john a. powell, author of The Power of Bridging, explains what bridging is (and what it isn't) and why it is necessary
When we talk about groups of other people, do we see them as fully part of our community? Do we see them as equal dignity as us? Do we see them as belonging? And sometimes the answer is no. And when we don't, especially if we see them as a threat, we actually then start telling stories about them.
john a. powell:Not listening to them. We don't let them tell their own story to us. We tell stories about them. In some ways we flatten them. We reduce them to a single story.
john a. powell:Because rural and urban are often not physically separated, it makes it easier to tell stories about each other. We actually don't know each other. It's not perfect. It's not hypothetical. It's not something you can do all the time.
john a. powell:But I think in terms of the kind of world that we're trying to bring into existence, bridging until we fully realize that we are connected, bridging is necessary.
Ellen Wolter:That's John Powell, the author of the power of bridging, talking about the necessity of bridging, which he calls a solve for our fractured world. For the final episodes of side by side second season, we are bringing you episodes that unpack what it means to bridge. What is it? Why is it important? Why is it important as we think about connecting across rural, urban, and suburban communities?
Ellen Wolter:How are leaders and organizations tackling this work? What can we learn from them, and how can we, as John calls on us to do, co create a world where we honor our differences and where we all belong? John, who leads Berkeley's Othering and Belonging Institute, joined me to talk about his book and what he means by bridging and the importance of recognizing our mutual interconnectedness. His important work sheds light on how bridging can overcome deep seated divides by breaking down how intentional actions like bridging can prevent the harm that results from othering and from not recognizing how we are connected. He argues that othering is not in fact a natural characteristic of humans and shares ideas for how individuals can foster a bridging mindset and become, as he says, a bridger.
Ellen Wolter:John reminds us that the future is not set, and as we as humans have done for thousands of years, have the collective capacity to, as he says, call the future into being and design a world where othering is a thing of the past. You might be thinking this is not possible, and yet he reminds us there are examples upon examples of things we all never thought would happen and did. And after listening today, if you're interested in reading John's book, the power of bridging, the Bush Foundation is providing free copies to anyone in their service region of Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota, and the 23 native nations that share geography with those states. You can find a link for how to request your copy from the Bush Foundation in the show notes.
john a. powell:This
Ellen Wolter:is Ellen Walter, and welcome to the side by side podcast.
Ellen Wolter:One of the things I'm gonna start with, John, is this idea of connection and interconnection that you pose in your book, the power of bridging. And, you know, because this podcast is all about exploring the connections that exist between rural and urban communities and suburban too because they're often pitted against each other, right, as rivals when in fact they actually work together quite frequently. There's a lot of cooperation in ways in which they rely on each other. And so one of the things you wrote in The Power of Bridging was we flourish in the world by the very nature of our mutuality, which speaks a lot, I think, to the work that that I'm looking into, which is how rural and urban spaces are connected. And so I'm curious if you you know, would it be fair to say that the work that you're doing on bridging is founded on this idea that we are interconnected?
john a. powell:Yes. Very much so. And I wouldn't even go further and say the connection extends beyond humanity. And it's actually a tenant of almost every major religion. And one way of thinking about it or talking about it is saying it's a value, it's a belief, but another is that it's a fact.
john a. powell:And if we think about COVID, for example, there was scary times and I lost close friends and had family members get quite sick. But it was also quite beautiful. It just shows the profound actual interconnection we have with each other. And we're trying to disrupt it. It's like a, you know, ground all the planes, stop all the ships, stay in your house.
john a. powell:And the COVID was still moving, right? And it was moving through us. It was showing how deeply, deeply and intimately we're connected. Stay six feet away, you know, it's like, it doesn't matter. So it's more than an idea.
john a. powell:I think it's actually reality. And I think the unfortunate dominant idea is that we're separate. And I think that that causes all kinds of harms and illnesses. We can't be literally whole into our whole, into we realize and practice our interconnectedness.
Ellen Wolter:john, I listened to one of your podcasts about your book through listeners. Just so you know, the Othering and Belonging Institute has a great podcast series, and so this is where this quote comes from. But Steven is talking about the book that you wrote together and how you really added this idea of connection, and that really added value to the work that you're doing. And he said there's something called the 20 statement task in social psychology where if you list out a number of identities that you have, you'll realize that with nearly everyone, you will find identities that you have in common.
john a. powell:You know, with a little investigation, with a little orientation, it's clear everyone does. I mean, think about Isabel Wilkins wrote a book called CASS. And I interviewed her a few months ago. And in the book, she talks about someone coming to her house to fix her plumbing. She had a leak in her plumbing.
john a. powell:And she describes this figure as someone presenting as a mega. She's a small black woman, probably associated with liberal values. And so there's this apparent clash like what do they have in common? And the atmosphere is fraught. You know, they're not connecting to each other energetically.
john a. powell:And she's frustrated because she wants to get her plumbing fixed and to get this guy out of her house. And she said at some point, she turns to him for some reason and says, How is your mother? And she noticed he started to tear up a little bit and he said, My mother died about two years ago. And Isabelle says, So did mine. And all of a sudden, this apparent wall melts and they're talking to each other.
john a. powell:They're feeling each other. Now, who do you know that has not experienced death? Death is a very big thing. Like It's saying we both like popsicles, right? We all are confronted with death.
john a. powell:So I'd say part of the thing is that we tell stories about not being connected, which is in some ways amazing because we have all these connections.
