Who Who gets to tell our stories—and who gets the bag to help tell them?

  

Who gets to tell our stories—and who gets the bag to help tell them?

That doesn't mean suggesting that Wikimedia Foundation grants buy editorial control. The Foundation explicitly says its grants do not determine Wikipedia's content. But funding can influence who has time, travel, technology, organizational support, training, research capacity and opportunities to participate. That 

Who Gets to Tell Our Stories—and Who Gets the Bag?

The other day I was thinking about James Baldwin and Wikipedia.

I began with a simple question:

Who gets to tell our stories?

But the more I thought about it, the more another question came to me.

In today's language, we might say:

Who gets the bag?

Who gets the money?

Who gets the funding?

Who gets the institutional support to research, document, photograph, organize, travel, teach, edit and preserve knowledge?

Because telling stories takes more than having a story to tell.

It takes resources.

James Baldwin and the Story Behind the Story

When I looked at James Baldwin's Wikipedia biography, I found myself wanting something different.

I wanted to understand how Baldwin became Baldwin.

I wanted to know about the child who was reading classic literature while still in school.

The teenager who preached.

The son and older brother who lived with family responsibility.

The young man who knew the Bible deeply.

The young writer who moved downtown and encountered artists, musicians, writers and other creative thinkers.

I wanted to understand the intellectual formation of the man.

Baldwin's life wasn't simply a collection of dramatic events.

He was developing a mind.

He was learning how to observe.

He was learning how to question.

He was learning how to listen.

He was learning how to use language.

He was learning how to look at the world and ask:

Why is it this way?

And then:

Does it have to be this way?

That is the Baldwin I want to see.

Who Gets to Decide What Is Important?

This is where Wikipedia becomes interesting.

Wikipedia is built by volunteers, but it exists within a much larger Wikimedia ecosystem.

The Wikimedia Foundation provides the technological infrastructure that keeps Wikipedia running. It also provides grants and other resources to Wikimedia communities and organizations around the world.

According to the Foundation's 2024–25 annual report, its total expenses were about $190.9 million, including approximately $28.7 million in awards and grants. The Foundation reports that about 32% of its budget supports volunteers, including grants, legal support, community engagement and other resources.

In another 2025 explanation of its funding, the Foundation reported that it distributed $18.23 million across 417 grants during fiscal year 2024–25.

Those are significant resources.

And this is where I think we should ask a question that is not necessarily about wrongdoing.

It is a question about access.

Who has access to those resources?

Who knows how to apply?

Who has the organizational structure to receive a grant?

Who has the time to write the proposal?

Who already has relationships inside the Wikimedia movement?

Who knows what kinds of projects are fundable?

Who has the confidence to ask?

And perhaps most importantly:

Who doesn't?

The Bag Can Shape Participation

I am not saying that receiving a Wikimedia grant means someone controls Wikipedia.

That would be inaccurate.

The Wikimedia Foundation itself says its grants do not determine Wikipedia's content. Wikipedia remains a volunteer-edited encyclopedia governed by its editorial principles and community processes.

But there is another issue.

Money can shape participation without directly controlling content.

If one person has funding to travel to conferences, another has funding to organize edit-a-thons, another can purchase equipment, another can hire staff, another can conduct research, and another has no funding at all, they do not begin from the same position.

They may all technically have the same right to edit Wikipedia.

But they don't necessarily have the same capacity to participate.

That distinction matters.

Who Gets to Be in the Room?

I have attended Wikimedia events where people are thinking about knowledge, technology, Africa, artificial intelligence and the future of Wikipedia.

And I keep thinking about the people who aren't in the room.

The community historian.

The retired teacher.

The grandmother who knows the neighborhood history.

The farmer who has spent forty years working with the land.

The person who knows where the photographs are.

The person who remembers the old theater.

The person who knows which family lived in which house.

The young person who has never edited Wikipedia but has extraordinary digital skills.

What happens when those people aren't part of the knowledge-making system?

Their knowledge can remain invisible.

And sometimes the problem isn't that they don't care.

Sometimes they simply don't know that there is a door.

Or they don't know how to open it.

African American Knowledge Needs More Than Articles

This is especially important when we talk about African American history.

We often think about the problem as a shortage of articles.

But sometimes the problem is deeper.

We need people documenting the connections.

Who taught whom?

Who introduced whom?

Where did the artists meet?

Which restaurants became gathering places?

Which churches produced writers and activists?

Which teachers encouraged children to read?

Which libraries became intellectual centers?

Which community organizations preserved photographs and oral histories?

