Forum From the Archives: john a. powell on Polarization and 'The Power of Bridging'
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From KQED in San Francisco, I'm Alexis Madrigal. On Monday, our country will once again inaugurate Donald Trump as president. And once again, it will come as the country is bitterly divided about him and what his administration may do. And also deeply skeptical about the motives, reasoning and even humanity of the people who support him.

Here at Forum, we thought that this lull before the transition would be a perfect time to listen back on our interview with John A. Powell. He's director of UC Berkeley's Othering and Belonging Institute, and his work is all about communicating and understanding each other's humanity across divides. It's a special edition of Forum from the Archives right after this news.

Welcome to Forum. I'm Alexis Madrigal. John A. Powell is a legend, a professor of law, African American and ethnic studies at UC Berkeley. He's also the director of Berkeley's Othering and Belonging Institute, which, quote, "...investigates and challenges social cleavages and hierarchies based on differential power, privilege, and access to resources."

He's been a mentor and model for many and has written several books, including a new one co-authored with Rochelle Galloway-Papotas. It's called The Power of Bridging, How to Build a World Where We All Belong. He just felt like exactly the right person to bring you some wisdom. Welcome to Forum, John Powell. Thanks for having me, Alexis.

So let's just walk through some of the terms here. You know, your institute at UC Berkeley called the Othering and Belonging Institute, and you kind of see these as paired terms. So maybe how did we settle on, you know, othering? How do you define it? Well, there are a number of ways to think about it, but the simple thing is where you're not according someone mutual respect, dignity, equality. And so for whatever reason, you say someone's less than, they're not deserving, they're

And there's a gradient. So you can say, you know, okay, women were not deserving of the vote before 1920, but they still were part of society. And then there's the extreme where you say people are othered and they're not quite human and they don't belong in the society at all and or will commit genocide against them. So it goes all the way from a slight majority

to really just saying people are a threat and we don't want them around. A more benign expression of it would be to say, okay, we're going to have people around, but we're going to segregate them. We're not going to let them into our schools, our homes, our neighborhoods, our synagogues or churches. And we can do it based on any number of factors. There's no single factor.

expression of othering. And it's basically a sociological phenomena that is created by people themselves. It's not natural. There's no natural other and no natural we that's actually constructed by society itself. And what's its relationship to belonging? Well, in some ways, it's close to the opposite, but not quite. Belonging is actually a very

primal need for humans and other mammals as well. We're literally born attached to another human being. We are social animals. Maslow and his hierarchy of needs, which is well known now, lists belonging as the third most important need.

Many of his students changed the order. He said first was physical health and then food and then belonging. Many of his students said, no, it's belonging, then physical health, then food. Because you don't get those things unless you belong. You literally don't. You can't be safe without belonging. You can't accumulate in life without belonging. And it's not only...

externally, it's also internally. We carry stories from society. We have a language. We have a culture that we share with others. And of course, the very word human

as part of its root meaning is from humus, meaning of the earth. So we belong to the earth. We have to be rooted and grounded in the earth. And it's easy to forget that in a society where it's very urban, where we valorize individualism. It's easy to forget how powerful and important belonging is to every aspect of our life.

You know, one of the complex things or kind of nuanced things about this theory too, right, is that people in their efforts to belong decide to other some other people. That's exactly right. Right. And so do you see that as a necessary connection? Like we must say those people over there are not us so that we can be in us.

Well, you know, it's interesting because when you're asking about the relationship between othering and belonging, on first blush, it may seem like they're the opposite, but that's not quite right. Because much of othering is actually done in service of belonging. So they're not quite parallel. So even when we're othering, oftentimes we're doing it for the purpose to belong. And sometimes the price of belonging is that you have to other some other group.

And some people think that that's a necessary part of belonging. That is that if you have something that belongs, you have to have something that doesn't belong. It's actually not quite that simple, and that's a good thing. It's more complicated and it's more natural. So if you think about a forest, trees and trees,

The earth itself. They're separate, right? But they're all dependent on each other. The trees are dependent upon the earth. As we get deeper into it, we find that the forest, and by extension us, are powerfully interconnected.

without being the same. So as a logical entailment, it would seem like, well, if you say belonging, don't you have the other? Actually, from an organic perspective and a moral perspective, it turns out not to be right. And it's hard for us to see that because we think in binaries. If it's not this, it must be that. But I would say our long history of the last several thousand years

has been reaching for a deeper and wider belonging with many setbacks. You know, you think about something like the EU, which on its face seems now not that remarkable and maybe won't even succeed. But for the last 50, 60 years, a remarkable thing came of nations who fought each other all the time start to see themselves as having some common identity, having some common identity.

history. Same thing in terms of most religious organizations. So you think of Christians. There are two and a half billion people who call themselves Christians.

