john a. powell on Institutions of Othering and Radical Belonging [ENCORE] /329

For The Wild

Philosophy, Society & Culture, For The Wild, Anthropocene, Story Telling, Religion & Spirituality, Decolonization, Progressive, Liberation, Land, Media

4.8 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 5 April 2023

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week we are rebroadcasting our interview with john a. powell, originally aired in May 2019. If you enjoy this week’s episode, make sure you listen to the first episode in our special series The Edges in the Middle, which features a conversation between john a. powell and Báyò Akómoláfé .

Now more than ever, we are reminded of the vital importance of creating practices that strengthen and recognize our shared humanity. However, in order to do so, we must examine the systems, ideologies, and actions that have emboldened us to deny humanity in the first place. At the beginning of this week’s episode, john a. powell defines any practice which denies someone’s humanity as an act of “othering.” Both at home and abroad it seems we are witnessing a surge of "othering," whether it is reflected in election cycles, the rise of ethnonationalism, or the pervasiveness of violent acts. We must wonder, how and why do societies rely on the process of othering? And more importantly, how do we move into engagement, organizing, and “bridging?”

john a. powell (who spells his name in lowercase in the belief that we should be "part of the universe, not over it, as capitals signify") is an internationally recognized expert in the areas of civil rights, civil liberties, structural racism, housing, poverty, and democracy. He is the Director of the Othering & Belonging Institute at the University of California, Berkeley, a research institute that brings together scholars, community advocates, communicators, and policymakers to identify and eliminate the barriers to an inclusive, just, and sustainable society and to create transformative change toward a more equitable world.

Music by Ani DiFranco.

Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.

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0:46.9	Welcome to For the Wild Podcast. I'm Ayanna Young.
0:52.0	How do we make these structures work for all of us? How do we think about structural and
0:55.3	inclusion and structural belonging? I'll give you a concrete example. I use this a lot. It's like
1:00.4	we build an escalator to give people from one floor to the other, and then someone comes along
1:06.2	in the wheelchair. The system we build doesn't work for that person, and so it looks like that person
1:12.4	is asking for something special, but that person is asking for what everyone else was asking for.
1:16.9	The resources and support to fully participate in society as a person and as a human being to contribute,
1:24.4	but what people need to get there, what groups need to get there, will be different.
1:32.4	Today we are speaking with John A. Powell. John is the director of the Hoss Institute
1:38.7	for a fair and inclusive society, and professor of law, African American and ethnic studies at the
1:45.2	University of California Berkeley. He was previously the executive director at the Kerwin Institute
1:52.0	for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at the Ohio State University and the Institute for Race and
1:58.0	Poverty at the University of Minnesota. Prior to that, John was the national legal director of the
2:04.7	American Civil Liberties Union. He is a co-founder of the Poverty and Race Research Action Council
	...

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