Ellen Wolter:So, john, as you know, the Bush Foundation selected your book for their book club. And I reached out to the Bush Foundation staff to see if they had questions for you. Somebody asked, what are productive ways to address the complexity of identities, including how religion both encourages and challenges belonging without othering? What are ways individuals can be seen as whole with multiple identities?
john a. powell:Yeah. Well, that's a great question. And like a lot of things, I think it's both probably too complex to really do it justice in the limited amount of time we have. And I also want to just give my thanks and gratitude to the Bush Foundation for sharing my book with people. But it's also very simple, right?
john a. powell:I mean, Arari in his book, Sapien, he talks about Homo sapiens developing these two really important capacities that we take for granted. One of them is imagining things that are not there, so imagination. And the second is telling stories. And he said that those two capacities allow us to tell stories that created greater and greater connections, greater and greater collaboration. That what is the secret sauce, what's the secret power, superpower of Homo sapiens is collaboration.
john a. powell:We can collaborate. Think of building anything, a car, a railroad, a school. It requires tremendous collaboration, way beyond what was apparently the case for many early hunter gatherers. So in those collaborations, we tell stories. I have a student who wrote a brilliant paper talking about AI, and she's talking about AI hallucinating.
john a. powell:And she says, Why are we surprised? It's the same thing humans do. When we don't know something, we make up stories. We hallucinate. And so part of the thing is, can we tell better stories?
john a. powell:Can we tell stories that actually help us connect? And if you think again of the great religious traditions, that's, in a sense, what they've done. They told they created larger and larger containers. My father was a Christian minister. He died a few years ago.
john a. powell:But one of the hearts of Christianity is that we all are God's children. That's an amazing statement proposition to make two thousand years ago. For some people, it's amazing today. But when Jesus made that statement two thousand years ago, the world was deeply, deeply divided, much more than it is now. And it was hard to get around.
john a. powell:And so it was very easy to imagine other people as the other. So part of it is getting in touch with those stories, getting in touch with nature, getting in touch with what a colleague of mine calls awe. And then remembering, which I think of the word remembering. Remembering, bringing things back together. As you said, if you write down 20 statements about I am, you're gonna find out, first of all, that you share a lot with a lot of other people.
john a. powell:But you're also gonna probably find that some of those I ams, some of those stories are in conflict with themselves. John Rawls, one of the most famous political philosophers of the twentieth century, said one of the challenges of diversity was not external, it's internal. We have diverse selves. We have diverse identities. And we normally don't think about them.
john a. powell:But sometimes they're in conflict. So think of the word ambivalent. You know? I just have more than oneself, and they don't always easily cohere.
Ellen Wolter:I think too, one of the things I really loved about your book, and this is one of my later questions I have for you and I wanna talk more about it, is just this idea of imagining imagining what could be. And so this idea of imagining what could be, and that that is also what I think you're talking about with multiple identities. Right? Imagining a different way of thinking about our multiple identities, something that we haven't even thought about yet. Right?
Ellen Wolter:But before we get into that, I wanna get some of the groundwork down of some of the definitions of your book. So in your book, The Power of Bridging, you talk about these ideas of othering and breaking. So I'm wondering if you could describe for folks what those terms are to you and then how they're connected and how
Ellen Wolter:they're related to each other.
john a. powell:Sure. So we do tell stories. And sometimes we think of these stories as just facts. But they're almost never that simple. And so when we talk about groups of other people or other people, do we see them as fully part of our community?
john a. powell:Do we see them as equal dignity as us? Do we see them as belonging? And sometimes the answer is no. And when we don't, especially if we see them as a threat, we actually then start telling stories about them. Not listening to them.
john a. powell:We don't let them tell their own story to us. We tell stories about them. In some ways, we flatten them. We reduce them to a single story. It's like, what's up with that person?
john a. powell:Well, he's gay. Okay, but what kind of vegetables does he like? Does he have children? Where'd he go to school? Where does he live?
john a. powell:What is his hopes and dreams? Right? So, when we think about someone as being other and their different gradations, so we might not invite someone out petite because we don't like whatever. That's one sort of minor thing. But when we tell the story that they are in some way threatening our existence, threatening who we are, when we think of them as a pollutant, and oftentimes, when other people are at an extreme, we do think of them as somehow polluting our community.
john a. powell:That's a term that's come up over and over again, Nazi Germany today. So what neuroscience has taught us is when we see another human being, apparently there's a part of the brain that lights up, becomes active. It doesn't mean we're going to take him out for dinner. Doesn't mean we're going to be friends with him. Just we recognize him as a fellow human being.
john a. powell:When you deeply other someone, that part of the brain does not light up. When we deeply other someone, we don't see them as human. And therefore, when we don't see them as human and a threat, it allows us to do all kinds of terrible things to them. So that's othering. Othering happens as a result of a number of processes.