That's getting close to over a third of people on the planet. Two billion people call themselves Muslims. They will never see, many of them will never see each other. They have different languages. They have different foods. They have different customs. But they have something that they share that's really important to them. And so is it possible to continue to expand that something that we all share? And I think it is. And I think that's the orientation that we have to take.

We're talking with John A. Powell, director of UC Berkeley's Othering and Belonging Institute, author of The Power of Bridging: How to Build a World Where We All Belong. We're actually drawn some questions from that book that are sort of like discussion questions that were included. And here's a couple of them. Where in your life do you feel you belong?

Where do you feel you don't belong? Where do you feel other? You can email us comments and questions to forum at kqed.org. You can give us a call too, of course, 866-733-6786. That's 866-733-6786.

John, one of the things that I find fascinating about your work is the way that you try and take on the tremendous change that societies are going through and have gone through. Because one of the components of this theory, right, is that we choose to other each other kind of as a response to what really are

new novel and sometimes scary new circumstances in the world. That's right. I mean, in a sense, one of the things I talk about in the book is that we actually have a hard time with rapid change, especially across some critical areas, and that what's happening in the world is the world, the change is accelerating. And so that sort of activates, excites our nervous system. We become anxious and

And we need to make meaning of what's going on. And sometimes we can think of there's what we call objective reality, what's outside of us, we all agree on, the Bay Bridge. There's subjective reality, what am I feeling? But then there's also meaning. What does...

the Bay Bridge mean? What does our changing demographics mean? What does AI mean? And we actually don't know. So meaning becomes really a fertile ground, and that's where stories come in. Stories help us make meaning of the world. That's where religion come in. Religions help us make meaning of the world. And so as the world is changing and those old stories don't quite hold and don't quiet us anymore, we need new stories. We need some explanation to make sense of things.

And one of the ways is to say it's somebody's fault. If you're uncomfortable, you were uncomfortable 10 years ago and now you're not. Well, why? Well, it's somebody's fault. It's the Muslim's fault. It's the gay's fault. It's the black's fault. It's the white's fault. So even a bad story is better than no story.

And we look to leaders to help us make sense of the world. And this is especially true today. So we call those breaking stories. But another story would be, yes, AI is coming. You know, in San Francisco, you see drivers' cars. But it's not necessarily bad. And yes, the world is becoming more diverse and we're growing.

having more proximity to people who may not look like us, may worship God or not God at all. But they're interesting. They're part of something larger, and we should be curious about them. We should...

Asked them what their story is. That's a bridging story a story that invites a kind of openness a kind of curiosity Kind of willingness to explore so those that are two major features of stories in our society today one person and one bridging Yeah, it can also scale up and down right? I mean it can be something that's done just across two people or it can be done across like a like a whole society - that's exactly right and in fact

it's very different when it's between two people and it's between two groups or between two societies. And one of the differences is something you alluded to earlier. If you're part of a group and you want to bridge to another designated other group,

sometimes you will be disciplined, if not punished by your group, for breaching the group norms. Why are you talking to those people? Why are you talking to conservatives if you're a liberal? Why are you talking to liberals if you're a conservative? And so it's not just between the two of you anymore. Now it's also calling into question your very belonging. And so we discipline people sometimes not to wander off from their belonging group. Mm-hmm.

