Race Conscious Framing Working Group

Click here for Report: Expanding Equal Opportunity & Racial Justice Policies

The Race Conscious Framing Working (RCFWG) group began at a meeting hosted by the Open Society Institute and sponsored by the Center for Social Inclusion. The purpose of the Race Conscious Framing Working Group (RCFWG) was to create and maintain a working group dedicated to sharing information, research, strategies, and framing tools to support affirmative action/equal opportunity advocacy at the local and national levels. [1] The members comprise a subset of Dream Fund grantees and key actors within the affirmative action advocacy field.

Building on the success of the 2008 efforts, the RCFWG engaged in the process of field mapping, to better understand the current infrastructure and needs for future work.

On October 21st the RCFWG convened to discuss the initial findings of the mapping project. The group is now exploring a coordinated and concerted effort to connect short-term tactical efforts to long-term/proactive strategies for racial justice. This pathway is described in the equal opportunity mapping report as “Expanding Equal Opportunity & Racial Justice Policies.” Participants want to explore proactive strategies that reflect the values of affirmative action and achieve race/gender equity outcomes.

The group has formed a planning committee that represents the strategies within the RCFWG, including national, local, research, communications and legal advocacy organizations to answer two core questions:

• What is our pro-active Equal Opportunity agenda? What is the policy landscape? Where are there tactical/defensive fights and where are opportunities for more pro-active/long-term efforts.

• How can these organizations build the capacity to take the work to scale? Coordinating an alignment of strategies, increase coordination and an information clearinghouse; and lastly how do we increase grassroots mobilization in support of affirmative action policies.