Kellogg Foundation awards $75 million to fight racial disparities in U.S.

The W.K. Kellogg Foundation has awarded $75 million in grants to civic groups working to eliminate racial disparities in communities across the country -- the largest sum the foundation has ever targeted at a single goal.

Kellogg, the fifth-largest foundation in the country and a frequent contributor to nonprofit groups that help children and families in the United States and abroad, launched the effort because of concern about the notion that issues of race had become less important since President Obama's election.

"The legacy of centuries of systematic racial discrimination and institutionalized allowance of that can't be overlooked," said Gail Christopher, the foundation's vice president for programs. "There are still consequences to that, and it will take us a long time to undo that."

Leaders of the foundation said their goal is to do away with structural racism, which they described as symptomatic of the wide swath of racial disparities inherent in health outcomes for minorities, the achievement gap in the education system and the disproportionate number of minorities who are imprisoned.

"The reality is that being a person of color in this nation increases a child's vulnerability in virtually every aspect of their life -- access to employment, access to health food, access to education," the foundation president, Sterling Speirn, said at a news conference Tuesday. "Although they may both have a college degree, a white worker can expect to earn $60,000 while a Latino worker can expect an average salary of $45,000 a year."

Supporters of the initiative include Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), who called it the next step in advancing civil rights. "It strikes at the core of what participants in the civil rights movement struggled to do not so long ago," Lewis said.

Kellogg's grants, to 119 groups, include $10,000 to the People's Grocery in West Oakland, Calif., to organize healthful food demonstrations, $300,000 to the Foundation for the Mid-South to reduce racial health disparities in 30 small towns, and $105,000 to the New Mexico Forum for Youth in Community to expand its dialogues on racial equity and historic oppression.