We're listening back on our conversation from November with John A. Powell, director of UC Berkeley's Othering and Belonging Institute. He released two books last year, The Power of Bridging, How to Build a World Where We All Belong, and Belonging Without Othering, How We Save Ourselves and the World. We'll be back with more of this forum from the archives right after a short break. ♪

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Welcome back to Forum. We're talking with John A. Powell, director of UC Berkeley's Othering and Belonging Institute. You know, Noel over on Discord writes, "One time I had a three-hour flight layover in Dallas, so I contacted my cousin who has lived in the area for many years. He picked me up from the airport and he drove me to his house. Somehow I brought up Drag Queen Story Hour and he was triggered. I was saddened that he'd gotten more conservative. He used to be a Democrat, but considering the atmosphere in Texas,

it would be really going against the tide to not be influenced by the majority beliefs. I tried to find common ground at least, and I have not written him off. I mean, that sounds to me, John Powell, like a bridging story, like someone who's trying to stay in it with someone and maintain proximity. I think that's right. And it would be interesting to really not try to persuade him

to your view, but really just try to understand

what he's going through to really... So that's one of the deep things about bridging. It's empathetic listening. It's not persuasion. It's not factual. It's not arguing to change someone. It's basically saying, I want to see you. I'm interested in you. What are you feeling? What are you afraid of? And if you can keep that space open, the research suggests something quite powerful oftentimes happens. Hmm.

That's interesting. I mean, how do you do that when someone might be bringing up, you know, a wild conspiracy that everyone's been microchipped by COVID vaccine? You know, it's one of these things that we there's no evidence for and yet has been circulating, you know, in different informational environments for people for quite a long time.

Where do you decide this person has left the realm of a shared reality and when I can work with them?

You know, at some point I would say two things. One, you can't bridge in every circumstance. You know, there's a number of circumstances because of you, because of the other, because of the environment where you can't bridge. I mean, some people ask me with the struggles in Gaza and the Middle East, what do you do if people are dropping bombs? And I say, go to an airway shelter. You know, there's a time and place where you can bridge and the times when other things are appropriate.

And so, but the shared reality is always potential. Some people will say, "That person has nothing in common with me. I mean, they're red, I'm blue, they're, you know, whatever." You can add to the list. But the reality is we all are dying. We all will suffer loss. We all have anxiety.

We love our children. We want what's best for them. And so we do have stuff in common, but it doesn't mean we agree on issues. So as a matter of course, I would say generally don't start with the issues. Start with each other. Start with the heart.

There's one situation, I won't say too much about it, but it was someone who was very different politically, very conservative in a situation where most people were at least liberal. And they start talking about personal things. And what the person shared was that they were lonely, that they hadn't had a date yet.

that, you know, they were isolated. Now, that has nothing to do with being liberal or conservative necessarily. And people's hearts opened up and people could talk. Now, some people would say, so what? But the so what actually is a big deal because when we deeply fragment, when we deeply break, we stop seeing other people as human. When we don't see people as human, we give ourselves permission collectively and individually to do terrible things to them.

We don't hear their story. Their story becomes flat. You see someone who's unhoused. What kind of vegetables does that person like? Do they have children? What are they afraid of? We actually don't know. All we know is that they're unhoused. And we make up a story, a background story about them. So when we other people, our story about them is two-dimensional. Our story about our friends, our family is very rich and contextual. And that's what we're trying to get with Bridging, is to open up that contextual curiosity to

for people who we think of as other. One of the things that I've heard you talk about over the years is why you've chosen this sort of larger meta category of othering rather than using just racism, say, or, you know, a single category. Is that because it allows you to open up kind of more dimensions of bridging? Let's say you don't share a racial or ethnic background with somebody, but you might share a, you know, a

a role in a family. You might both be parents. You might both, you know, have lost family members. You might share a linguistic group or something like that. That's right. I mean, to some extent, complexity helps us. So breaking, as I suggested, is very simple, right? It's like that person's this and that's it. But no one's just this. We all have multiple identities. We may be parents, children, have children. We may be

like classical music. I mean, there are a whole bunch of things that some are important to us and some are less important to us. And they're formative ways in which we other. And a lot of people have asserted, I think correctly so, that race is one of the formative ways we other in the United States. And by that, they mean it helps actually set our culture. It helps actually set our institutions. It's more than just about the racialized other. It becomes about the whole country. Yeah.

