These Communications Tips Can Help You Advance Racial Equity and Inclusion — Even in the Middle of a Global Pandemic [Q&A with the W.K. Kellogg Foundation]

Now that the entire world is focused on the COVID-19 pandemic, who has time to talk about anything else besides how to stay safe and whether the economy is about to crash, right?

Well, it turns out that, even in the middle of a crisis, there are other conversations taking place that are just as important.

In fact, because so many people are on edge, it’s the perfect time to talk about things like racial equity and inclusion.

That’s what I took away recently after speaking with some of the good people at the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, one of the country’s premier organizations focused on advancing racial equity and inclusion. I reached out to them to find out what conversations are happening on the ground and what trends they have been seeing on the communications front.

I had a great conversation with Howard Walters, a program and evaluation officer at the foundation, and Minda Corso, the foundation’s digital communications manager. We discussed the racial equity-focused challenges many entrepreneurs and organizations are facing with digital communications, and we spoke at length about why this topic is so important during the crisis we’re facing right now. The following is our Q&A.

Before we get into the Q&A, let me take a moment to summarize the main things I took away from our conversation.

1. There are a lot of businesses and organizations out there that are fully committed to advancing racial equity and inclusion, and the work they’re doing is not just being done to keep up with the joneses. People are finding creative ways to have meaningful conversations about racial equity and inclusion — even in the midst of this pandemic.
2. Race is one of the most challenging topics we will ever engage in as human beings, and the best way to have a real conversation about it is offline and in person (which is probably something you would be surprised to hear from a digital communications manager). But here’s where technology comes into play: the online tools we have at our fingertips can be very useful if they’re used to direct people where to go to make deeper connections with each other.
3. When talking about racial equity and inclusion online, it’s important to talk about it in a language most people will understand. That means using common words that the average person can understand and staying away from confusing acronyms that people aren’t familiar with. Just like with any other type of communications work, it’s important to listen to what people are already talking about and come up with creative ways to piggyback off those conversations when creating campaigns focused on social justice issues.
4. When promoting racial equity and inclusion, it’s important to focus on shared values. This goes for your website copy, your social media pages and especially your events. You don’t need to whitewash the message. But if you want your message to be heard by the masses, you need to think about the person who might say, “What does this have to do with me or my grandma, my uncle, my cousin or best friend?”

Now, let’s get into the Q&A.

Martin Ricard: So, from your perspective, why are so many businesses and organizations involved in racial equity work right now? And why are they so focused on social justice right now in this moment?

Howard Walters: I think that there are three things that are sort of forcing this conversation in the moment. I think one of them is just the reality of demographic shifts. You can see it in some places. In other places, folks have been pushed into this conversation through the media. I mean, pretty much every media outlet has run at least one piece that has talked about the fact that, right now, the children being born in this country are, a majority of the time, children of color. And within the next 20 to 30 years, the adult population will be mostly persons of color. So I think that has prompted folks to have a conversation on, “What does that mean?”

About five years ago was the first publication of our business case for racial equity, where we pointed out the economic cost of not investing in racial equity. And there was real intentionality, in particular, in the update that we just released in 2018. We wanted to really make sure that we honed in on the opportunity and not so much just focused on the disparities because just because a population is the majority doesn’t mean that they have power.

And so we wanted to point out to folks it requires action, it requires us to invest differently and to engage differently. There are a lot of others out there that are having similar conversations and pushing out similar papers and ideas. And that’s another reason you’re seeing it more because people are putting out evidence that says this is a conversation we need to be having.

The third piece is about how racial equity is impacting business. What we have seen is that organizations that aren’t prepared to have this conversation are constantly catching themselves off-guard, whether it’s because they have fired a person of color under dubious circumstances or they’ve released a product that has racist undertones and they’ve receive backlash. Or their diversity numbers come out and folks realize that, despite all this rhetoric around equity, it’s not reflected at all in their staffing model. When that happens, then you see companies that are actively working on trying to be better so that it doesn’t impact their bottom line.

