Aggressive voyeurs
What we can learn about narrative impact from two Midwestern cities
When I was twenty-two, I moved to the Arkansas Delta to teach high school English. I arrived imagining myself as a heroine, about to bring the light of education and literature into my students’ lives. I felt the backdrop was fittingly romantic: I was teaching in Richard Wright’s boyhood town, on the banks of Mark Twain’s Mississippi, and fifteen minutes down the road from Moon Lake, where Tennessee Williams drank himself into a stupor.
It took me some time to understand the wrongness of the story I’d spun about myself, my new community, and my students. I summed up this realization in an article for The Atlantic: “I came to Helena to be a heroine. But a heroine can’t be a good social advocate, because social advocacy is all about the community—not about being at the center of one's own story. Likewise, a romance that requires a backdrop of continuous strife cannot be a successful social movement, because a successful social movement will eventually eradicate that strife. Nostalgia has no place in progress.”
Ever since, I’ve thought a lot about the—often unintended—impact of the stories that we in the social sector tell publicly and to ourselves about our work. We usually equate storytelling with marketing and communications. But, as I’ve said before, story isn’t just a tool for pumping out information and attracting attention, but also a north star for the way in which we view and move through the world. Story colors how:
we perceive ourselves—as heroines or professionals?
we perceive the communities serve—as pitiable or admirable?
communities perceive us and themselves—as benefactor and beneficiary, or as partners?
Earlier this year, I led a story workshop for adults serving youth in an Ohio city. Our goal was to define the kind of story that we wanted to tell about kids and service providers in the city. We started by examining the stories currently being told in the public ether—in newspapers, on television and radio, in parent and neighborhood Facebook groups, during city council public comment, etc. Then, I asked the group: “What themes do you see across these stories? How do they sit with you?” Silence for a beat. Then the room erupted into indignation.
The stories were “voyeuristic, like white people talking about Black people.” The group was overwhelmingly struck by the “lack of empathy” and “dehumanization of kids.” A parent pointed out that while all the stories were about the trials and tribulations of Black and brown kids, all the experts quoted were white. Most stories were all “negative and aggressive.” One youth worker demanded: “Where are all the successes?” Another lamented, “Good stories don’t get to the public… people don’t want to tell the good!” Several expressed feeling discouraged and depressed: “I’m lost as to what to do.”
There are deep social and moral implications for how we paint people and communities in our storytelling. Kids mired in stories in which they see themselves portrayed as objects of pity are less likely to develop confidence and efficacy. But there are pragmatic implications, too. A teacher mired in stories that poo-poo her efforts is more likely to lose steam and either quit the profession or become an indifferent clock-watcher. A social worker mired in stories that dehumanize kids is less likely to approach his caseload with empathy and compassion. A donor mired in stories of incessant failure is more likely to think of their donations as a band-aid to temporarily stem the flow of a lost cause—and may one day stop giving.
As we tell stories about the need that calls us to action and the work that we do, we have a responsibility to ask ourselves how does the narrative we put out into the world impact ourselves, our partners, and our communities? How does our storytelling foster:
confidence or inefficacy?
energy or lethargy?
enthusiasm or defeatism?
empathy or apathy?
pride or shame?
for example…
During the 2011 SuperBowl, Chrysler stole the show with its commercial “Born of Fire.” It’s worth spending the two minutes to watch it, but here’s most of the script:
I got a question for you.
What does this city know about luxury?
What does a town that’s been to hell and back know about the finer things in life?
Well I’ll tell you. More than most.
You see, it’s the hottest fires that make the hardest steel.
Add hard work and conviction.
And a know-how that runs generations deep in every last one of us.
That’s who we are. That’s our story.
Now it’s probably not the one you’ve been reading in the papers.
The one being written by folks who have never even been here.
Don’t know what we’re capable of.
Because when it comes to luxury, it’s as much about where it’s from as who it’s for.
The commercial is gorgeously shot, and Kevin Yon does an incredible growly overvoice. But the commercial really stands out because it tells a story that is starkly different from all the other stories being told about Detroit at the time. Like the critically acclaimed book, Ruins of Detroit, by photographers Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre. The title pretty much sums up the content: rubble-strewn hotels, decaying movie theaters, broken windows in factories, abandoned elementary schools. Or, like these headlines from major news outlets: How the Motor City Turned into a Ghost Town (The Guardian), Hunger Hits Detroit (CNN), or The Tragedy of Detroit (Time Magazine). Even The Weather Channel joined in the pummeling with this quip: “Symbolizing the decline of the Motor City, many buildings… lay in crumbling and weather-beaten ruins.”
Stories about Detroit had a decidedly apocalyptic ethos. If I’d lived in Detroit in 2010, I might have felt shame. I might have moved. If I was working in the social sector, I ‘d probably have thrown up my hands and given up. No hope here!
The Chrysler commercial signaled a dramatic narrative shift. Without shying away from the very real challenges Detroit faced, it also highlighted the resources and resilience of the city—“it’s the hottest fires that make the hardest steel.” It centered the qualities of the people of Detroit: hard work, conviction, and generational know-how. It offered hope. Urban researcher Peter Saunders spotlights other examples of this narrative shift, including a mind-blowing video by the Metro Detroit Visitors Bureau featuring middle schoolers singing about their city with all the optimism and zeal of a bright and energetic generation.
The impact of this narrative shift is huge. In 2019, Saunders argued that Detroit was coming back not just because of economic development, but “because the city's meta-narrative is slowly changing before our eyes…. Before actual revitalization, Detroiters need to feel good about themselves and the city again. Suburbanites must feel good about their relationship with the city. Michiganders must feel good about the vibrancy of the state's largest city.”
long story short…
Stories are powerful. As Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie says, "stories have been used to dispossess and to malign. But stories can also be used to empower, and to humanize. Stories can break the dignity of a people. But stories can also repair that broken dignity.”
I’ll admit it isn’t always easy to tell when our stories serve to dispossess and malign. It’s actually pretty darn hard. Often, the stories we tell even sound benevolent to our own ears. By casting myself as the heroine of a romantic southern saga, I meant no harm. I certainly didn’t mean to dispossess my students of their many talents, nor to disavow the many rich cultural and social resources in the community. But I did. Had I seen myself as simply a teacher charged with doing her best, I would have served my students much better.
In the social sector, we have a responsibility to consider our impact. That impact includes not only how many meals we served, the percentage of carbon footprint reduced, or the number of students who accessed mental health counseling, but also our narrative impact. In other words, we have a responsibility not only to do the work, but to tell stories about our work in a way that empowers, humanizes, and dignifies.