But race is not the formative way of othering in other parts of the world. People have different experiences. I just got back from Europe and India. In India, you know, race is largely a non-issue. But caste is huge. And religion is huge. I lived in India several years ago, and I remember someone came up to me and said, so what religion are you? And I said, well, you know, I don't really...

think about religion in that way. And they couldn't relate to me until they had a religious category that made sense to them. And so finally, they said, oh, you're the religion of agnostic. Fine, whatever. I had a similar experience in Africa. I lived in Africa and people literally outside of the city would say, so what tribe are you a part of? And I said, how do I know? What do you mean, how do you know? And I said, well, you know,

My fourth parents were taken from Africa and taken to America. So I don't know what tribe I am. Oh, you're the tribe of African Americans. So when we have these categories, when we live in these categories, when we tell these stories, they seem just there. And it blinds us not only to aspects of ourselves, but it blinds us to other people's stories. And so race, as important as it is, and I'm not suggesting that we...

Ignore it, but it's one among many stories. To paraphrase Bob Marley, he says, every person thinks his burden is the heaviest. So as an African-American, I might think,

being descendants of enslaved people is the heaviest. If I was Native American, which actually I am partially, I might think what happened to Native Americans is the heaviest. If I was Irish. So the point is that can we open up, can we be interested in not only our multiple stories, but other people's multiple stories. And to have compassion means to suffer with. Can I hear and share your suffering?

And when we have that, that brings people together. That's a powerful bridge. Mm-hmm.

We're talking with John A. Powell, director of UC Berkeley's Othering and Belonging Institute, author of a book called The Power of Bridging, How to Build a World Where We All Belong. And we'd love to hear from you. What stories are you telling yourself about change in the world? You can email us, forum at kqed.org. You can give us a call, 866-733-6786. That's 866-733-6786.

Here we go, John. We're getting into it. We have a great, really interesting comment here that we, the whole team's really interested to see what you'll say. Debbie writes, I find it interesting that as a white middle-class family living in a diverse community, my children feel othered.

These days, it's not okay to be a proud, melting pot white American with no particular belonging other than being an American. My children see groups who unite and connect based on race and ethnicity, but feel no connection of their own. This is especially true for my son. How do you foster a sense of inclusion and okayness to be white and middle class in our youth? Well, thanks for the question. And two things. One, when I talk about this in the book, when our...

containers are cracked or broken, then everybody feels othered. So othered, you can think of it in terms of vertical, like the powerful and less powerful, but really it's something that actually spreads across society. And so if we're going to create belonging, which is different than inclusion, belonging requires co-creation. It requires co-design, which oftentimes the way we think about inclusion does not. It's like you join somebody else's thing, you're included.

but you join it on their terms. I oftentimes say, you know, I have a party, you're invited, but I'm from Detroit, so it's going to be a lot of Motown. I'm vegetarian, so no meat. And I'm getting older, so the party ends at 8 o'clock. So you might say, well, that's not a party I want to be a part of. You could come as a guest. You're included. But you don't belong. It's not your party. Belonging says, let's talk about our party, not my party, not your party.

And so part of the things sometimes we do in terms of claiming our own otherness, we actually engage in our own belonging. We engage in othering. And so the title of the book that Stephen Menendez and I wrote earlier this year is called Belonging Without Othering because belonging with othering has been going on for thousands of years.

So if you're a Christian, you belong, but if you're not a Christian, you're a sinner. If you're a Muslim, you belong. If you're not a Muslim, you're infidel. When Europe was exploring the world, if you're European, you're civilized, if not, you're barbarian. So they had belonging. These people belong, but those don't. And that carries over. So sometime today, even as we sort of reach for our own sense of belonging,

racially, gender, we actually other the other. And I would say to deal with that with your son or daughter. Also, they're part of institutions. So I would encourage those institutions to embrace that, not just put it on them. So whether it's a school or a church or a playgroup. And then finally, I would say, from my perspective, we all belong.

We don't need permission to belong. It doesn't mean that we won't feel good. It doesn't mean we won't get slighted. But our humanness, our, if you will, divinity is not contingent. There's a South African word called Sabawanu, which means I see you. It also translates into the God in me sees the God in you.

So I think everybody belongs, and that's what's so beautiful about what we're doing and what we're trying to do, is to say your son, your daughter, regardless to their race, they belong.