One other data point to lift up is that back in 2016, the Gallup poll showed that, for the first time, there was a shared belief among whites and people of color that race was a problem in our country. And for us, it showed us evidence that the work we’ve been doing over the last decade or so to force a conversation around racial equity is working.

Martin: Yeah, that’s interesting. Can you give some examples of where you all are supporting organizations with racial equity?

Howard: We’ve been trying to build a stronger field of support around racial equity. For us, that has involved a lot of work around narrative change. So there’s some folks like a lot of the Asian American Pacific Islander communities that are completely absent from our public zeitgeist. Native Americans as well. Then there’s the stereotyping of others in terms of blacks, Latinos and Asian groups, like those who are Japanese, Chinese, etc. So if you’re Hmong or Laotian, it’s like no one even knows you exist. And if you’re Japanese or Indian, everyone assumes that you’re wealthy, well-educated and an amazing scientist — all of which is problematic. So organizations like Race Forward, Opportunity Agenda and Color Of Change have all been grant-funded partners to help with their work.

Another area is advancing the practice of racial healing. We initially started that work back in our America Healing days. Folks were already engaging in what they were calling “racial healing “ — we didn’t invent the term — in small pockets of Alaska and California and different places around the country. And we said, “How can we turn this into something that more people can access?” We have since leveraged that work and rolled it out in 14 communities.

In that work, there’s a cohort of about 40 or so racial healing practitioners that started that work with us. So Little Black Pearl out of Chicago, First Alaskans Institute in Anchorage, Alaska, the National Compadres Network — these are all organizations that were a part of that initial cohort.

Then we have been funding organizations like Flourish Agenda, Inc. and the Schott Foundation to look at racial equity in the context of education.

On the economic front, we partnered pretty heavily with PolicyLink and their equity atlas. We’ve also done work with our Racial Equity Anchor Collaborative and Solidarity Council on Racial Equity (SCoRE).

The Racial Equity Anchors are nine institutions that are working collaboratively on advancing policy changes. What we do is provide general operating support to those organizations to build their capacity so they can continue doing the great work that they’re doing to advance racial equity.

These are organizations like the National Congress of American Indians, NAACP, Urban League, UnidosUS (formerly the National Council of La Raza), Race Forward and Demos.

The work of SCoRE, in a nutshell, is to help bring this conversation around racial equity into a global context. So we have funded some racial equity work in South Africa and in Brazil — the Baobá Fund in Brazil, most famously. Through this SCoRE group, we’re trying to better understand how to further this work in a global context.

Martin: Minda, if you could just kind of piggyback on that and talk a little bit more about some of those examples where you all are advancing those stories.

Minda Corso: In my experience with working in social and digital for the last decade, I’ve found that the Internet is not a great place to have some conversations as it pertains to racial equity. I mean, I’m on social media all day long. I’m watching the conversations that a vast group of people are having. There are some topics that can be discussed in 240 characters or less and some of them that cannot be discussed. So one of the things that we do across our channels online is to push people to take conversations offline.

We’re giving them resources for home conversations, for classroom conversations, for conversations in philanthropy, in houses of worship. We’re giving them conversation guides for businesses and different library resources. A lot of times, in the digital space, you kind of want to drive people to have conversation with you online. But this is one circumstance where we feel it is important for people to feel equipped to have the conversations offline. That’s why we have been working with organizations like the American Library Association. They’re doing racial healing circles in libraries across the country and they’re promoting different resources and books and ways that people can educate themselves.

