Ralph Ellison’s classic novel gives voice to the frustration of African Americans in the pre–civil rights era. It is also a useful study in the ways in which philanthropy can go awry when it is based on falsehoods and denies dignity to its intended beneficiaries in order to serve the donor’s underlying ideology.

Cecil E. Bohanon is a professor of economics at Ball State University.
Michelle Albert Vachris is professor of management, business, and economics in the Department of Management, Business, and Economics at Virginia Wesleyan University.
Other Independent Review articles by Cecil E. Bohanon
Summer 2022 Minds Wide Shut: How the New Fundamentalisms Divide Us
Winter 2021/22 Steven G. Horwitz: A Tribute
Winter 2020/21 Human Nature and Civil Society in Jane Austen
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Other Independent Review articles by Michelle Albert Vachris
Winter 2020/21 Human Nature and Civil Society in Jane Austen
Winter 2018/19 Dynamism as a Bump on the Road to Crony Capitalism?