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What does it take for an organization to push social change forward?
Trabian Shorters, founder and CEO of BMe Community, is showing that it might start in an unassumed place – rethinking our understanding of stories. Here, we chat about his previous career in software, how “hacking a narrative” shapes his work and what other organizations and companies committed to change can take from BMe.
Jessica Pliska: What were some of the early influencers in your career?
Trabian Shorters: My grandparents and mother played a huge part in how I see the world and approach my work. They demonstrated the transformative power of love and instilled in me its importance. My home environment personified the power of care and togetherness. I must’ve been about five when my grandfather taught me “God requires us to love each other the way God loves us.” Those words remain powerful for me. Seeing the world according to this idea of “love as essential” continues to shape how I think about my work and the people it intends to impact.
Pliska: What’s been the propelling force throughout your career?
Shorters: A belief in the principle of “freedom.” Freedom is our indelible right and responsibility. American-racism fundamentally undermines this sacred principle. Growing up, I thought racism was really just a matter of misunderstanding. But when I realized racism is actually about a group of folks who base their identity on subjugating others, a deep sense of urgency accompanied my professional journey. That’s why now, at BMe, we create a space for black men to be recognized as the caring, committed, community-builders they have always been for all of society – not just the black community. If you can grasp this truth about black men, you’ll be able to hold onto similar truths about all people.
Pliska: Speaking of BMe, could you tell me about the work and goals of the organization?
Shorters: BMe is geared toward building more caring and prosperous communities inspired by black men. One of the things driving BMe is an insight I took from my time working in the software world: in order to hack something, you have to understand the system well enough to get it to do something it wasn’t intended to do.
At BMe, we are hacking culture. Human beings are hardwired to create and act upon narratives. We crave the moral direction stories provide. And whether we know it or not, we constantly default to these narratives, which often place white men at the front of history. Sure, it’s a very exciting and empowering narrative to those born white and male, but for everyone else, it raises questions about their own value in the world.
Recognizing this alongside the growing diversity of our country, BMe is working to recognize the maximum amount of people as heroes in our country’s narrative; we help people realize America’s narrative is plural. We do this through training and consulting work for other organizations, our Genius Fellowship and Community Builders Network. These pathways help folks “hack” the toxic and pervasive narrative that centers black men as a detriment to their larger society since we know the reality is black men are living out lives as local and national assets every day.
Pliska: This is such a powerful approach. What are some of the programming and internal structures that bring this to life at BMe?
Shorters: “Asset-Framing” - defining people by their aspirations and contributions, not by the challenges they may face, is the guiding principle for all the work we do at BMe. I cannot overstate the importance of this. I was speaking recently to a BMe community partner working in Maryland’s minority business program and they shared with me that the business plans by black men very often include some sort of giveback component, some effort to support their communities – it’s just normal for them. This is just one example.
The truth is black men are doing amazing things every day to build up their communities and the larger society. They are both the most engaged fathers in America and the most likely to enlist and serve this nation in uniform. BMe is working to amplify that true narrative of dedication to the greater good. This is why we call the black men in BMe’s network “community builders.” Everything we do is geared toward drawing out that natural inclination to build community.
Pliska: Is there a moment from your work with BMe that really captures the power of shifting to an asset-based approach?
Shorters: At BMe, we help organizations commit to asset-framing as an institutional practice. When we helped a major nonprofit approach their core issue – poverty – through an asset-frame, they were able to see minority-owned banks as crucial allies. Because of an asset-frame, they no longer viewed all things associated with the community they are looking to serve as needing “intervention,” and in the process, they were able to recognize the opportunity for collaboration.
BMe has put this to practice, too. OneUnited Bank, a black-owned bank, received a million-dollar deposit from us a couple of years ago and they turned our deposit into $2.5 million dollars in property loans in low-to-moderate-income communities. Fighting poverty through an asset-frame costs nothing because depositing in a black-owned bank costs nothing. When you define people and places by their aspirations and contributions, it is much easier to see that FDIC-insured black-owned banks, like OneUnited, are natural partners for stabilizing communities and building wealth – at zero risk to that nonprofit depositor who says they want those same things. Asset-framing is the key to breakthroughs like these. It paves a way for us to live out narratives, based in fact, that value all members of the human family and increase equity and opportunity for all.