john a. powell:One of them is breaking. So if you think about if people are connected, why don't we experience the connection? We break that connection, literally. And we actually have practices individually, collectively, and even as a nation state to manifest, to continue to break. If you think about South Africa, apartheid.
john a. powell:Apartheid actually means separate, or our own country, segregation. In fact, or in law is another way of breaking people. It's an institutionalized way of breaking people. Until 1967, there were several states in The United States that would say interracial marriage miscegenation was against the law. So they're saying two people try to come together and the law steps in, literally, in the case of ones that were spring poured in 'sixty seven, not making this up, it's called loving.
john a. powell:That's othering. That's institutionalizing othering. And we're doing it today. We have labels on people, and then they be in a sense, we stop seeing them as full human beings. We stop being interested in their story.
john a. powell:We stop being aware that they are us. So that's breaking. Breaking is that practice of telling stories, engaging in practices, engaging in design. And sometimes breaking is pernicious and mean. Sometimes it's not thought through.
john a. powell:There's a book called Designing Belonging, written by some folks down in Stanford. I'm in the book. But one of the things they talk about is how do you physically design space to say to people, This is your space. Or you can design space in such a way to say to people, This is not your space. And sometimes that's done deliberately, but more often it's done unconsciously.
john a. powell:So think of American Disabilities Act. Until two years ago, any building you went to would have steps and not a ramp. Well, if someone is in a wheelchair, there's a message there: This is not your place. So in a sense, that's sort of an implicit breaking because the person who designed the building probably didn't think of people in a wheelchair. There's another kind of breaking where you deliberately think about someone, where you deliberately think about keeping someone out.
john a. powell:And if they're part of the community, pushing them out of your community. And we tell stories about them.
Ellen Wolter:john, in your book, you talk about soft breaking, and then you talk about hard breaking. So would you say that hard breaking is really that deliberate, intentional kind of breaking? Laws that prevent is that how you would There's describe
john a. powell:a denying of another person's humanity. You know, once you call someone a threat, then you're basically saying, we have the right to contain them, to restrict them, to kill them, to push them out of the country, to not give them healthcare, to not give them empathy. They're no longer considered God's children. They're something else, they're bound. We saw it happen in Germany with Jews.
john a. powell:We're seeing it happen today in The United States and around the world as we sort of think about the story of the other. We talk about immigrants, not just in the country illegally, which we'll contest that or not, but that they're criminals, that they're stealing, that they're raping, that they're eating our dogs or killing our pets. We tell these stories about them, all of it designed to engender greater and greater fear. And so much so that there's a concept now going around called toxic empathy, saying certain people we shouldn't care about. And if we do care about them, it's not good for us.
john a. powell:Who are those people? Well, they've been named undocumented immigrants. They are considered groups of people. You You're putting children in cages, so what? We shouldn't care for them.
john a. powell:We shouldn't have feelings for them. They're not us. They're not we. They don't belong. They're not really human.
john a. powell:That's heartbreaking.
Ellen Wolter:Jen, in your book, you talk a little bit about this collective anxiety that's happening right now in our society, in our communities, just because of all the rapid changes, right, demographic changes, climate change, you know, AI is attention and a fear, globalization, immigration, many things I probably haven't mentioned. And you said rapid change in societies triggers human anxiety, which can turn into a collective anxiety, which then is, as you're describing, perpetuated by sometimes leaders, and they're telling stories that stoke fear and division and then lead to these heartbreaks, right, these heartbreaks that you're describing. What are the consequences and implications of these heartbreaks? What happens in a society when you have these heartbreaks?
john a. powell:It's actually interesting. Number of things can happen, right? A part of othering is in search of belonging. And that's counterintuitive. So sometimes people break or hate in order to create glue for the in group.
john a. powell:I hate those people and that is part of what defines me. So again, the historical example that we often use is Germany. So Germany became a much more tight knit society when it excluded Jews and others and gays and people with disabilities. It wasn't just Jews. But it was a way of actually cementing an apparent German identity based on hate.
john a. powell:But it also created a fractured world. And of course, if we are part of each other, and I think it's clear that we are, then if I cut you off, it means I'm cutting off part of myself. And what happened in Germany, which, you know, that led to World War II, where we were trying to build smaller and smaller WE's, which required greater and greater violence to the other. Greater and greater, so much so that we could justify, they could justify killing 6,000,000 people in order to purify. And what you have learned from that, which is something that we in The United States have not fully learned yet, is that those small we's, those small sort of we's organized around religion, ethnicity, organized around anything, It's dangerous.
john a. powell:Not just philosophically. It literally led to the worst war the world has ever seen. Hundreds and millions of people getting killed. And so out of that, that was one of the ideas that generated the European Union. The idea that Germany and France could be friends, that they could have a shared currency, that you could travel back and forth across the two countries, go work in Germany if you were French, go live in France if you were German.
john a. powell:If you'd have said that before World War II, people would have been like, talk about imagination, like, You're crazy. These two people are a different race, which is also interesting. Most people don't realize that at his height, Hitler talked about four races of white people. So it wasn't just whites and Jews, it was four different races, the Aryans being at the top, and then he had this gradient. So again, a story about who belonged.
