1. Those who need to do something about it (e.g., people of color experiencing injustice)

2. Those who care about the people a�ected (e.g., friends, spouses, relatives)

3. Those whose work and way of living can bring them into direct con�ict with racist values (e.g., public health, teachers, service workers, etc.)

4. Those likely to share core values as a result of their experiences (e.g., anti-racism training alumni, people who viewed �lms that convey our issues, people with a history of activism, etc.)

12 3 4

Where We Begin: Building Public Support for Racial Justice Niche by NicheFor strategic communications purposes, there is no such thing as a general audience. Yet, advocates routinely engage in scattershot efforts to “talk” racial justice without identifying specific audiences and their connections to our issues. Here are suggestions for key niche communications that can help us be more strategic in our efforts to build public support. Once we lay these foundations, we can start to advance new messages when events and other teachable moments occur (much like the Right does to leverage current events to recruit disgruntled people to their cause).

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Key Lessons and Opportunities: Where Do We Go From Here?

Not only is it important to lead with a racial analysis, we also need new ways of thinking and talking about racial inequities that take into account all the complexities present in the Obama era. If the reality we describe doesn’t match people’s real-time experience and perceptions, even our potential allies won’t be moved to action. Here are some of the relevant conditions we now face:

We are dealing with institutional and market-based racism •instead of Jim Crow racism. You won’t find “white” and “colored” drinking fountains anymore. Yet, our mental pictures of racism are still drawn from the sepia imagery of the 1950s. Today, people see the difference in outcomes along racial lines—poverty and wealth, sickness and health, academic achievement and more—but they are less likely to recognize the imbalanced treatment and systemic marginalization that helped create these disparities over time. While racial injustice touches every part of society affecting millions in countless different ways, many people do not see it clearly. Linking individual incidents to these patterns and structures is key to advancing racial justice. For instance, the concept of “Driving While Black” helped to illuminate a pattern of seemingly unrelated racist acts that exposed how structural racism influenced policing. When police harassment of Blacks in Cincinnati resulted in fifteen deaths between 1995 and 2001, the Sentinel Police Officers Association (a formation of local Black police officers) spoke out, comparing the standard procedure for managing steer that escape from slaughterhouses to the procedure used in police confrontations with Black men. It turns out that cattle are treated much better—a comparison that helped underscore the need for changes in policy.45 In order to move our agenda, we will have to proactively tell the story of structural racism at every opportunity using film, books (for children and adults), reports, music, and more.

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Demographics are changing in communities of color, and •thus changing the nature and impact of both racism and the racial justice struggle. Much of the U.S. population increase in recent decades is due to the rapid growth of immigrant communities, often in territory that overlaps with longstanding communities of color. A growing number of young people identify as biracial or multiracial, rejecting imposed racial categories. New conflicts and collaborations have emerged from this changing landscape. Emerging networks—like the broad coalitions active on immigration issues and in urban community organizing—contribute to the multiracial, multi-ethnic character of the current racial justice struggle. This new reality has to be reflected in strategic communications for racial justice.

Class stratification is increasing in communities of color.• New economic realities have resulted in a larger middle class and greater concentrations of wealth in some communities of color. Although the economic downturn has hit the poorest in these communities very hard— increasing the numbers of unemployed, uninsured, and homeless—color doesn’t necessarily equate with social status. Oprah Winfrey is one of the world’s richest entrepreneurs; African Americans serve as chairs and CEOs in the Republican Party, American Express, Aetna, Oracle, Citigroup, and Symantec. Racial categories include a world of differences, with “Asian American,” for instance, including both recent Southeast Asian immigrants working low-income agricultural jobs and generations of U.S.-born Japanese and Chinese Americans working in high-paying professions. People at opposite ends of the socioeconomic spectrum, who may identify with the same racial or ethnic group, don’t always share interests or opinions.

In this reality, conservative wedge issues can polarize •communities of color. The Right expends tremendous resources framing public discourse around a constellation of issues designed to split communities of color and weaken alliances. The “jobs and immigration” frame reads one way in low-income African American communities and another way among their Latino counterparts. Same-sex marriage evokes resistance in some settings, “affirmative action” in others. The Right’s success in associating people’s fear about drugs and crime with its portrayal of incorrigible “youth predators” has built support in some low-income communities for police crackdowns and harsh punishments.

