Framing the Birthright Citizenship Debate
Happy New Year, REP readers! With the new year, we continue to face issues of racial disparities and discrimination that are pervasive in our society and those for which we must use our tools of social cognition, framing, mapping, community lawyering, and litigation to address.
Today brings a race equity issue in which framing can be an effective advocacy tool: earlier today, several state legislators from around the country announced a scheme to attack the 14th Amendment’s birthright citizenship clause. For those unfamiliar with the birthright citizenship controversy, please refer to our most recent e-newsletter, in which Professor Victor Goode discussed the current debate and placed it in historical context.
In response to these efforts to scale back long-established 14th Amendment rights, The Opportunity Agenda has released a paper, Talking About Proposals to Change the Fourteenth Amendment, that provides advocates simple talking points in framing the debate. We share it with our readers because, even if the initiative is unsuccessful as it is predicted to be, the dialogue and sentiments it is generating have an impact on everyone working with potentially affected clients and communities and this may impact related laws and policies affecting them as well. Read the article, use the framing techniques, and let us know how they play out in your advocacy for race equity.