john a. powell:But it wasn't just racially in terms of, as we think, black and white. It was like, some white people don't belong. The worst war in some respects, one of the worst wars in Europe, thirty year war, was between not Muslims and Christians, but between Christians and other Christians. The fight was over how you approach Christianity. And one division was between Catholics and Protestants, but another was between different types of Protestants.
john a. powell:So if you're a Methodist and another person was a Lutheran, literally, it's to justify killing each other. So that's what I mean when these stories, we tell these stories, and in these stories, the other becomes such evil that we can do terrible things to them. Today, we would normally think about, Well, a Methodist and a Lutheran can't marry. They have to kill each other because they approach the same God in different ways. So when we tell these smaller and smaller stories about we, we are setting the foundation for violence, setting the foundation for domination, setting the foundation for genocide.
john a. powell:So it's a very dangerous space, and we're flirting with it again.
Ellen Wolter:john, this is another question from a Bush Foundation staff. Does othering and breaking happen both ways? So this person says, so many of the examples in the book may be around the more progressive, diverse, nonmajority person being othered. Does it make sense that the more conservative, nondiverse, majority person could be othered as well? What's your perspective on
john a. powell:No. It happens in all different directions. And there's part of the book that talks about literally two marginalized groups othering each other. So it's not just vertical, it's also horizontal. And some people think it's inevitable.
john a. powell:Some people think it's natural. I think there's very strong reason to suggest that's not the case. But we certainly are encouraged to do it. Oftentimes, there's a lack of symmetry. That is, one group may have more power than another group.
john a. powell:But othering happens and breaking happens across many different divides, not just in one direction.
Ellen Wolter:john, how do you see othering and breaking? How do you see those dynamics playing out in the rural urban narrative or divide that is often discussed? Often in often more in dominant media. But how do you see that playing out?
john a. powell:Part of the effective way of breaking is how we tell stories and how we organize resources. And when you don't have physical contact with people, you can still break with physical contact. But it's harder to break, it's hard to hold on to a story of someone's lack of humanity when you're in day to day contact with them. Not impossible, but harder. Because rural and urban are often physically separated, it makes it easier to tell stories about each other.
john a. powell:We actually don't know each other. And part of breaking an othering is also a way for me to sort of deal with my anxiety. So, anxiety in the technical sense is a disease without an object. I feel uncomfortable. I don't know why.
john a. powell:Something's off. And it doesn't mean that it's not important. But in some ways it's easier if I name what it is. If the anxiety is morphed into fear. I'm feeling worried about the future, which is a lot of this.
john a. powell:It's like, well, it's their fault. It doesn't matter who the bay is, in this case. It's people in the urban area. It's people in the rural area. It's the rural area of people who you don't know that's really a drag on this country.
john a. powell:And they all are, and you put in, you know, full of stereotypes. Our projects take us all over the world. And there are always extreme examples. But as a group, I've never met a group that didn't love its children. Rural, urban, white, black, Latino, Asian, conservative, liberal, everybody, every group that I've met deeply love their children.
john a. powell:I just met you today. But without knowing more about you, I'll bet a dime to a donor that you love your children. Mhmm.
Ellen Wolter:What you're describing about othering is something I hadn't really thought about, but it is about feeding the anxiety that you have to make yourself feel better. So it's almost like slowing down and saying, hold on. This is about my anxiety right now. Let me think a little bit more about the humanity of others. Thought about that.
Ellen Wolter:And they're
john a. powell:breaking stories, and we've talked a little bit, but they're also bridging stories. We can tell stories that help bring us together. So what you described is actually a wonderful thing to do as an exercise, but we need something that can be done on a mass scale. So how do we tell a story? Think about Franklin Della Roosevelt's when he says, The only thing to fear is fear itself.
john a. powell:In the middle of the depression, he's saying, I know you're scared, I know you're but you know what? If we have each other, we're okay. And he started all these public projects to actually not only build, but also to bring people together. The book, The Nature of Prejudice, talks about segregation and stereotypes. And one of the things they say is you break stereotypes by bringing people together under certain conditions.
john a. powell:If we're doing stuff right, we can create a container, we can create a story, we can create a condition that brings people together. Unfortunately, we don't do that very much. We actually trade more in terms of tearing people apart. There's certain people, certain groups that benefit from keeping people apart. If I can get you to hate that other group, maybe I'll get you a vote.
john a. powell:If I can get you to hate that other group, maybe I'll get your money. I'll get your loyalty. But there also, and we have wonderful examples, can be the love of the other group, can be the rejection. We celebrate the life of Nelson Mandela. What's the story he told after being in prison for twenty seven years?
john a. powell:There was one South Africa. He told at the point in which students throughout South Africa, black students, were protesting, were boycotting school because they didn't want to learn being taught in Africanda. They saw that as the oppressor's language. Nelson Mandela was in prison asking his prison guards to teach him Afrikandan, to teach me your language. And not just your language, your culture.
john a. powell:I want to know about you. These are people who are his prison guards. Right? And when he got out of prison, he continued that even more so. So he created bridging containers and bridging stories.
john a. powell:Going to the rugby match in South Africa, rugby was a symbol of white supremacy. Muscle Mandela goes there to break that symbol, to challenge that symbol, to tell a different story. And there's a movie that was made about it. So we all can do that. We can challenge those stereotypes, but also affirmatively engage in stories and practices that celebrate our connection and our shared humanity.
john a. powell:We should be doing this in school. We should be doing it in community, in our churches.
