But what exactly is narrative infrastructure and what should it look like within a vast and expansive movement like the Black-led reparations movement? Fox News mentioned “critical race theory” over 1900 times over a three-and-a-half-month span during which they created a falsified world for their audiences that intentionally twisted the concept of critical race theory into a political instrument used to rally local bases. We, too, must build a narrative infrastructure that builds power around movements like abolition, reparations, and LandBack, that will serve as antidotes to the rise of revisionist right-wing authoritarianism that is evolving across the country. Some of the elements of narrative infrastructure, according to the Othering & Belonging Institute, can include “research and analysis, staffing, training, publications, curriculum, or digital media tools.”While these are important tools in building narrative infrastructure, they are not the infrastructure itself. Looking across progressive movements, and specifically the reparations movement, this type of infrastructure doesn’t exist.

Source: New York Times December 14, 2023 14:56 UTC