‘My ancestors made harmful and immoral choices’: Morgan Curtis at her ‘intentional community’ in California. Photograph: Rachel Bujalski/The Observer Philanthropy ‘I see this money as not mine’: the people giving away fortunes from slavery and fossil fuels What would you do if your inherited wealth was built on slavery, fossil fuels or came at the price of neglect? Meet the guilty rich who want nothing to do with their money

Morgan Curtis’s life story is the American Dream in reverse. Her great, great, great grandfather was a banker in early 1800s New York – he invested in railroads, while his brother invested in Central American mines. The family wealth grew as it passed through the generations, and Curtis’s father added to the pile as a management consultant for “major” firms. Naturally, Curtis had a gilded childhood: educated in west London private schools; going on annual Swiss ski holidays; her own pony. But today, Curtis, now 30, lives on a farm in California with 40 other people. She lives on $25,000 (£20,000) a year.

This is because Curtis’s banker ancestor didn’t start with nothing – and Curtis is keenly aware that the American Dream for some means an American nightmare for others. Her great, great, great, great (that’s an extra great) grandfather owned a cotton mill that ran on slave labour, while her maternal family had an 11,000-acre sugar plantation in Cuba. “My ancestors made harmful and immoral choices, participating in slavery and colonisation,” she says, “And so I see this money as not mine; as belonging to those communities who had their land and labour stolen from them.”

“A few days ago I took a medium dose of acid,” began a Twitter thread that was “ratioed” last June. (This means vastly more people replied to it than liked or retweeted it – an almost sure sign you’ve said something controversial.) Across 36 tweets, the man revealed he “resented” his mother for giving him $100,000. The world told him, “You do labour and are paid a fair wage for your labour and that’s how you earn the right to exist and be a member of society” – the acid made him realise he felt “guilty” because he had “never” done this.

“What we see with some very, very wealthy families is quite a lot of neglect,” says Robert Batt, founder of the Recovery Centre, a London-based mental health clinic for wealthy clients. “Now, that’s not neglect in the sense of a child going unfed,” Batt continues, explaining that one teen began self-harming after a difficult day at school. “She goes back to the big house in Belgravia and no one’s home. There’s probably a housekeeper somewhere, but no family… It feels odd to call that neglect, but I guess emotionally it really is.” Since the 1990s, child development expert Suniya S Luthar has repeatedly found that substance abuse, anxiety and depression are elevated in children on both ends of the socioeconomic spectrum.

At the age of five, Batt himself became lord of 18 Norfolk villages when his father died – by 15, he was a “menace” who “didn’t really do anything with my life apart from spend money and cause chaos” (he became addicted to cocaine, alcohol and shopping). “All the responsibility, all that wealth, all that history, led me into decline, despair and misery,” he says. He is troubled when families focus on “protecting the wealth, not the child”.

Yet the guilty rich are growing in number – or at least, more are speaking out. MacKenzie Scott, ex-wife of the world’s second richest man, Jeff Bezos, has given $12bn to non-profits in the past two years. “Like many, I watched the first half of 2020 with a mixture of heartbreak and horror,” Scott wrote in a July blog post that year, adding that she hoped, “people troubled by recent events [would] make new connections between privileges they’ve enjoyed and benefits they’ve taken for granted.” Abigail Disney – whose family needs no introduction – has said she opted out of being a billionaire, and would pass a global law banning private jets if she could.

Later, while studying environmental engineering at Dartmouth College, Curtis campaigned for the institution to divest its shares in Chevron and Exxon – then came the shock of her life. She sold her car and her father said she could keep the money if she invested in stocks. Hoping to aid solar panel companies, she went to open an investment account – then, she found out she already had one. There was $350,000 in her name, invested in “the very same corporations I was campaigning against”.

“I felt guilt, shame, anger… and a fiery longing to change it,” Curtis says. The money accumulated to $600,000 before she obtained full access in 2020 – so far, she has redistributed two-thirds. She has written a poem entitled On Shame. “Maybe you, like me, have an ancestor / you’ve been too ashamed to even speak of,” it begins. Later: “What we are most ashamed of / is not what they did / but what we are yet to do.”

Yet Stephen says guilt “doesn’t necessarily put me into action, like, ‘OK, I’ll donate a bunch of money’” – instead, it “gives me some motivation to work some more hours, because other people are also working.” He says seeing a therapist has improved his self-esteem, which in turn has changed his perspective. “It’s helped lower the feelings of guilt,” he says. “She’s really helped me feel as if I can choose the life I want and I don’t have to necessarily listen to the social pressure of using this money to further the good of everybody. I can really use it to help me achieve the things that I want to achieve.” (Stephen would like to do charity work in the future, saying: “First you have to learn to help yourself before you can help others.”)

Rachel Sherman is a sociologist and author of Uneasy Street: The Anxieties of Affluence – she is currently working on a book about wealthy people working to change the system that advantages them. “There’s scepticism that this is just about being woke; it’s another form of status to say you’re sad about your money,” Sherman says. However, she adds: “Silence around class is one of the things that makes it possible for us to have so much inequality.” Sherman believes “these feelings are politically crucial” and change is possible when the wealthy talk openly.

Source: The Guardian

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