Ellen Wolter:That's really an incredible story about Nelson Mandela. What do you think it was that this idea that he wanted to learn about essentially an oppressor who was oppressing him, his their language and their culture, how do you think that added value to his goal to get rid of apartheid and to support black South Africans. How did that add value to his work, do you think?
john a. powell:I had the honor and privilege of meeting Nelson Mandela. And as I say, he was the real deal. I think we don't talk about this, but he and King and others are a deeply spiritual leader. And it wasn't so he cared about black South Africans, but he also cared about white South Africans. He cared about the Afrikanders.
john a. powell:So much so beautiful story his guards cared about him. At some point, they could see. That's one of the things that's sort of important to emphasize. When people feel seen and recognized, magic happens. So these are people who are hired to guard blacks in prison.
john a. powell:And particularly, they weren't just blacks. They were people who were fighting apartheid. So these were dangerous people. And Nelson Mandela melted their heart. They were saying, Mr.
john a. powell:Mandela, you don't have to do this hard work. We see you as a human being. We're gonna exempt you from doing this hard work, because they were breaking rocks and it was very dire conditions that he was imprisoned under. He rejected that offer. He said, I'm a prisoner just like these other people.
john a. powell:And I will only take an exemption from this hard work if you give all of them an exemption. So part of it was he loved humanity. And then when he became President, he worked really hard to make that part of the institutionalized South Africa. I talked to one of the Supreme Court justices in South Africa about their constitution, and I said, Would you say your constitution is a belonging constitution? A constitution that tries to reach out.
john a. powell:And he said, I'm trying to find a word stronger than absolutely. And then he gave me an example of how they interpret cases for the purpose of trying to create a space where everyone belongs. So, yes, Nelson Mandela cared about black people, he cared about all people. And that's true of King. That's what makes, to me, makes him ultimately really great, really wonderful.
john a. powell:That, to me, is sort of the heart of most of the religious teachings. So that's what we need to claim. But there's a price to pay sometime for that. Even today in South Africa, a lot of people are saying Mandela didn't do enough to sort of hit back at the white South Africans. He left the land under their control.
john a. powell:You know, his effort was not complete. It's not his effort, it's our effort. What do we do? But he was very conscious of doing it in such a way that didn't create greater and new breaks. It's easy to have a break with someone you consider your oppressor, but it's still problematic.
john a. powell:And
Ellen Wolter:to your point, in the book, I think, I think I have this right. What's happening in South Africa now, they can't look to the past. Right? They need to imagine with, of course, incorporating the past, but imagine and reimagine what's next for them. So it's thinking forward.
john a. powell:And, of course, that's that's true for us here in The United States. You know, we are at an inflection point. We are, from our perspective, going backwards at rate and x speed. We're trading heavily on breaking and hating. We're othering people at an institutional and national level every day.
john a. powell:Part of the thing that breaking does is create zero sum. It's like, I can only thrive if that other group is held back. And Nelson Mandela refused to do that. I think we all have to refuse to do that. We try to do that through our practice using something called targeted universalism.
john a. powell:But the underlying story is even though my life is not perfect, can I still care about someone else? Part of the thing and part of the beauty, David French wrote something about our Constitution. And he basically says the Constitution is one of dignity. And the Constitution says that everyone, not just U. S.
john a. powell:Citizens, not just white people, not just Black people, not just Latino, not just men, not just rich people, but everyone is entitled to due process. Now that's a legal term, so people might not know what it means. But one way of thinking about it, and David French wrote this in the New York Times, he said, It means that everyone's entitled to dignity and to tell their story. So you say, You came to the country illegally. We're going get rid of you.
john a. powell:Not so fast. Our constitution says everyone has a right to help tell their story to a judge. What if you say you killed someone? Can we just have revenge? No.
john a. powell:We said the person gets to tell their story. So the idea that we've created a system, which is not perfect by any means, but a value that says that everyone has human dignity, and part of having dignity is the right to tell your story. Doesn't mean that you will ultimately prevail. Doesn't mean your story is right. But it means your human dignity is never denied.
john a. powell:Never. That's about bridging and belonging. It's what's there in our constitution. We don't live up to it all the time. But that's the aspiration.
john a. powell:So part of it is, can we live up to it and even strengthen it? And I think not only we can, we must.
