African American’s life from the, I get in the car to go drive to the store and get some ice cream with my kids or … when there’s an over-policing dynamic on the one hand and lack of respect on the other … And that’s something we have to fix,” he said.
“This affects every person in America … We have to fix this as a country, we need to seize the moral high ground and put activities in place that say we are who we say we are not who we pretend to be.” Source
Interracial Marriage 