Summary
The Race-Class Narrative is a tested way of talking about race and class together, built for progressive campaigns in the United States. It came from a research project at Demos, published in May 2018 and led by the communications specialist Anat Shenker-Osorio, the law professor Ian Haney López and Demos’s Heather McGhee.
Its premise is that racism works as “a divide-and-conquer tactic”: wealthy interests stoke racial fear so that working people turn on each other and on government. So the message names race openly, says who gains from division, and calls for joining together across racial differences, recalling past wins. In dial tests it outscored a colour-blind economic message.
Rationale
Message-level work, and Part 1 doubts “communications alone” can move a disposition. Yet its research finds something we recognise: a persuadable majority who “toggle between two contradictory orientations”. We move between dispositions too.