Let's bring in some callers here. Rosemary in Oakland. Welcome. Thank you. I wanted to tell John that although I don't know you in person, I've been listening and I adore you. I wish the world would feel the same way you do because I totally agree with you. I was...

explaining how just before the election, I had a conversation with a fellow. I didn't know him. I'm very outspoken. I'm very forward. We started talking about the election and without asking him outright who he would vote for, I

kind of worked my way around it. And he said, I'm not going to talk to you. And I said, oh, I'm sorry. And he said, I said, why is that? You don't want to speak. And he said, I don't want you to belittle me. And I said, I would never, ever do that. I just want to have a conversation. I want to hear where you're coming from. I want to understand. Nope. He would, he was,

Quite angry. And, of course, I had to walk away. I wasn't going to try to keep up the conversation. But I don't really know how to deal with that. I don't know how to deal. And it makes me very sad. It makes me sad. Yeah. Hey, Rosemary, thanks for sharing that story. John? Well, thanks for sharing. And, again, in the book, we talk about short bridges and long bridges.

And short bridges are bridges with people who you share a great deal, like it could be your cousin or your sister or your brother, where you share a language, you share maybe religion, you share food, you share the same family. You still can get into fights. You still can have these walls between you. But those are called short bridges. Then there are what we call long bridges, which is bridges between someone that, you know, they live in another part of the world and, you know,

They shop at different stores, and they look at different television programs, and you think you have nothing in common with them. And there's a difference between trying to engage in long bridges and short bridges. And I often tell the story about a pastor here in the Bay Area. When I was talking to him about bridging, he said, his name is Pastor McBride. He said, so John, are you saying I should bridge with the devil?

And as a Christian minister, I said, don't start there. Start with something shorter. And as you get comfortable, you can extend the bridge. Just try the Methodist. Exactly. But also be careful about who you call the devil. So our openness to bridging doesn't mean the other person is open to bridging. Although the reality is most people like being seen. Most people like being recognized. And so if a person feels that person you were speaking to

who said he was afraid that you're going to belittle him. It's giving you a lot of information.

And that's what's happening in a global context. The people are feeling belittled. People are feeling not seen. And when that happens, the part of the brain that takes over is what I call the lizard brain, the amygdala, the fear. And to engage and bridge with the amygdala, the lizard, is quite different than engaging and bridging with the front of the brain, which is where rational reason takes place.

It's so interesting. Do you think that the reason that particular kind of feeling, belittling, which is such a, it's so specific, actually, and it's, you know, even as a metaphor, it goes a long way. Do you think, why do you think it is that that particular possibility seems to be in the air around these political topics right now?

Well, I think it is in the air. And I think, and I haven't looked at the data on this, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's probably more prominent with men. So part of it is, you know, we sort of walk through the world and we feel some sense of control. We still feel some sense of maybe importance through our job, through our station in life, through our family. And all those things are being called into question at multiple levels. And so then you're

there's a tendency to lash out. And why do I feel less than? What do I feel? And again, belonging requires co-creation. It's again, not just you passively part of something, that your voice counts, that your perspective counts, your feelings count. And what we do when we fracture, which we sometimes refer to as polarization, which I think is not an apt term, but when we fracture, we actually make smaller and smaller pieces.

And then we're angry. Why am I feeling this way? Why am I feeling like in my quote-unquote own country I'm not seen? We need to be seen. We need to be recognized. So even as we attack the other, we also want something from the other. We want the recognition. And so it becomes a vicious cycle. We attack more. The other attack more. We feel less and less. We get that immediate rush of anger, but then it doesn't last.

So I think that we're not out of the woods by a long shot. And there's going to be a lot of debasement and belittling, deliberately so, not just unintentionally. What the caller talked about was the person believing that. But we engage in a kind of nasty politics right now, nasty discourse, where we go out of our way to belittle people we consider the other. Mm-hmm.

We're talking with John A. Powell, director of UC Berkeley's Othering and Belonging Institute. He's also a professor of law, African American and ethnic studies at UC Berkeley. We're going to get to a bunch more of your calls. If you can't get through on the phone lines to talk about this topic, you can try emailing us, too. Really some wonderful comments coming in to forum.com.

kqed.org you can try you know blue sky threads the new things or kqed forum there as well I'm Alexis Madrigal stay tuned for more right after the break

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To start listening, just search Making Space wherever you get your podcasts and follow for new episodes every Wednesday.

