Tagged: Framing

Framing the Birthright Citizenship Debate

January 5, 2011 | Maya Roy | Tags: ,

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.

Southern Poverty Law Center Reveals Origins of Arizona Law

August 2, 2010 | Bill Kennedy | Tags: ,

In the Summer 2010 edition of SPLC Report, the Southern Poverty Law Center identifies the author of Arizona’s SB 1070, Russell Pearce, as a man who in 2006 e-mailed an article to his supporters  criticizing the media for promoting multiculturalism and racial equality and for presenting the Holocaust as fact.

Pearce, an Arizona State legislator, used lawyers with the Immigration Law Reform Institute to draft the law.  ILRI is the legal arm of  Federation for American Immigration Reform, (FAIR) .

According the SPLC, FAIR received $1.2 Million from the Pioneer Foundation, devoted to eugenics and to proving the connection between race and intelligence.  FAIR president Dan Stein has warned that immigrants are engaged in “competitive breeding” aimed at diminishing white power.

FAIR’s founder, John Tanton, who is still on its board wrote, “I’ve come to the point of view that for European-American society and culture to persist requires a European American majority, and a clear one at that.”

Read the full article  in the SPLC Report (Vol. 40, No. 2)

New Tool for “Framing” the Immigration Debate

July 29, 2010 | Bill Kennedy | Tags: ,

Dr. Franklin Gilliam, the director of the Frameworks Institute has just released a publication that reports on the Institutes recent studies of  American’s Attitudes about Immigrants and Immigration Reform titled Framing Immigration Reform, A FrameWorks Message Memo

Dr. Gilliam suggests that American’s both admire and fear immigrants and that significant “cognitive toggling”  occurs when many in the public are thinking of the subject.

Frameworks has tested an approach to discussing immigration that we should consider using  in our communities and in our advocacy.  It emphasizes the values of fairness across places, ingenuity and prosperity as the most effective approach when discussing immigration reform and immigrants rights.

Framing is a new tool for many  advocates.  Feedback on Dr. Gilliam’s suggested approach would be helpful as we incorporate new tools in the race equity toolbox.

REP in the News

February 15, 2010 | Maya Roy | Tags: , , , ,

In the current Jan.-Feb. 2010 issue of the Clearinghouse Review, you’ll find a new article written by LSNC managing attorney Bill Kennedy, staff attorney Colin Bailey, and former staff attorney Emily Fisher about communications framing, entitled “Framing in Race-Conscious, Antipoverty Advocacy: A Science-Based Guide to Delivering Your Most Persuasive Message”.  It is a comprehensive article that provides both the scientific background of communications framing, as well as how legal advocates can harness it to the benefit of their clients.  I encourage all REP blog readers to read the piece and give us feedback about your efforts to implement communications framing in your practice.

The Princess and the Frog

February 3, 2010 | Gillian Sonnad | Tags: , , ,

Disney’s The Princess and the Frog depicts the long awaited first African American princess in Disney’s mainstream filmmaking.  Many other racial groups have been represented thus far, there have been princesses of native american, asian, and even middle eastern descent throughout Disney’s history.   Reception of Princess and the Frog has been mixed, and the ongoing struggle with representing African Americans in mainstream media is obvious.  NPR explored this phenomenon and a controversial review written by Scott Foundas, entitled “Disney’s ‘Princess and the Frog’ Can’t Escape Ghetto.” Foundas says that “It seemed puzzling to me that after all of this pressure over many years from various groups to create an African-American princess, that when they finally got around to doing it they decided to put her in Jim Crow-era Louisiana, hardly a shining moment in the history of African-Americans in the U.S. in terms of their standing in society.”  Other comments reflect the disappointment in that Tiana is not actually a princess in the typical Disney manner, that her “prince” is very light-skinned, and that she seems to have straight hair.  But others, particularly African-American filmgoers, were delighted by this development and felt that it was the result of a long fought battle for representation in mainstream media for children.   A Disney store manager in Culver City teared up when the live version of “Princess Tiana” came to meet people and shake hands, saying “”I have worked for the Disney company for 16 years, and this is something that this community — and I can include myself — has been waiting on.”

There is no question that Disney and other mainstream film studios who market to children play a large role in the formation of our next generation’s ideals and values when it comes to race.    The Princess and the Frog is an important step toward broadening racial representation in children’s media, but still poses an important question about the manner in which African-Americans are depicted.

The Supreme Court and Race

February 2, 2010 | Maya Roy | Tags: , ,

In an article published yesterday on SCOTUSblog.com, Professor Michael J. Klarman, from Harvard Law School, outlines the Supreme Court’s impact on race relations for the last fifty years, from Brown vs. Board of Education to Parents Involved.  It is an interesting historical account and well worth the read.

Professor Klarman reminds readers of the current conservative majority’s common ideology:  “That ideology embraces a narrow, formalist conception of what counts as race discrimination; abhors the use of racial preferences, whether benignly motivated or not; and deems this nation’s ugly history of white supremacy as something more to be repudiated than remedied.”  This is important for us, as advocates to remember.  By using the tools the Race Equity Project endorses, such as social cognition and framing, we can push back against this conservative ideology, to prevent further racially regressive results in our communities.

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