The Case for Narrative Change in the Fight for Racial Justice

Trigger warning: This piece contains links to images and accounts of violence 

I saw a quote that struck me the other day.

Technically, it was a Tweet.

A colleague and friend, also a Black American, also working in social impact, shared a post she’d come across that read: 

I think we’re beyond the “raise awareness” phase of practically every significant social issue.

— Aarón Cantú (@aaron_con_choco) April 14, 2021

My reaction upon reading it was, “Mm!” — a short, instinctive noise of assent that essentially means, “you can say that again” (or, in Black vernacular, simply, “Say that!”). 

When you work in social impact, and especially if you also move through society as a member of historically marginalized and oppressed groups, an extraordinary amount of your time is spent waiting for other people’s “a-ha” moments to kick in. You’re working toward those times when that audience / administration / stakeholder group / person in your life finally acknowledges and acts against the need, injustice, or lived experience you’ve been calling out for what feels like forever. Even when you’re not trying to pursue the staunchly opposed, constantly reminding would-be allies of your plight can be far from effortless.

The fatigue is real. The stop-and-start momentum of progress can be disheartening. The cost of seeding understanding in others, which ranges from your own mental and emotional exhaustion to human lives and collective trauma, calls your purpose and efficacy into question, frequently. 

And so, upon viewing a Tweet whose core message is basically, “Catch up, already!” your unfiltered reaction is sometimes only: “Mm!”

But still we keep up the good fight.

I consider myself a champion of “hearts and minds” work. In this category, you might find efforts called “narrative shifting”, “perception change”, “issue awareness building”, “storytelling” — work that takes on the essential, yet far from simple, act of influencing a person’s understanding of and beliefs about an injustice and the people affected by it. The aim is to have such influence on a person that, the next time they have an opportunity to act or advocate — from intimate moments of interpersonal interaction; to actions of farther-reaching consequence, like casting a vote — they do so with newfound awareness, compassion, and solidarity. 

In my experience, hearts and minds endeavors power movements’ efforts to advance transformative policies and unlock new infrastructure — wins that rely on a believing base and stakeholder set to realize major advancements, ongoing accountability, and lasting change. And as much as it goes against my emphatic agreement with that fed-up Tweet asking society to ‘catch up’ on our issues, this past year has only strengthened my conviction there is still, as ever, hearts and minds work to be done in the realm of racial justice.

Such as when, in the midst of a global health crisis rife with the consequences of blatant systemic inequities, a top editor at “one of the world’s most-read research periodicals” expresses disbelief in systemic racism in healthcare.

Such as when, as the U.S. is reeling from the social and emotional rollercoaster that connects George Floyd’s murder in 2020 to the recent conviction of the officer that shot him, a different officer chooses violence against a child based on questionable preconceptions.

Incidents like these are as much struggles of individual belief and judgment as they are the frontiers of preventative policy and attempts at accountability after the fact. They are examples of people in positions of power spreading false narratives, or else acting upon the harmful narratives they already believe, to devastating outcomes.

At Purpose, I’ve observed new ways that narrative change is being leveraged as a key strategic tool by actors pursuing racial justice outcomes in the year since George Floyd died. Here are some of the most thought-provoking takeaways:

1. Every word matters. If harmful narratives are the flames that can devour a society, weaponized words are the sparks. We’ve seen this well understood by conservative media for generations and solidified by the behavior of the prior U.S. presidential administration and others. Campaigners today are interrogating the words used to describe Black people, from the seemingly innocuous to the blatantly damaging, as they directly relate to how members of Black communities are perceived and treated by the public and those in power.

2. Promote nurturing narratives, too. After George Floyd’s murder, our company convened actors in our community who touch racial justice narrative shaping, from local advocacy groups to major media networks, for a series of conversations about how to use storytelling platforms strategically in support of positive change. In one session, we took a straw poll, asking, “If you had to choose three narratives for the racial justice movement in America to prioritize right now [in Summer 2020], what would you choose?” After “defund the police”, the top two responses were “longevity” and “solidarity” — calls for support for the advocates carrying these soul-heavy burdens, from other movements and communities who can stand shoulder-to-shoulder for the long haul. It was an important reminder that sometimes this work’s most urgent calls-to-action are about the needs and humanity of the movement itself.

3. Talk about what’s possible. There is so much damage to be undone in the pursuit of racial justice that the leading narratives are often dominated by the need to fight the evils of existing systems. But conversations with that same community of narrative shapers this past year impressed the importance of illustrating vision-led, yet tangible, solutions in racial justice movement storytelling as well. As far as rallying cries to build the future, “fund social services” is as important a message as “defund the police”. When pro-movement narratives lean only on the headline, so to speak, without bringing in both the context of history and forward-looking visions of what’s possible with reimagined systems, we miss opportunities to engage allies around our hopeful future as well as our painful past and present. 

Hearts and minds matter. Narrative change work is essential movement work. Our sector needs to respect narrative shaping as a tactic and a vision, and invest in its success as we would any other strategic approach. With a patient and generous view, we can see that our systems, institutions, and cultural inclinations are only powered by thinking, feeling, believing people — people making decisions, working in communities, or reading a Tweet. And with the right frames over time, we can move some of them to help us realize a more just future.