Welcome back to Forum. I'm Alexis Madrigal. We're here with John A. Powell, director of UC Berkeley's Othering and Belonging Institute. New book called The Power of Bridging, How to Build a World Where We All Belong. Earlier this year, I had another book come out called Belonging Without Othering, How We Save Ourselves and the World. Let's bring in another caller here, Tracy in Hayward. Welcome. Hello. How you doing? Can you hear me? Yeah, sure can. Go ahead.

- Mr. Powell, Alexis, thank you. You know what, I listen to you guys every morning. This is very interesting. My experience, I was born from a family, Christian, Baptist, Louisiana, Southern Baptist. And in 1998, I became a Muslim, I converted to Islam. And my mom thought I was going to be running around the streets selling bean pies with a bow tie on.

And I was like, mom, you're ignorant. I just said, and I don't mean that in a bad way. You just don't know. So I started to educate her just basic things.

basic, you know, Islam 101 and just showed her how Islam is about peace. And we still believe in Jesus is the Messiah. And then I started living my life as a Muslim. And then she saw it through my character that, oh, my God, you haven't changed, but you have. You're a better human being. And the faith has made you better. And so I

I was like ostracized at first. And then once they became knowledgeable, just through basic teaching and showing them, then they brought me back. It was like my mom loved me again. And now she's my biggest Islamic advocate. She's like, don't you ever leave your faith.

And then another thing, one more thing that I did is like Thanksgiving. I said, I came to Thanksgiving after I became conscious and I guess I could say woke. I was like, man, Thanksgiving, this is a holiday. This is a holiday of genocide. I'm not supporting it. So when I came to Thanksgiving the first time after I was woke, I just went to Google, printed out a one page, and I went Thanksgiving according to the Native American Indian, printed

I'm here to be with family. I'm not celebrating this holiday alone.

I said, not for what it stands for of celebrating being with family. And I says, here's a little one-page educational flyer about what Thanksgiving is. And everybody's like, oh, Tracy. Oh, Uncle Tracy. Yeah.

Hey, Tracy, appreciate your, you know, just sharing this kind of story of transformation both in yourself and, you know, in the family as well. I mean, John Powell, do you want to talk a little bit about this? I mean, there's so many dimensions to this story. Well, you know, the part of the thing is that what Tracy shared is that his perspective and his mom's perspective and family perspective was quite different. And educating them, bringing them along, I think could be important.

But I also want to be clear that bridging is not necessarily educating. It's more empathetic. It's more compassion. It's not saying, you got your facts wrong. There may be a place for that, and that may be important. But it's basically saying, I see you as a human being. I respect you as a human being. You don't have to agree with me. And that's sometimes hard to do.

So I think the process that Tracy went through with his mom and family was, and I would dare say it was held basically by love.

So when you have close bridges, and I talk about this a lot in the book in my own family, where we had some cleavages, but even while we had those cleavages, there was always love. So that creates a new possibility of bridging. So can you care for someone even when you disagree with them? So I think that's... Here's...

Slightly different spin here. Listener Scott writes in to say, "I don't want to be a downer, but I honestly felt very othered after the election results. Perhaps I was living in a bubble, but I don't feel that I'm welcomed in my own country." And one of the things that I'm struck by in this comment, John, is that if the election had gone the other way, there'd be an entirely different set of people who might be saying literally the exact same thing.

but in a different part of the country or a different part of the Bay Area.

No, I think that's actually important. So this is not sort of a thing of like just a feel good. I mean, things happen. They're real. People do other people. You know, I was just in Barcelona and meeting with some Senegalese people there. And one drive tried to get a cab and the cab driver said, I don't want any N with N word in my cab. That was extreme othering and it feels bad. You should feel bad. I mean, but you shouldn't stay there.

So I think the country and the world, I think they're powerful voices that have weaponized othering, that encourage people to other, that encourage people not just to not talk to people or see people, but encourage people to be violent toward other people. But in our response, and part of it our greeting, we have to

if we can, be with others who continue to insist that everybody belong. You know, I would say before the election, regardless to who wins, what happens to the people who lost the day after the election?

Right now we have a system that I won, you lost, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah. It is othering. We have a system that's toxic with othering. And I think to struggle, fight, encourage that everybody belongs and it's not contingent upon you agreeing with me is what we're trying to get to. But I don't want to suggest that we're there. I will mention this, which I think is useful,

Most of us know that Thomas Jefferson was the third president of the United States. He was also a person who had enslaved hundreds of people. He had a principal hand in penning the word, we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men, correct that, all people are created equal. What is he talking about? He has hundreds of people enslaved, and he's talking about self-evident truths.