We also recognize that our voice brings a level of authority to the conversation, but we don’t want to come in and take all the credit. So in 2019 we partnered with Ava DuVernay and her organization Array. She said, “I know what you guys are doing and you guys are doing good work. I have some friends who have some pretty big reach. How can I leverage their voices to amplify the work that you’re doing?” It’s never been about the celebrity factor. It’s been how can we advance this message of racial healing? When I first came to the foundation, the hashtag for the National Day of Racial Healing was #NDORH. It was one of those hashtags that kind of made you think, “Who knows what that means?” And then it was #RacialHealing and then there were a couple of other options. But when we did some social listening, even the word “racial” is not necessarily a positive word because it has so many negative connotations and it’s usually associated with racial tensions and racial discrimination.

So we wanted to bring hope into that day and into that hashtag. We ended up changing it to #HowWeHeal because, more than just being about racial healing, it’s about “How do we heal?”

Martin: That’s really dope. It also makes me think about why storytelling, in general, is important right now because, obviously, we’re going through this coronavirus pandemic and there are folks out there who are using this opportunity to say, “Let’s just focus on the economy.”

Howard: Perfect example that you just gave in terms of the coronavirus. We’ve been talking as a racial equity team about that and having that conversation with some of our grantees because of the nature of their work. When you’re in the racial equity field on the front lines, your work is everything. It’s personal. So when you turn on the news and you see the media talking about the “foreign” virus or the “Chinese” virus, your brain automatically sees it.

What we’re seeing is that, on one hand, you have folks speaking very scientifically about the zoonotic nature of this particular virus. The coronaviruses do hop from animals to people, particularly through food stuffs and things like that on a regular basis. But it has nothing to do with anybody having a bad or immoral sort of culture or strange eating habits or anything like that, right?

Journalists must be careful and avoid demonizing a culture, or blaming racial or ethnic groups for this economic downfall. These assertions are misrepresenting science. Why do these narratives matter? These narratives are important on at least two fronts. For one, they help us to know and understand the truth. If you’ve got people thinking, “This virus is only going to affect you if you’re strange or weird,” then it can lead folks to put themselves and others at unnecessary risk. The truth can help everyone be safe.

The other part that we’re seeing is, when we start to tell stories that are more about our shared fate and our shared humanity, it starts to build bridges. So in a moment like this, what we need to be doing is coming together and finding solutions because of our shared fate. The power of stories to connect us across social barriers is an important lever in times where collective action is required for change.

Martin: That’s interesting because, in terms of storytelling, you’re talking about shared values. So what are your thoughts on that, Minda? How should we be using shared values to do storytelling nowadays?

Minda: When you brought up storytelling a little bit earlier, my first thought was, “People trust people they know.” If I’m telling my personal story, it’s going to connect with you on a much deeper level if I tell you a story about my grandmas, uncles, cousins or best friend. So I think people’s stories matter. Our individual stories matter and, a lot of times, on social, we connect with stories when they’re told in the right way. Right now, we are seeing some incredibly amazing and beautiful stories of people supporting each other and taking care of each other and getting supplies for each other.

It’s not to say that somebody can’t tell a story on a larger scale. But if we take it down to a deeper level, I think people need to know that their stories matter. It’s not about what’s happening in Hollywood and it’s not about the stories that make it on the big screen. It’s about your individual story that’s impacting people near you.

Martin: So let me ask you one last quick question because this is what prompted me to reach out to you. I wanted to see if you can touch on some of the challenges that you’re seeing in terms of the folks who are involved in doing racial equity work. What challenges are they having with digital communications?

Howard: So one challenge, for sure, has been messaging. There are so many things confronting our grantees because there are so many things you could be lifting up and talking about. But, as a communicator, you know that if you’re talking about everything, then folks might not be able to comprehend what you’re talking about.

Elizabeth Medicine Crow, the head of the First Alaskans Institute, once said that “The shortest distance between two people is a story,” and that quote really has guided the way we engage folks in community.

Martin: Minda, are there any other thoughts that you had on that topic?

Minda: Honestly, I think we’re in a place where we’re going to be learning a lot about how to communicate in a digital space. I think there are going to be some benefits that come out of this current climate, and they will help us learn how to navigate the digital space better. I’m actually hopeful about what is going to be learned.