In 1974 the noble prize in economics was awarded jointly to Friedrich August von Hayek and Gunnar Myrdal.

Gunnar Myrdal

a particularly monumental decision in racially motivated liberal philanthropy arose in the “aftermath of the Harlem riot of 1935, [when the] Carnegie Corporation’s Trustee Newton Baker conceived of the idea of undertaking a broad study of ‘the Negro Problem’ in America”. Shortly thereafter, in 1938, the Carnegie Corporation commissioned sociologist Gunnar Myrdal to carry out what turned out to be the landmark study of black-white relations. The end result of this “lavishly funded” project was Myrdal’s seminal book, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy (Harper and Row, 1944), a study that Sven Eliaeson suggests might “well be the most influential book on Afro-Americans and American civilization in the 20th century. (3)

In keeping with the elitist nature of liberal philanthropy — briefly outlined in the introduction — Eliaeson notes that Carnegie wanted a writer “who was neither to be considered prejudiced nor imperialist,” thus Myrdal, identifying as a democratic socialist, fitted this position well. Furthermore, Myrdal’s liberal pedigree was already well established, as from 1929 to 1930 he had also served as a Rockefeller Foundation fellow; consequently, it is fitting that Beardsley Ruml of the Rockefeller Foundation played a key role in helping to convince Myrdal to take on the Carnegie project. Yet despite the noble intentions of the Carnegie project, the end result — that is, Myrdal’s book — was considered by many coloured scholars to have “addressed more the conscience of white liberals than the real issues they themselves were confronting.” (4) Indeed, Bernhard J. Stern suggested that while “Myrdal at first took a tough-minded conflict-power approach to the Negro problem [he later] changed it to the ‘softer’ conception in accord with the moral values of the white middle class because of Carnegie Corporation sponsorship.