A Hopeful New Way to Pursue Racial Equity

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When john a. powell arrived at the University of California at Berkeley about a decade ago, he found a competition that spoke to a struggle outside academia.

The nationally renowned civil-liberties scholar (who spells his name all lowercase) had been picked to lead the Haas Diversity Research Center, which was divided into clusters, each of which examined a way that people marginalize others — by race, by faith, by gender, and more. Individually, the clusters were doing great work, powell says, “but they were largely competing to be the real and ultimate example of marginality and discrimination. It wasn’t healthy to have these competing narratives about who was the most discriminated against or oppressed.”

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Today, the center has a new name: the Othering & Belonging Institute, a reflection of the framework by which powell views marginalization after more than 30 years as a social-justice advocate. He explains this approach in a new book, Belonging Without Othering: How We Save Ourselves and the World, which he wrote with institute colleague Stephen Menendian.

The two scan the globe and history and find that humans — in their fundamental desire to feel they belong — often “other” groups of people, assigning them less than full societal status or even their basic dignity or rights. In India, religion and caste are the means to marginalize and dehumanize. In Europe, language and ethnicity, along with religion, are the chosen wedges. Race is a significant dividing line in America, but in Korea, where race is not particularly relevant, it’s gender, sex, and class.

“The ‘other’ can be a numerical, racial, ethnic, or religious majority or minority,” they write. “An othered group may hold great wealth or be economically precarious.”

The drive for equity, powell and Menendian argue, has fallen short because it can’t escape the “us vs. them” shorthand that stirs fear and opposition. Social-justice movements can “improve material conditions and the standing of marginalized groups,” they write, but the efforts typically engender a backlash that limits what can be accomplished.

Explore ideas, conversations, and solutions for a fractured country.

“Equity efforts must appear positive-sum rather than zero-sum, and be framed in a narrative of progress and betterment for all,” they write.

Successful narratives for progress, powell and Menendian argue, create a sense of belonging without othering. At their core, they are grand aspirations that inspire people across identities and link them in common purpose.

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., powell notes, pointed to the ideal of “beloved community.” “He actually rejected making the civil rights movement a racial-justice movement.” In South Africa, Nelson Mandela inspired South Africa to reach for a national identity as a “rainbow nation.”

Without such narratives that offer everyone a sense of belonging, powell and Menendian argue, “the future will look more like the bloody past,” with increasing division, hostility, violence, and war. “The ultimate outcome would be the end not only of civilization but potentially of life as we know it on this planet.”

Not at Bottom Yet

In a conversation with the Chronicle, powell and Menendian talked about Belonging Without Othering and the implications for philanthropy. This excerpt is edited for clarity and brevity.

Why do you consider racial equity a limiting framework for addressing marginalization?

powell: There is the theory of it, which is very different sometimes than practice. The practice is that you pick a group “at the bottom,” and focus on that group. Well, that process itself is problematic and fraught for a whole lot of reasons.

Equity has often been associated with racial justice, so race has already been chosen as the defining factor for equity. There are many different ways in which people are marginalized, and it’s not stable. One group might be marginalized in one situation and a different group in another situation. A focus on equity blinds us to those nonracial ways in which people are marginalized.

Menendian: In practice, the emphasis and focus on equity interventions tends to be on disparities. While it is important to illuminate the nature of inequality, it is also limiting in terms of galvanizing a response to address it. It doesn’t give everyone skin in the game, whereas a belonging frame does.

At the moment, there is, in a sense, a universal crisis of belonging. It’s not just marginalized populations and marginalized communities that feel a sense of not belonging; it’s also those who traditionally have been higher up in the societal hierarchy who feel they don’t belong. This crisis is shot throughout societies.

Many argue that the United States has never been more divided. Do you agree?

powell: There are different ways of measuring fragmentation and polarization. But however you measure it, I think it’s safe to say that it is extreme, and it is accelerating.

And it’s not just political; it’s also cultural. Think about the Covid pandemic. We’ve had pandemics before, but we never had such a deep political divide between the two major parties on whether, say, the swine flu was a good thing or bad thing. Polarization is institutionalized in a way that is really rare in this country. And it’s not just this country; it’s happening all over the world. It’s really quite unprecedented, and we haven’t hit the bottom yet.

Some scholars argue that social movements can’t succeed without a villain or out-group — billionaires and corporations for a Bernie Sanders-style campaign, or immigrants for followers of Donald Trump. Can you point to movements historically that have succeeded without such antagonists?

powell: Think of Nelson Mandela. He made apartheid the enemy, not white people. When King talked about righteous indignation, that’s what he was talking about — being angry at systems that oppress people but being generous towards people. That’s the kind of complexity that we are reaching for.

Menendian: In many of the social-justice movements of the 20th century, there are in fact antagonists. In Gandhi’s efforts to liberate India, the antagonist was frankly the British Empire and specifically the British leadership. In some sense, the king of England was viewed as the ultimate enemy.

But in many cases, it’s really not that simple. We are struck by the fact that in the long sweep of human history, the most compelling narratives are those that are more complicated than the Manichean good versus evil. There is always a layer of complexity. The Odyssey and the Iliad are some of the most enduring works of narrative in human history, and they don’t have a categorical villain in them.

Courtesy of Nicholas Lea Bruno/Othering & Belonging Institute

As a solution, you point to programs that pull people out of their bubbles and connect them across their divides — political, racial, ethnic, generational, and more. Philanthropy now funds hundreds of such efforts that vary widely. What’s essential to be successful?

Menendian: One thing: Bridging is not necessarily about resolving disagreements. People think, If we can just bridge, then we can solve all our political problems, but that is not the case.

The ultimate goal of bridging is to create a bond and sense of belonging. But the penultimate goal is to develop trust. If I take five minutes here to tell you my life story, I would feel a closeness to you that I wouldn’t have felt before. And if you did the same, that reciprocity creates a powerful bond, and that inculcates and instills trust.

Bridging is really that: creating connection. It’s not necessarily about resolving conflict. You can’t solve a political problem unless you can create trust and connection.

What is the role of philanthropy and nonprofits in advancing belonging, particularly those deeply invested in ensuring equity?

powell: When we think of racial justice, gender justice, disability justice, immigrant rights, all of those are undergirded by belonging. Look at the Middle East. The Middle East is a fight about who belongs, literally.

We say that everybody belongs. We recognize that everyone is not situated the same; there’s not power symmetry. But if you start with the premise that every life counts, every person counts, then it actually changes the whole discourse. It changes your funding.

If you don’t think of people as fully belonging, you’re not going to be concerned that they are unhoused. You’re not going to be concerned that they are abused by the police. We believe that belonging is a predicate to all the things we want — good health outcomes, good education, a society that works. Everything funders are funding, even the environment, can’t be reached unless there is a foundation of belonging.

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