They were all equal. And some historians said that is the most consequential statement in U.S. history. And it's not just a contradiction. It's not just he was a hypocrite. It speaks to the complexity, the way he thought about equality and the way the country thought about black people at the time is that they were not people. So he could sort of address that. We have to reject that and change.

Lincoln tried to reject it. So I'm saying today when we look out, we say, what are you talking about belonging without othering? It's happening. Othering is happening all over the world. It's true. But that's the very time that it's important to assert that everyone belongs. It's the very time that it's important to assert we need to bridge these apparent cleavages. That's the very time to assert that all human life is sacred.

Here are three people who are struggling with this. One listener writes, "I live in the Bay Area, am a lesbian, and come from a very large, tight-knit family from rural Wyoming. Through the first Trump administration, until a few weeks ago, I spent time with them being particularly close to one cousin. We were gingerly able to talk about issues until she told me that there were 'bigger fish to fry' than LGBTQ+ rights.

None of her concerns feel really accurate to me, whereas I feel like my concerns are. I haven't been able to speak to her since then and I no longer want to attend the yearly family reunion. I am grieving a huge loss right now with no idea how to heal from it. Laura writes, "I don't know how we bridge at this point. We're in a war for our democracy, our liberties, and the rule of law. It's not just different opinions now. It's about being on the right side of history or the wrong side."

And Joe asks, "What if bridging does not feel safe because the other party may not mean well or has expressed the intent to hurt people like you, for example, a trans person or an undocumented immigrant?" Those are all very important and I'll just start with the last. Again, I try to address this some in the book. If there's a threat, if you're being triggered, if there's trauma, it may not be the space to bridge.

So bridging is not something that should be done at all times in all contexts. Your safety is important. And so I actually go around the country talking to people who disagree with me, but I have conditions. I have guardrails. And one of those guardrails is no violence. And sometimes group says, we're not going to guarantee that. And I said, fine, I'm not coming. So it's not something that you can always do, but it's a way of orienting what you do in the world.

And yes, so, but the earlier comment in terms of disagreeing, again, bridging doesn't require agreement. My father was a Christian minister. He's passed away. And I went back home several years ago, and he had a very hard position on women's choice. And I believe that women should have a choice in terms of their body. And we stayed up all night talking. And the next day...

My mom came down to breakfast and she said, "What did you and your father talk about?" She said, "You know, he was so happy this morning." And what we talked about was not just our disagreements. What we talked about was how we felt. We talked about our love for each other. What we talked about is our respect of each other. And we didn't change each other's mind. But we changed some things even more. We changed each other's heart.

So bridging is not saying, again, it's not everything, and power matters, and hurting people matter. But even in war, even in war, and one of the callers said, we had war.

there has to be a time where people talk. So you think about the 30-year troubles in Northern Ireland. Those troubles could only be addressed when people sat down with each other who had been literally killing each other's families, and we met with them. They're really wonderful people, also complex like most of us, but unless they were willing to talk, the work couldn't end. So it's not saying you don't do other things, but you have to have space for some...

when you are ready. And if you're not ready, don't do it. And I say, if you can't bridge, at least try to avoid breaking. Let's bring in another caller here. Let's bring in Hakeem in Palo Alto.

Welcome, Hakeem. Hi, thank you all so much for this. Thank you so much for this conversation. It's been so enlightening. So I'm a professor down at Stanford, and I think a lot about identity, and I was motivated to call in because I was so taken and struck because of its familiarity by the caller who said that he's wrestling with young kids who

are white and middle class and don't feel like they belong. And so I wanted to just intervene into the conversation and say, I think it's really important for us to think about the way that in diverse places with difference and structures and all of that,

sometimes those of us who belong to dominant social categories won't necessarily feel like we belong in all the spaces that marginalized people create and construct. And it's one of these things that worries me a lot, that there are good white folks, including a lot of the listeners, who feel like they don't belong, who feel excluded. And I wanted to just

about the way that motivates some of the kind of animus and some of the politics that we've seen from many white Americans who feel excluded, who feel a sense of loss, and who then behave in line with that. And so it seems an opportunity for the caller really to help their young kids understand why it is there might be some spaces where people of color have created or constructed, where as a queer man, I might not

be welcome necessarily into the lesbian bar. And that's okay because those places have been constructed out of violence and harm and difference. So I just wanted to elevate that in the conversation. Yeah, I appreciate that comment, Hakeem. Thanks for listening. What do you think, John-Pel? Well, you know, I think that's right. I guess I would add a couple of things. One is that it's also an opportunity to bridge, right? It's like you're feeling other. You're feeling like you don't belong. What does that feel like?

