Title: BBC - Ethics - Charity: Arguments against charity
Headings: Arguments against charity
Arguments against charity
What's wrong with charity
Thinking too small
Charities often target symptoms, not causes
Charity may become a substitute for real justice
Failing to change society
Charity may not provide the best solution to a problem
Charity may benefit the state rather than the needy
Technicalities of giving
Charity may lead to favouritism, not fairness
The relationship between charity and the tax system can do harm
Our charitable giving is often inefficient
What charities do with their funds
Charities may not make best use of their funds
Charities are often accountable to the givers not the receivers
Is it ethical to give with strings attached?
Fundraising

Content: Charity may become a substitute for real justice
This is a particular slant on the topic above. The idea is that charity is wrong when it's used to patch up the effects of the fundamental injustices that are built into the structure and values of a society. Charity, from this viewpoint, can sometimes be seen as actually accepting the injustice itself, while trying to mitigate the consequences of the injustice. One person who wrote on this is the American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr. We have previously suggested that philanthropy combines genuine pity with the display of power and that the latter element explains why the powerful are more inclined to be generous than to grant social justice. Reinhold Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society, 1932
Niebuhr thought that a powerful person's donation to charity was
a display of his power and an expression of his pity. And Niebuhr added
His generous impulse freezes within him if his power is challenged or his generosities are accepted without suitable humility. Reinhold Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society, 1932
One example given by Niebuhr (who was writing in 1930s USA) was the way charitable help for black education didn't deal with the roots of the problem. His language is not in line with modern racial sensibilities, but the point is still of value. The Negro schools, conducted under the auspices of white philanthropy, encourage individual Negroes to higher forms of self-realisation;