MESSAGING PRO-TIPS

Decades of research repeatedly show us that the term racism is primarily understood as an individual’s personal racial beliefs. Most people across race don’t understand or immediately think about how racism occurs on multiple levels. RCN addresses structural racism by pointing out the way that race and racism is weaponized by our opposition to drive a wedge between communities. It pulls back the curtain on a core part of how they attempt to weaken our movements for change and justice.

The RCN messaging architecture offers you an opportunity when naming villains to explicitly describe how people of color and other marginalized and intersecting identities are scapegoated for problems that are most often created by greedy corporations and bad political actors. Our goal is to give detail on what racism looks like and how it harms all of us, even while naming that people of color are harmed the most. When acknowledging these unequal impacts – disparities – clearly assign blame to villains, and then provide examples of collective solutions that prioritize communities of color.

“All lives matter” is a counter-argument against Black Lives Matter. Our opposition uses it to pit BIPOC suffering against white suffering, shut down conversation, and activate a defensive response. We need to avoid our opposition’s trap of division to distract us.

The explicit naming of white people is bringing white people into a shared multiracial democracy frame. It is a direct push back at the idea that racial justice can only be achieved by subjugating white people, which is our opposition’s primary way of corrupting our call for racial justice. And our research shows that BIPOC people want to know that white people are working with us to change the real impacts of strategic racism. Racial disparities were created by people in power to prevent us from coming together and demanding better for all of us.

Research shows that it is best to work in all elements of the RCN frame whenever possible. Unfortunately, in this digital age with character limits, that’s not always possible. While we may be limited by character count on some social media platforms, we can make our overall feeds reflect all four elements of the RCN frame.

Visuals can also add elements that don’t fit in the text. In this post, for example, while the text doesn’t explicitly name race, the graphic does a great job of illustrating that “every child” means kids of all races and genders.

When choosing which RCN elements to highlight, prioritize saying what we are for rather than what we are against.

RCN is a framework that can be adapted to add genders, religions, and other identities important for your issues. For example: No matter our races, genders, or faiths, we all deserve the freedom to be ourselves.

Research by ASO Communications, Transgender Law Center, and Lake Research Partners found that we can advance a shared vision for the future by weaving together our shared values, experiences, and demands across race and genders. Using a gender-inclusive narrative can mobilize our base, marginalize our opposition, and move people who are still persuadable. To learn more about that research, read Transgender Youth and the Freedom to Be Ourselves.

A good place to start is this example language two-pager. We recommend using creativity to hook your audience, while still establishing a shared value at the outset of a message. The examples in that document are just a start. The opening phrases can be tailored to fit your community, issue, or geographic location. For example, Minnesota advocates used “from North Minneapolis to North Mankato, from Red Lake to Red Wing.” Transit activists described people’s different experiences with “whether we drive, bus, or train; bike, walk, or roll.”

Whether we’re at the Capitol pushing for policy change or in our neighborhoods protesting for justice, words have power. But too often, the folks who are least familiar with our jargon are the ones we are trying to mobilize.

Using jargon makes our messages inaccessible and reduces the chances our audiences will take action. When we use jargon, we run the risk of excluding, dismissing, and belittling people who don’t share the same education, economic or social status. This alienation of groups via words can be amplified by racial dynamics and immigration status. When we use clear, compelling, jargon-free communication, we open the doors for more people to understand, act on, and repeat our messages.

When you’re not talking about race, other political actors still are. We don’t get to decide if race will be discussed in our politics and governing. We only get to decide if we will be a part of that conversation. Our opposition will use explicitly or implicitly racist dog-whistles in order to stoke fear and create division. To fight back against these attacks, build cross-racial solidarity, and increase support for our issues, we must explicitly reference race. Years of research and state partner wins informed by the Race Class Narrative framework is a proven theory of change. We can name race to advance a multiracial democracy.

To learn more about our opposition’s deliberate strategy of using race to divide us, check out the Race-Class Academy.

In our research, we’ve seen that messages that start with a shared value are more effective at moving key audiences than those that begin with a problem. Too often, our side leads with problems and negative demands because we are frustrated and fed up with the status quo. However, that fuels cynicism and allows our opposition to set the terms of the debate.

When we begin our stories with shared values, we appeal to people’s better selves. We create a “big us” across race and class defined by our beliefs in a common good. Then, when we talk about the problem, we can more effectively frame our villains as being out of touch and divisive.

Also, research from across our movement shows that leading with a problem might get our audience to agree with us, but makes them feel more discouraged and less likely to take action. Leading with a value enables us to better mobilize and persuade people to our cause and counter the story of racial division and scapegoating used by our opponents.

Our base and persuadable audiences know that people, even villains, usually act for a reason. So when a villain’s motivation is left unstated, audiences get cynical and often tune out the rest of the message. Most people don’t believe that our villains are inherently evil. Therefore, we must give an origin story or motivations for their damaging actions.

Activists and advocates work or volunteer regularly for political causes and want to hear the political ideology. The base shares our beliefs but may never come to an organizing meeting. The base is our friend who volunteers at the farmers market, our cousin who works at the grocery store, and our auntie who votes for our issues every year but resists talking about politics. Our community that doesn’t engage in politics all year is the base, but they share our beliefs and do everyday actions so that we can all thrive.

Naming race in the RCN framework is about belonging. Everybody wants to belong. It’s a basic human need to be loved and feel included. Whether it’s on the movie screen or in our government, we’ve seen that representation matters. Folks have a visceral reaction to being able to relate with characters or personalities when they have been historically left out. By naming race, we’re opening the opportunity to feel a sense of everyone belonging in the future that we’re fighting for.

RCN is about giving space for folks of all races to see themselves as part of the fight for economic and racial justice. We must disrupt the dominant narrative of scarcity and division. That means we must talk to everyone about race and that includes white people too. If we don’t include white people in our vision for a multiracial democracy, we are fueling our opposition’s strategy of division and ceding power for them to be mobilized.

It’s easy for folks to imagine that the movement for racial justice is made up entirely of Black, brown, and Indigenous people, while the moveable middle and white supremacists are all white people. However, we know that it’s not so binary. Individuals of any race can be anywhere on the racial justice spectrum. We know this not only from research, but from our own lived experiences. Can you think of any friends, family members, or acquaintances who are people of color and defy stereotypical racial justice views?

The fact is the moveable middle is made up of folks of all races. Yes, the majority of them are white. Yes, Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) communities are more likely to have a racial justice orientation because of their lived experiences. But, that doesn’t mean we can generalize to assume that all people of color analyze the world through a racial justice lens and all white people don’t. Additionally, while BIPOC communities are more likely to have a racial justice orientation, they are also less likely to take action when we focus on the history of abuse that people in power have caused. Those messages increase the cynicism of our most value-aligned audiences. The RCN framework has proven to mobilize people from not just agreement, but to action.