Who owned the building?

Who funded the theater?

Who paid the rent?

Who provided the food?

Who gave the young artist a place to sleep?

Who gave the young writer a job?

Those questions reveal the infrastructure behind cultural production.

Baldwin Had an Intellectual Infrastructure

James Baldwin did not become James Baldwin alone.

There were teachers.

There was family.

There was the church.

There were books.

There were libraries.

There was Harlem.

There was Countee Cullen.

There was Beauford Delaney.

There were writers and artists in Greenwich Village.

There was Connie's Calypso Restaurant.

There were conversations.

There were friendships.

There were people who opened doors.

There were people who challenged him.

There were people who believed in his talent.

There was an entire social and cultural infrastructure around the development of his mind.

That is the story I want to see preserved.

And I think that is also the story we need to tell about Wikipedia itself.

Wikipedia Has an Infrastructure Too

Wikipedia can look almost magical to the reader.

You type a name.

An article appears.

You click a link.

Another article appears.

You find a photograph.

You find a source.

You find a date.

You find a connection.

But behind that apparently simple experience is an enormous infrastructure.

Servers.

Software developers.

Editors.

Administrators.

Photographers.

Archivists.

Researchers.

Organizers.

Affiliates.

Volunteers.

Donors.

Grant programs.

Staff.

And communities.

The Wikimedia Foundation says that it exists to maintain the infrastructure and support the communities that make the projects possible.

So when we talk about who tells the story, we should also talk about the infrastructure that makes storytelling possible.

Who Gets the Bag?

This is where my phrase comes from.

Who gets the bag?

I don't mean it in a cynical way.

I mean it as a question about power and participation.

If millions of dollars are being invested in free knowledge, we should be curious about where those resources go.

Which communities receive grants?

Which communities are growing?

Which communities remain underrepresented?

What kinds of projects receive support?

Who applies?

Who gets turned down?

Who doesn't apply?

What skills are required to successfully navigate the funding system?

And are the people who possess valuable community knowledge actually positioned to participate?

These are reasonable questions for a movement built around the idea that knowledge belongs to everyone.

The Question Isn't Only "What Is Missing?"

Perhaps Wikipedia editors need to ask two questions.

The first is:

What is missing from the encyclopedia?

But there is another:

Who is missing from the process of creating it?

Those are not the same question.

We can create an article about an African American community without having many people from that community participate in creating it.

We can document African history without having many Africans involved in the documentation.

We can write about Black artists without having enough Black cultural historians participating.

We can talk about knowledge equity while the people with the least access to resources remain on the outside.

That is the contradiction worth examining.

Money Doesn't Buy the Story—but It Can Help Create the Conditions for Telling It

This is the distinction I want to make.

Funding does not necessarily buy editorial control.

But funding can buy capacity.

Capacity to travel.

Capacity to organize.

Capacity to research.

Capacity to digitize.

Capacity to teach.

Capacity to photograph.

Capacity to hold meetings.

Capacity to train new editors.

Capacity to bring people into the room.

And capacity matters.

If we genuinely want the sum of human knowledge to reflect humanity, then we have to think about the people who are currently missing from the process.

Maybe This Is the Baldwin Question

James Baldwin spent his life asking who gets to define reality.

Who gets to define America?

Who gets to define Blackness?

Who gets to define morality?

Who gets to define freedom?

Who gets to tell the truth?

And now, decades later, we have another place where those questions matter:

Who gets to participate in building the digital record of human knowledge?

And perhaps the next question is:

Who gets the resources to participate?

That is my "bag" question.

Not simply:

Who gets to tell our stories?

But:

Who gets to tell them, who gets heard, who gets supported—and who gets the bag?

Because if knowledge is truly supposed to belong to everyone, then participation cannot simply mean that everyone is technically allowed to edit.

We should also be asking whether everyone has a meaningful opportunity to participate.

And that brings me back to James Baldwin.

The young Baldwin had access to books.

He had teachers.

He had a library.

He had a church.

He had Harlem.

He had artists.

He had mentors.

He had places where ideas were exchanged.

He had people who helped him develop his mind.

Perhaps our task today is to build that kind of intellectual infrastructure for the next generation.

Not simply to give people an article to read.

But to give them the tools, knowledge, resources and confidence to become part of the people who write the record.

Because the real question isn't only:

Who gets to tell our stories?

It is also:

Who has the opportunity to become a storyteller?

And yes—

who gets the bag to help make it possible?

Who gets the “bag” moves the discussion from representation to power and capacity.