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The “it could happen to you” frame that dominates current •“progressive” communication is damaging to long-term public understanding of the racial impact of public policies. In an effort to reach large numbers of middle-class white voters, many communications efforts feature stories about whites who have “played by the rules” and still got hurt by the economic downturn. This frame evokes fear in the target audience that “bad luck” might happen to them. It aims to instill a shared sense of vulnerability and get them to take action, so the stories have to conjure deep empathy by ensuring that the “poster children” of these efforts closely resemble the audience. As a result, white “traditional” (heterosexual, two parent) families are increasingly portrayed as the deserving poor. This frame marginalizes people of color and the racism that creates tougher conditions in our communities. Often, this frame subverts the structural nature of problems as it reinforces the notion that economic shifts are unpredictable like the weather. The policy response to this “meteorological” frame is mostly limited to strengthening the safety net “just in case.” At some point, we will have to bite the bullet and do the long term, methodical work of building public understanding of how racism and economic markets really work. Only then will we be able to paint a picture of life under our “new and improved” alternatives.

Focusing on “unconscious bias” can reinforce racism as •fixed, almost biological and intractable. Unconscious bias refers to subconscious prejudices of which we are often unaware. A number of racial justice organizations have focused on unconscious bias because of the growing amount of data reinforcing its existence with regard to racial prejudice. Of course, given efforts by the Right (and even some “progressives”) to declare that America is post-racial, this frame does help by providing evidence that racism still exists. However, there are some negative side effects. Defining racism as “preference for” one group over another reinforces the dominant narrative of racism as individual behavior. It can even exacerbate the way many people already confuse racism with ethnic pride and the fight for self-determination by oppressed groups. It can also obscure systemic roots of socialization (i.e., where do these “preferences” come from?) if the frame is not properly contextualized.

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If we had to prioritize one takeaway from this guide, it would be the importance of clarity about our audience and our need to develop messages for our constituencies—those in communities of color most adversely affected by a problem—rather than focusing our efforts on the opposition or on those in power. Activists’ most common pitfall has been allowing ourselves to get caught up trying to convince our opposition, forgetting our most important goal: building power among those most affected by racial injustice.

A majority is not built by focusing on the opposition. Rather, majorities are formed when we expand our base of supporters, starting at the core and working progressively outward. We should be sure to speak in terms that reflect the thoughts and dreams of our constituencies, echoing their awareness and analysis of social issues. To expand our base of active support it is essential to promote community voices and to build power within communities that have the most at stake in the struggle for racial justice.

Being effective means maintaining a big picture and acknowledging the entire process of social change even as we work on one specific campaign. Our messaging and strategic communications should be connected to a broader organizing strategy. Communications is not a panacea. Communications capacities are best used in concert with many others tactics: organizing, policy development, media reform, and other essential activities. We need to continue monitoring coverage of the issues and never hesitate to write or call outlets when coverage is missing key voices, shows bias, or is poorly researched. We have to develop and nurture a racial justice infrastructure for media—data, spokespeople, studies, and visual imagery that document the problems and their root causes, along with other resources that illustrate the landscape of our stories.

In the Obama era, we should also be ready to take advantage of the current moment and the new opportunities that flow from it. For example, stimulus funds have been appropriated for job training, housing, transportation, youth services, and programs in the criminal justice system. If the public sector is investing in our communities as part of the national effort for economic recovery, we can have a role in ensuring that the how and where of that investment supports racial justice along with other worthy social goals.

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Advancing our agenda requires helping others believe in the viability of our ideas. And because we have large, transformative ideas—many of which we have yet to implement—we can’t always point to specific or demonstrated successes. Yet, we are forging these ideas into reality every day and opening up space for new imaginings. The successes we can document, including the stories in this guide, affirm what we will continue to prove as the struggle for racial justice gains force: No matter how loud or pervasive the frames of the opposition, justice remains a catchy tune.