OFFICE OF NARRATIVE
We’re reframing the narrative about race. To build an antiracist, equitable society, we must first recognize that racial injustice comes from racist policies, not racist people. We are taking the lead in shifting the storyline to reveal that truth—and making sure the whole world knows it. In the Center’s Office of Narrative, we draw on the work of scholars and experts to reframe the national conversation on race by sharing cutting-edge antiracist research and opinion and telling compelling stories. Those stories help policymakers understand the implications of our research—and use them to make better policies. They help organizations share their wisdom with the next generation of antiracist practitioners. And they help everyone understand where racism comes from, and what we must do to eradicate it. The Office of Narrative brings antiracist research into the public sphere and advances the Center’s mission to eradicate systemic racism through these initiatives:
• In partnership with the Boston Globe Opinion team, we have launched a new multimedia publication, The Emancipator (theemancipator.org), a reimagining of 19th-century antislavery newspapers that aims to reframe the conversation on race and racism through a combination of academic scholarship and journalism. • Important scholarly work often doesn’t make it past the pages of academic journals. In our Public Scholarship Shop, we teach affiliated researchers how to make their research accessible to the general public, including how to pitch stories, give engaging interviews, write persuasive op-eds, and hone other media skills. • Each year, we host the National Antiracist Book Festival, which highlights emerging and leading writers on race and racism. In 2021, featured authors included Pulitzer Prize finalist Albert
Woodfox, Black Lives Matter co-creator Alicia Garza, novelist Celeste Ng, and dozens more. • We are creating the world’s first degree programs in antiracism studies, featuring coursework, team-based practicums, and collaborative projects using antiracist frameworks. These programs will eventually expand online to disseminate this groundbreaking curriculum beyond Boston University.
By supporting the Center’s Office of Narrative, you will help us translate research insights on racial inequities into stories that policymakers and the general public can understand, and help us put narrative tools in the hands of those who can make a difference.
> MEET THE EMANCIPATOR With support from the Center, the Globe, and philanthropists, The Emancipator will be accessible at no cost, unlike The Boston Globe’s subscriber-only main site. The Emancipator is intended not just as an incubator for antiracist ideas and stories but as a way to turn those ideas into action. It will examine everything from the lack of diversity in STEM to racial bias in healthcare algorithms. And in order to connect past with present, it will annotate abolition-era editorials to highlight parallel issues today. Scholars, journalists, and BU students will contribute a range of content, from written and video op-eds to data visualizations and virtual conversations and debates. The project also includes a newsletter, Unbound, written by Globe columnist and MSNBC contributor Kimberly Atkins Stohr (COM’98, LAW’98), as well as live events. Guiding The Emancipator are two expert editors-in-chief. The Center’s Deborah D. Douglas is an award-winning journalist and the author of US Civil Rights Trail: A Traveler’s Guide to the People, Places, and Events That Made the Movement. The Globe’s Amber Payne is a former executive producer at BET Digital and founder of NBCNews.com’s NBCBLK, a media platform covering Black identity. The Emancipator’s advisory board includes more than a dozen journalists, scholars, and policy experts, including The New Yorker’s Jelani Cobb, Nikole Hannah-Jones of The New York Times, journalist and activist Julian Brave NoiseCat, and Eddie S. Glaude Jr., chair of Princeton’s Department of African American Studies.