Around the Holiday Table
DON’T TAKE THE BAIT
With the holidays approaching, we know that many of you are gearing up to have those conversations with family and friends around the table. This month, we are encouraging you to 1) dig into the structure of Race Class Narrative to understand why we say things in the order we do and 2) go back and read former newsletters to be able to resist taking the bait from that one uncle and know how to positively redirect the conversation.
Thank you for being part of the choir to spread our messages that are rooted in our shared values. We know that having some of these conversations can be uncomfortable– and completely necessary to create the world we all need.
RCN Principles and Structure
With abbreviated guidance from ASO Communications
Research consistently shows that speaking affirmatively about race and gender strengthens our ability to mobilize our base and persuade the middle, allowing us to challenge our opposition’s worldview. But the ordering and content of our messaging matters:
1. Open with a shared value relevant to your issue, naming race, class, and gender. This comes first because it unites you and your audience on the same page, which is necessary to do before moving on to naming the villain. If you start with the problem/villain before starting with values, you will lose the chance for your audience to feel like you understand them and want the same things, and therefore reduce your ability to neutralize any hostility.
Examples:
A) Most of us believe that children of all races, backgrounds, and genders should have the freedom to learn, be themselves, and pursue their dreams.
B) Whatever the color of our skin or how much we make, most of us want to leave a better world for our kids and grandkids.
Your values should mirror how people view themselves and how they think the world should work, not a specific policy, outcome, or demand. Believing in freedom, working hard for your family, or treating others as you would like to be treated, for example, are all values. Stopping police brutality is a demand; safety and community are values.
2. Name the villain responsible for the problems and expose their motivations. Name how these villains deliberately divide us, use racial scapegoating, and – where applicable – exploit the lack of familiarity with transgender people, all to distract us from their efforts to hoard wealth and power at the expense of our families.
Examples:
A) For years, certain politicians have pocketed the resources our kids need for a quality education. And they do it while trying to distract us with scare tactics and exploiting lack of familiarity with transgender people to exclude some kids from healthcare, school, and sports.
B)Fossil fuel CEOs and the politicians they pay for have divided and distracted us with lies while they pollute our air, poison our water and dump toxins into our communities.
No matter your issue, someone at some point made a decision that created or exacerbated the problem you’re addressing – and most likely, there is someone right now actively blocking the solutions we all actually need.
Note: it’s critical to define our villains narrowly (identifying a small them in contrast to a big us) rather than impugning whole categories of people. Persuadable and even base audiences balk at suggesting all people in any given category – say, a political party – are the problem, even when that is true. Where possible, name names.
In addition to identifying the right villains, you must anticipate the story your opposition will tell. The right spends billions spreading racial scapegoating as part of a larger project to undermine the very idea we can act collectively for the public good. Our messaging must account for the racist dog whistles and transphobic siren songs our opposition deploys to poison U.S. politics. Otherwise, we leave their story about race, class, gender, and government unchallenged and their charges about us unanswered.
3. Describe your vision for the world we can create and bring it back to your shared values.
Examples:
A) We can make our schools places where children of all races and genders are free to learn all that they – and our country – have the potential to be.
B) We can rewrite the rules so that every family has what we need to get and stay well, every working person has a safe, good job and every community can protect our air and land for generations to come.
Your vision should make tangible the shared value that opens your message, describing the way the world would look, feel, and work if we truly lived that value (starting, of course, by enacting your policy agenda). If you’re talking about police brutality and your values are family, safety, and community, your vision might be “living in communities where every family can thrive and trust that our loved ones will make it home safe at the end of the day.”
Previous Newsletters
Education and Curriculum in the Classroom
You can find our other Don’t Take the Bait newsletters here.
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Check out All in Wisconsin’s guide to navigating political talks with family so you can make this season about connection, not contention.