Ellen Wolter:Well, that's my next question, John, is onto bridging and belonging. So you wrote in The Power of Bridging, The solution to othering and breaking is not more othering and breaking. It is belonging and bridging. So is it fair to say that that's the antidote to othering and and breaking?
john a. powell:It's more than the antidote, but yes. It's foundational in terms of being human. So I mentioned earlier that some people think breaking and othering is sort of the natural condition of humanity based on our biology and our evolution. I think that that's wrong for a lot of reasons. I won't go into great detail, except to say a number of historians, including Harari, have said, the humans when sapiens not humans, because there were 10 different kinds of humans.
john a. powell:Sapiens is just one. When sapiens learned to actually imagine and tell stories, we actually created a break from biology. We can now do things that others couldn't do because we could imagine things that others couldn't imagine. And part of that imagination is allowing us to build larger and larger weeds. Hunter gatherers were small tribes for the most part, probably 200 people at the most.
john a. powell:That's all the people that you had daily contact with your entire life. That was who you trusted. That's who you depended on. But now we have a country of three thirty million people. We have 2,500,000,000 people who call themselves Christians.
john a. powell:We have 2,000,000,000 people who call themselves Muslim. Most of those people will never see each other. They don't have the same language. They don't eat the same food. But there's something that ties them together.
john a. powell:And it's this, what horror calls, the story. Money is the story. Race is the story. The nation state is the story. Corporation is the story.
john a. powell:We tell stories that allow us to collaborate, allow us to actually share, allow us to actually seize other's humanity. And so the urge to belong, the need to belong, is foundation. We wouldn't survive. Maslow and his Hierarch of Needs had belonging as the third most important need. There was food, safety, and belonging.
john a. powell:Many of the students have said no, belonging is the first of our human needs. Because if we don't belong, we don't get food or safety. So you can quibble. It's the first, it's the second, it's the third. The point is, it's basic.
john a. powell:And so, there's a book called, In the Name of Belonging and Violence. And the author, who spent part of his life in The Middle East, talks about one reason people engage in breaking and violence is in order to belong. They're trying to belong, but they use othering as a mechanism to try to create belonging. And so in that sense, belonging is not simply an angle to othering. It's deeper than that.
john a. powell:And so the name of our book, as you suggested, is called, as Stephen and I wrote, is Belonging Without Othering. Ever since human society started coming together, there's been belonging. But oftentimes, it's at the same time you create one group that belong, you create another group that's other. And the challenge is to create belonging without other. Now, some people say it's not possible, and I won't go into great detail on that, but I'll just make two quick comments.
john a. powell:Think about the UN Declaration of Human Rights, 1948. When that was proposed, pushed largely by people like Eleanor Roosevelt, it seemed crazy. And W. E. P.
john a. powell:Du Bois and Eleanor Roosevelt broke over that. And I have tremendous respect for both of them. But Du Bois said, What do you mean everyone has human dignity? Everyone has certain rights? Every human being in 1948.
john a. powell:And you say Africa is colonized. Most of women can't vote in most of the world. There's segregation and lynching in The United States. Where is this example? And he said, What you're proposing is just symbolic.
john a. powell:And what I've said many times is that he got it partially right and partially wrong. He was right that it was symbolic. It was wrong that it was just. Symbols, stories are really important when done properly. They're not just fiction.
john a. powell:They're not just illusory. They do something. They actually organize the human spirit in a certain way. And so today, again, we're not there. But no one says people don't have human rights.
john a. powell:There are thousands of laws now around the UN Declaration of Human Rights. And we're still not there. Or go back to the Declaration of Independence. And the committee, including Jefferson, says, We hold these truths to be self evident that all men, or we should say people, are created equal. Jefferson had 600 people enslaved.
john a. powell:How could he say that? Right? This is in our founding document. It's an aspiration. It's saying, even in the midst of all of this, we say that people belong.
john a. powell:Everyone. Everyone. And now we're arguing about it. Well, maybe Jefferson was wrong. Okay?
john a. powell:Know, maybe we should start over again. And when Jesus says that we're all children of God, okay, maybe Jesus was wrong. He said that at a time that most people in the world, not just in any part of the world, was enslaved or serfs. Their lives were cut short. And Jesus is saying, All of them, every one of them, is a child of God.
john a. powell:So the belonging is really deeply foundation. And the othering, I think, is a distortion of the belonging.
Ellen Wolter:And so the belonging, you said, is aspirational. So it's really a way to imagine, right, that you can belong without othering. And then is bridging is that a practice? And I think you describe it as a mindset to really foster that belonging.
john a. powell:Yeah, that's exactly right. So it's nuanced. On one hand, we already all belong, full stop. Just like everyone's entitled to due process, full stop. Now does everyone get full due process?
john a. powell:No. Are we close to it? No. But the assertion that everyone has a right to due process, everyone is really important. So everyone belongs, period.
john a. powell:Who doesn't belong? Point to a group of people that you think don't belong. Again, doesn't mean like everybody, doesn't mean you won't fight, it doesn't mean you won't have disagreements. But your humanity is never in question. Your right to human dignity is never in question.
john a. powell:So we've organized the world and told stories to the opposite. We organized the world at times when we said some people are natural slaves. Who are the natural slaves? At one point we said blacks were natural slaves, that they were born to be enslaved. At one point, we said women are the natural property of men.
john a. powell:That was a story we told. Most of us don't tell that story anymore, even though there are practices. There's a number of people enslaved today. There are women who are trafficked all around the world. So there's a practice that violates those deeply held values.
john a. powell:We have to challenge that. We have to tell a different story. And when we meet someone that we don't have an immediate, you know, I don't know your family, or I think of you, I've been told you're the enemy, how do I bridge that? Well, I'm stuck in that story that we are divided because of our race, because of our religion, because you're rural and I'm urban, because I'm urban and you're rural, how do we address that? That's what bridging does.
john a. powell:Bridging is saying, when we have these apparent differences, and they're all just apparent. A friend of mine wrote a book called What Difference Does a Difference Make? The meaning of differences is a social question. It's not just there. It's not that I automatically hate you because you're short and I'm tall and I'm tall and you're short, because those are social stories that we tell.
john a. powell:We're not just living the stories, then we organize our societies that way. So how do I bring Jewish and Palestinian students together? We'll create all these walls. How do I bring Black and White students together? How do I bring Latino and Asian students together to see each other's full humanity?
john a. powell:Those are bridging practices. And as we go deeper and deeper into bridging, at some point, we don't need a bridge, because I realize you actually are me.
