Dorian Spears has spent her whole life in Memphis. After college she worked for a social services agency, on a mayoral task force to curb gun violence and as a county economic development official before joining Momentum Nonprofit Partners, which coordinates local philanthropic efforts, three years ago. As chief partnerships officer, her current focus is coordinating efforts to assure a comprehensive census count of Tennessee, especially its cities, to maximize government aid and political power for the state's Black neighborhoods. Her answers have been edited for clarity and length.
What's the tweet-length description of your organization?
An intermediary that strengthens nonprofits from the inside out through training, peer learning, advocacy, public policy and cross sector partnerships.
Describe your very first civic engagement.
As a 7-year-old, I accompanied my parents and grandparents to vote at the nearby public library. I held their hands as we advanced in the line, listening to their discussions about candidates and their advice to me: "When you become an adult, you will have the right to vote. Ancestors came before you, suffered and lost their lives to make this right possible. We will remind you to sign up around your 18th birthday." That is exactly what happened after I obtained my driver's license. I went to the post office, registered to vote — and have not missed an election since.
What was your biggest professional triumph?
Getting 10 of my city's nonprofit and philanthropic organizations into one room for an eight-month effort, led by Beloved Community, to create racial equity action plans that anchor their policies and practices. It took almost a year to make that happen, with a few organizations almost backing out of the contract. While my goal was 20 organizations, including from government and business, I was thankful the institutions that signed on took this initiative seriously. We wrapped up a few weeks before Covid-19 arrived and have remained connected as we work through solidifying our respective plans.
And your most disappointing setback?
Most setbacks have arrived in my life when I did not take heed to my intuition or I took myself too seriously. I give myself grace in those moments and keep it moving.
How does your identity influence the way you go about your work?
I am Black woman in a senior professional role. When I grew up, little was expected from residents of my ZIP code. Now I recognize I am in a privileged space, invited to tables where I can influence change — and able to invite colleagues and younger leaders who would benefit from access to these rooms so they, too, can shape positive change.
As a practitioner of equity, diversity, and inclusion, I understand how setting the foundation of anti-Black racism and white dominant culture is important before we can arrive at this conclusion: Actions must be taken to allow for a thriving of communities that have suffered for generations, under systems not intended for marginalized identities. Knowing our current systems were not meant for all to benefit makes me angry often. At best, this makes me hopeful and engaged to create opportunities to shift that narrative.
What's the best advice you've ever been given?
Trust people to be themselves. It lessens surprise and disappointment.
Create a new flavor for Ben & Jerry's.
As a fan of the Atlanta based hip-hop group OutKast, it would be called "So Fresh, So Clean" — a citrus fruit mix sorbet with a hint of rosemary.
What's your favorite political movie or TV show?
"The Daily Show" with Trevor Noah. Or "House of Cards," but post-Kevin Spacey.
What's the last thing you do on your phone at night?
Check my calendar for the next day's schedule, play a crossword game — and meditate.
What is your deepest, darkest secret?
I would love to go to Colorado to visit the Royal Gorge Bridge and Park in Canyon City. I would get on the Royal Rush Skycoaster, ride the Aerial Gondolas and try the "Cloudscraper" — the highest zip line in the country! I do love adventure.
Eric Trump, the newly appointed ALT5 board director of World Liberty Financial, walks outside of the NASDAQ in Times Square as they mark the $1.5- billion partnership between World Liberty Financial and ALT5 Sigma with the ringing of the NASDAQ opening bell, on Aug. 13, 2025, in New York City.
Why does the Trump family always get a pass?
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche joined ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday to defend or explain a lot of controversies for the Trump administration: the Epstein files release, the events in Minneapolis, etc. He was also asked about possible conflicts of interest between President Trump’s family business and his job. Specifically, Blanche was asked about a very sketchy deal Trump’s son Eric signed with the UAE’s national security adviser, Sheikh Tahnoon.
Shortly before Trump was inaugurated in early 2025, Tahnoon invested $500 million in the Trump-owned World Liberty, a then newly launched cryptocurrency outfit. A few months later, UAE was granted permission to purchase sensitive American AI chips. According to the Wall Street Journal, which broke the story, “the deal marks something unprecedented in American politics: a foreign government official taking a major ownership stake in an incoming U.S. president’s company.”
“How do you respond to those who say this is a serious conflict of interest?” ABC host George Stephanopoulos asked.
“I love it when these papers talk about something being unprecedented or never happening before,” Blanche replied, “as if the Biden family and the Biden administration didn’t do exactly the same thing, and they were just in office.”
Blanche went on to boast about how the president is utterly transparent regarding his questionable business practices: “I don’t have a comment on it beyond Trump has been completely transparent when his family travels for business reasons. They don’t do so in secret. We don’t learn about it when we find a laptop a few years later. We learn about it when it’s happening.”
Sadly, Stephanopoulos didn’t offer the obvious response, which may have gone something like this: “OK, but the president and countless leading Republicans insisted that President Biden was the head of what they dubbed ‘the Biden Crime family’ and insisted his business dealings were corrupt, and indeed that his corruption merited impeachment. So how is being ‘transparent’ about similar corruption a defense?”
Now, I should be clear that I do think the Biden family’s business dealings were corrupt, whether or not laws were broken. Others disagree. I also think Trump’s business dealings appear to be worse in many ways than even what Biden was alleged to have done. But none of that is relevant. The standard set by Trump and Republicans is the relevant political standard, and by the deputy attorney general’s own account, the Trump administration is doing “exactly the same thing,” just more openly.
Since when is being more transparent about wrongdoing a defense? Try telling a cop or judge, “Yes, I robbed that bank. I’ve been completely transparent about that. So, what’s the big deal?”
This is just a small example of the broader dysfunction in the way we talk about politics.
Americans have a special hatred for hypocrisy. I think it goes back to the founding era. As Alexis de Tocqueville observed in “Democracy In America,” the old world had a different way of dealing with the moral shortcomings of leaders. Rank had its privileges. Nobles, never mind kings, were entitled to behave in ways that were forbidden to the little people.
In America, titles of nobility were banned in the Constitution and in our democratic culture. In a society built on notions of equality (the obvious exceptions of Black people, women, Native Americans notwithstanding) no one has access to special carve-outs or exemptions as to what is right and wrong. Claiming them, particularly in secret, feels like a betrayal against the whole idea of equality.
The problem in the modern era is that elites — of all ideological stripes — have violated that bargain. The result isn’t that we’ve abandoned any notion of right and wrong. Instead, by elevating hypocrisy to the greatest of sins, we end up weaponizing the principles, using them as a cudgel against the other side but not against our own.
Pick an issue: violent rhetoric by politicians, sexual misconduct, corruption and so on. With every revelation, almost immediately the debate becomes a riot of whataboutism. Team A says that Team B has no right to criticize because they did the same thing. Team B points out that Team A has switched positions. Everyone has a point. And everyone is missing the point.
Sure, hypocrisy is a moral failing, and partisan inconsistency is an intellectual one. But neither changes the objective facts. This is something you’re supposed to learn as a child: It doesn’t matter what everyone else is doing or saying, wrong is wrong. It’s also something lawyers like Mr. Blanche are supposed to know. Telling a judge that the hypocrisy of the prosecutor — or your client’s transparency — means your client did nothing wrong would earn you nothing but a laugh.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.