That's what I feel every day. The quote-unquote marginalized groups, that's what they are actually. The hurt that you're feeling is the hurt that they've been feeling and are feeling. So there's some commonality there. No one likes to feel excluded.

And at the end of the day, I think it's also important to disaggregate. So we talk about these categories and they're constantly shifting and they're also complex. So whiteness is a category, but it's a complicated category.

The range of people who identify as white, who have very different views and very different experiences, as is true of blacks, as is true of gays, as is true of everyone. And if we sort of hold on to that complexity and not reduce people and their identity to a single thing, you know, it's disturbing what happened in Central Park with the, I mean, in some ways I love the irony of the story. So there's a black guy in Central Park. Why is he there?

He's there for bird watching. And there's a white woman there with her dog off the lease. And I get into a thing, right? But the stereotype that you have of black people doesn't quite fit. His story is interesting. All of our stories are interesting. He's a Harvard graduate professor.

There in Central Park, birdwatching. I lived in New York. I never did any birdwatching. My point is that the space of being threatened, the space of being othered, no one wants to be othered. And that's what we're saying, belonging without othering. So how do we acknowledge that without giving it up ourselves? We're not saying to the white young man, it's okay for you to be othered. We're saying it's not okay for anyone to be othered.

And let's wrestle with that. Let's wrestle with what that means in terms of our culture, in terms of our structures, in terms... You know, when I was a kid and go to the movies...

There were no black people. I'm African American and if there was a black person they got killed like in the first five minutes They were just fodder for the monster. They had no real substance That was othering experience. I didn't enjoy the movies I'm glad it's different but can we bring in black people without pushing out white people can we bring in queer people without pushing out straight people and

That's the challenge. Can we actually make a space, multiple spaces for everyone? And our identities are going to change. I mean, the demographic change that's happening in the world are phenomenal. And it's going to put stress on us because some of the change we may resist. I don't get to live in an all-anything neighborhood now, all black, all white. The world is changing.

But a change does not have to be scary, and it won't be scary if we can turn toward each other instead of turning on each other. Mm-hmm.

You know, a couple last listener comments. My experience as a liberal rancher growing up in a diverse community has often left me frustrated with the othering of ranchers, often referred to as rednecks along with other generalizations. And Corrine writes, an issue I sometimes find when bridging is that I can become so eager to make the other party feel at ease and heard that I submerge who I am and what I believe in. It feels like a one-way street. I'll give and not enough return.

John Powell, any quick last thoughts on this comment? Well, the one, the person who talked about losing themselves, that's not what we're talking about. In fact, we talk about the importance of agency. So stories are important, including your story. So as you listen to other people's stories, it doesn't mean your story goes away. Your story counts. You count. Other people belong. It doesn't mean you don't belong.

And at the same time, can you tell other people's stories? There's a concept that a friend of mine wrote in a book called High Conflict called looping, which is that you say something and I say it back to you until you feel like I really heard you. But then I say something and you say it back to me until I felt like you really heard me. So there's enough recognition for everybody. It's not saying we recognize one group.

disappear another group. That's not other, that's not belonging, that's not bridging. That's something else. So I would encourage the caller to actually hold on to their story, to enrich their story, even as they listen to others. Thank you so much. We've been talking with John A. Powell, director of UC Berkeley's Othering and Belonging Institute. Thank you so much for joining us, John. Thanks for having me, Alexis. I'm Alexis Madrigal. Stay tuned for another hour of Forum Ahead with Mina Kim.

Funds for the production of Forum are provided by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Generosity Foundation, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. We could all use a little help navigating the news these days. The Consider This podcast wants to give you a hand. Six days a week, we'll help you make sense of the day's biggest news story and what it means for you in less than 15 minutes. Listen now to the Consider This podcast from NPR.