In Defence of Talk

There is a strand of thinking which suggests that talk and action are opposites, and you hear this idea within social change circles.

It is a perception that comes from a valid place. Because there is a world of difference between saying we need change and doing what is required to make it happen.

An employer could post a black square on their instagram page to show their support for Black Lives Matter, but if their ethnicity pay gap doesn’t change, who are they helping?

Performative solidarity does little to lift the day-to-day experiences of people on the wrong end of racism.

We offered Black-led civil society organisations (members of Voice4Change England) a preview of our findings from a 20,000-person message test ahead of the 2023 launch of our guidance Contains Strong Language.

Hundreds came to the event and participants left feeling that our messaging insights could help with their advocacy challenges. In amongst the overwhelmingly positive feedback though, was a more sceptical voice. The respondent called for “…more action and less talking,” arguing that “…talking has been [happening] since my grandparents arrived in the 60s.”

The sense of urgency and impatience with the slow rate of change is understandable. We feel it too. However, this person’s response also contains within it a deeper judgment about how change happens, i.e. - that it has little to do with words.

Yet the thing about talk is that it carries power.

Talk is a place where life-affirming ideas, visions and dreams are carried, where we find connection with one another and where we signal who we are and who belongs. For example, the NHS came into being because, according to its founder Aneurin Bevan: “No society can legitimately call itself civilised if a sick person is denied medical aid because of lack of means.” And whatever the challenges today, this sentiment still carries weight.

On the other side of the equation, talk can be a place where efforts are made to divide us along racial and other lines. The slogans used by politicians stoking anti-migrant sentiment were the same ones scrawled on placards outside hotels housing new migrants, which were then set on fire.

Unsurprisingly, writers have long made the case for words as a site for transformation. bell hooks argues that language is used as a way to recover from and push back against racism and its harms: “Our words are not without meaning, they are an action, a resistance.”

Specifically, hooks tells us that: “Language is also a place of struggle.”

It is also worth considering the contribution of Toni Morrison to this question. The Nobel laureate writes about how language and literature breathe life into the idea of the problematic and racialised other. At Reframing Race, we take this observation to mean that the counter-work and lifting up shared humanity must, at least in some way, be undertaken at the level of language and ideas.

All this is to suggest that, when it comes to anti-racism, talk is not cheap.

For those committed to transformative social change, we can think of talk as part of the architecture of systems of harm and domination but also as a means to create a world that looks very different from the one we inhabit today.

But we must do more than tell others that words matter. After all that could be seen by our event-goer as yet more words.

As advocates we also need to talk more about what far-reaching solutions and an anti-racist future looks like – so that words better help to drive change. At Reframing Race, we are committed to supporting this endeavour (watch this space for more).

None of the above means that transformation can be secured by talking and reframing alone. Far from it. But the words used by advocates, agitators and campaigners can point the way to a world transformed.

As we say in Contains Strong Language:

“The words and language that we use on anti-racism, race equity and racial justice are not simply a way to describe transformation; they are in themselves part of that transformation.”

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