Ellen Wolter:John, there are and I'm sure you've heard concerns about bridging and people being worried that it's giving up your beliefs or giving up your ability to ensure that justice happens in the world. There are lots of concerns about as a person from a marginalized community. You know, I don't wanna go into a space where I feel uncomfortable, and there's a a power imbalance. Can you talk a little bit about when you talk about bridging, what you mean by that and what you don't mean by bridging?
john a. powell:The question comes up a lot. And first of all, there are guardrails that you may wanna put in place before you enter into an environmental bridge. So for me, I advise people not to have a long list, not to have a list of 50 things that have to happen before I will sit down and talk to you. For me, it's violence. It's like we have to agree we're not going to engage in violence.
john a. powell:And almost all the time people are willing to do that. But not all the time. There have been times when people have said, No, I'm not going to agree to that. And I said, Then I'm not going to engage, right? So you have to do this for yourself.
john a. powell:You have to decide when you are willing to engage. Bridging does not mean agreeing. It does not mean compromising. It doesn't mean you won't get angry. What it's about, though, is that I'm willing and acknowledging that you're a human being.
john a. powell:I'm acknowledging that in that we have connections. So one of the ways I talk about it is that how to bridge, which is different than bridging, how to bridge is that it's really we spend a lot of time in the heart, in the head, and bridging is getting connected to our heart. So when Isabel Wilkins, that story I told that she recounts in her book Cast, she says that once they bridge, the politics don't change, but the guy says, I have a lot of tools. What else do you need fixing in the house? Let me help.
john a. powell:I see you as a human being. Now, some people believe you can only make change by being in a constant state of anger, and by dehumanizing the other side. I can't convince someone else to be a bridger. But if you're reflecting the same kind of vitriolic, the same kind of dehumanization that the other side is, how are you different than them? And yes, sometimes the power imbalance have to be addressed.
john a. powell:So for example, if you're talking to your boss, and this has happened when people open up, sometimes they get fired. That's not a situation that you can actually sit down and have an open, frank conversation. Our example in recent history is the Reverend Doctor. King. He used that whole idea of loving community and nonviolence.
john a. powell:And some people, historians, say he was the most effective changemaker in modern history in The United States. So it's not passive. It's not giving up your values. But I don't know what your values are. You know, my values is one of which I think, I hope is life giving, life respecting all life.
john a. powell:And King talked about righteous indignation. What's righteous indignation according to King? He was saying, You should be angry when someone violates God's principles, God's creation, God's children. But that anger comes from you're aligning yourself with God and love. It doesn't come from someone took my parking spot and I'm pissed.
john a. powell:That's indignation, but it's not, from King's perspective, righteous indignation. So there's a misunderstanding oftentimes of bridging that's solved. When Nelson Mandela, and there's a whole beautiful story about him, when he sat down and talked to the general in South Africa at his own house, Nelson Mandela served the general tea, which at the time was a big deal. The general had been calling Nelson Mandela monkeys and calling black people all kinds of things. He agreed to the cease fire.
john a. powell:And when he went out and talked to his entourage, they said, what happened? Did you tell that coffer, which means the n word, off? And he said the general said, I don't know if I'd like Nelson Mandela, but he can convince anyone of anything. We're going to have a ceasefire. When they were negotiating, Nelson Mandela was head of an army.
john a. powell:So he was bridging, but he laid down his arms. He said, if it doesn't work, we'll continue to fight. My liberation is not negotiable. It's going to happen. But he did incredible bridging.
john a. powell:And it worked. So, no, bridging doesn't mean giving up your values. It doesn't mean necessarily being nice, doesn't mean not being angry, but it does mean really holding on to the other person's humanity.
Ellen Wolter:And it's really hard. It's really hard. And you do speak to that in the book, this idea of just imagining what bridging could look like. We don't know everything about bridging yet. We are figuring that out.
