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Communication as a Strategy to Sustain and Expand the Work

The resources in this section will help communities and others groups understand and select ways of using communication as strategies to pursue their racial equity goals. They include several framing resources. Framing is the process of talking about a subject paying particular attention to how people hear what is being communicated - how their assumptions influence whether or not they "get" the message in the way you intend. Frame matters a lot to what people take away from messages about race or racism.

There is an emerging body of research on the topic of framing around issues of race. We encourage people to dig deeply into this research, for two reasons. First, some of its findings are not what you might expect - they are counter-intuitive. Second, people have drawn different conclusions from these findings, so it is important to review the opinions of several scholars, and also to form your own conclusions.

The story below highlights some of what is counter-intuitive. Many advocates highlight the struggles of a particular individual to show the need for institutional or system changes. "Why Johnny Can't Read" is a book title that is a well-known version of this 'frame'. However, framing research indicates that many people react to personal stories by 'blaming the victim' - that is, assigning personal responsibility for the problem to the people who are experiencing the inequities - without assigning any collective responsibility to the system wide policies that created or maintain the inequities.

Further, when talking about reasons for people to work for the benefit of racial groups, other than their own, there are some phrases that seem to draw people together - such as, shared fate - and some that tend to push people apart - such as, redressing past wrongs.