Ellen Wolter:And your book, I think, sets us on a course for thinking about what that that mindset is. John, what do you think are the costs of not bridging?
john a. powell:So that's a great question. A lot of people talk about the cost of bridging, but they don't oftentimes pay attention to the cost of not bridging. I think when we cut ourselves off from the other, we're cutting ourselves off from ourselves. We're engaging in self mutilization. I have a hat which says bridger.
john a. powell:I'm a bridger. And I've been thinking lately, it's not just important for people to learn the skill associated with bridging, but identify as a bridger. Identify as basically someone who cares about life and humanity. And whether you quote unquote an oppressed, marginalized group. And my mom and dad reflected that.
john a. powell:I mean, were at the brunt of a lot of racial segregation and oppression and economic segregation. They were part of the rural community in Missouri and Mississippi that were looked down upon. My dad dropped out of school in the third grade, so some people felt like, you know, this stereotype that rural people are not well educated. He dealt with all of that. And yet, he was one of the most loving and had, from my perspective, and I think not just my perspective, people knew him.
john a. powell:He lived such a full life. So much love. But I always say, I don't try to convince people to bridge. You know, it's an orientation to life. And one has to come to that on one's own.
john a. powell:I feel like the work is not just in service of, as you're saying, marginalized people. It is that Of a just society, it is that. But of life itself, life is trying to live. And to cut oneself off from that means you cut yourself off from my perspective, from life. But someone has to come to that through their own process.
Ellen Wolter:I love too how you talked about bridging in the book. You know, you don't have to bridge with everyone. There might be people you don't bridge with, and that's fine. You can decide on an individual case by case basis what works for you. And if it stops working for you, you can stop bridging.
Ellen Wolter:It's complicated as with everything. Right? Yeah.
john a. powell:And then long bridges and short bridges. And so oftentimes, when people are struggling with the ideas, like they pick the longest bridge possible. And I used an example of my friend of mine who's a minister and he's saying, Are you saying I have to bridge with the devil? It's like, Okay, don't start there. That's probably a pretty long bridge.
john a. powell:Start with something more doable. Because it's a practice. We get it as it's like a muscle. And as we get better and better, oftentimes I say, if you've been sitting on the couch for six months and you decide you want to run a marathon, it's probably not wise to go out tomorrow and run 13 miles. Start with something more within your reach.
john a. powell:Take a walk around the block. Walk around the block two times and then maybe six months maybe you can do a half marathon. So, you know, this is real stuff. This happens all the time. I mean, we worked with groups where literally, where soldiers had killed families, where people had been disappeared.
john a. powell:And at some point, you're going to kill every last person of a certain group, at some point you have to sit down and talk. And can you talk as human beings? And so, it's not perfect. It's not hypothetical. It's not something you can do all the time.
john a. powell:But I think in terms of the kind of world that we're trying to bring into existence, bridging until we fully realize that we are connected, bridging is necessary.
Ellen Wolter:As you think about the importance of bridging, if more leaders were to adopt a bridging mindset, positional or non positional leaders, what kinds of transformations do you think we might see?
john a. powell:Leaders can and should play an oversized role. So we tell stories, but we don't all have the same capacity or the same perch to tell stories. Leaders play an oversized role in terms of helping people to make meaning. We're meaning making animals. The meaning can be what the conflict entrepreneur says, is you should be afraid of that change.
john a. powell:You should be afraid of that group. You should be afraid of the other. Another story would be, let's find out about them. Let's listen to them. Let's invite them in.
john a. powell:Let's tell a story that this is who we are. We are a diverse, pluralistic society of three thirty million people. Let's hear the story of all those people. Let's engage those people. Let's do it in a way that's fun, because when you talk to people who are deeply afraid, and a world is rapidly changing, who's the audience?
john a. powell:And what I say is the audience is the lizard. The lizard. That's the part of the brain, the amygdala, which oversimplification, but fear is organized in that part of the brain. When that part of brain is active, it takes over. The lizard takes over.
john a. powell:So we have to talk to the lizard. And it needs to know that it's safe. It needs to know that it belongs. So the Proud Boys in South Carolina are saying, The Jews will not replace us, which is a racist Nazi phrase. But they're also telling you something.
john a. powell:They're afraid that the world that's coming will not include them. So we need leaders to actually make it clear that we are building a world, we're co creating a world where everyone belongs, everyone. And tell that story in movies and in songs in practices, in designs, in how we spend our money, how we do healthcare, how we do housing, how we do schools. And I would also say, there's a lot of energy. And people are nervous and upset, and they should be, But can we channel those energies into something constructive?
john a. powell:Can we come together? The United States has a hard time doing stuff collectively, but I think if we can collectively come together, I think what the Bush Foundation is doing, for example, is wonderful. Just to bring my way to my book, but to create potentially a community to have this discussion to do what you're doing, to try to bridge between rural and urban, between wherever you see the divide as an opportunity for a bridge.
Ellen Wolter:Well, John, I really appreciate your time today. Thank you so much for talking with me and sharing your wisdom and expertise. Really appreciate it.
john a. powell:Yeah, thank you for having me. I think Minnesota is oftentimes a leader in the country and this to me is just a good example of that.
Ellen Wolter:Thank you for listening
Ellen Wolter:to Side by Side. We welcome your emails at sidebysideumn dot edu. Side by Side is a production of the University of Minnesota Extension and is written and hosted by me, Ellen Walter. Special thanks to Jan Jekula, who designed our wonderful logo, and Jim Griswold, who sings and plays guitar in our opening and closing credits.
john a. powell:Really doesn't matter at all.
Ellen Wolter:You can find episodes of side by side wherever you get your podcasts. We'll be back next week with another episode. I'm Ellen Walter, and this is side by side.
