114: How to stop ‘Othering’ and instead ‘Build Belonging’

I had originally approached today's topic of Othering through a financial lens, as part of the series of episodes on the intersection of parenting and money (previous episodes have been on NYT Money colunist Ron Lieberman's book The Opposite of Spoiled, How to Pass on Mental Wealth to your Child, The Impact of Consumerism on Parenting, and How to Set Up A Play Room.  The series will conclude in the coming weeks with episodes on advertising and materialism).   I kept seeing questions in parenting groups: How can I teach my child about volunteering?  How can I donate the stuff we don't need without making the recipient feel less than us?   And, of course, after the Black Lives Matter movement began its recent up-swing of activity, the topic took on a new life that's more closely related to my guest's work: viewing othering through the lens of race.   My guest, Dr. John A. Powell, is an internationally recognized expert in the areas of civil rights and civil liberties and a wide range of issues including race, structural racism, ethnicity, housing, poverty, and democracy. He is the Director of the Othering & Belonging Institute (formerly Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society), which supports research to generate specific prescriptions for changes in policy and practice that address disparities related to race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, disability, and socioeconomics in California and nationwide. In addition to being a Professor of Law and Professor of African American Studies and Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, Professor powell holds the Robert D. Haas Chancellor’s Chair in Equity and Inclusion.   Our conversation was wide-ranging and touched on a host of topics and thinkers, which I promised to track down if I could.  These include: Martha Minow's book Making All The Difference Aristotle's theory of Arithmetic and Geometric Equality Judith Butler's book Gender Trouble  Amartya Sen's idea that poverty is not a lack of stuff, but a lack of belonging Dr. Susan Fiske's work on the connection between liking and competence Lisa Delpit's book Other People's Children Dr. Gordon Allport's book The Nature of Prejudice Max Weber's idea of methodological individualism The movie Trading Places (I still haven't seen it!) This blog post touches on Dr. powell's idea of the danger of allyship John Rawls' idea that citizens are reasonable and rational Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs Richard Bernstein's concept of the regulative ideal   Dr. John Powell's Book Racing to Justice: Transforming Our Conceptions of Self and Other to Build an Inclusive Society (Affiliate link).   Jump to highlights 01:11 Introduction to Dr. john powell, director of the Othering and Belonging Institute at UC Berkeley 03:33 Defining othering: when someone isn't seen as fully equal or fully human 09:07 How categories we treat as essential, like race and gender, are actually built by society 11:57 Why "saming" (treating everyone the same) doesn't fix othering either 18:39 Why the Western idea of independent agency is really a distortion, and what it costs us 22:41 Unpacking poverty stats and the trap of trying to define "the other" while fighting othering 29:34 Rethinking what it means to be a "good parent" across different approaches to raising kids 39:34 Talking to kids about poverty and homelessness without slipping into White-savior territory 47:10 How volunteering can other people too, and what it means to give without turning away 52:30 Wrapping up with belonging - why it may be our most basic need, even before food and safety   References Brons, L. (2015). Othering, an Analysis. Transcience 6(1), 69-90. Collins, P.L. (1986). Learning from the outsider within: The sociological significance of Black feminist thought.  Social Problems 33(6), S14-S32. Cohen, Y., Krumer-Nevo, M., & Avieli, N. (2017). Bread of shame: Mechanisms of othering in soup kitchens. Social Problems 64(3), 398-413. Day, C.R. (2019). “They don’t think like us”: Exploring attitudes of non-transgender students toward transgender people using discourse analysis. Journal of Homosexuality 1-20. De Beauvoir, S. (1949) The Second Sex. Harmondworth: Penguin. Doerr, N.M. (2015). Volunteering as othering: Understanding a paradox of social distance, obligation, and reciprocity. Partnerships 6(2), 36-57. Fenz, Katharina, & Kharas, H. (2020, March 23). 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Pre-print version retrieved from https://s3.amazonaws.com/academia.edu.documents/59757383/Justiced_and_the_Othered_Minority20190616-24770-kd7vxw.pdf?response-content-disposition=inline%3B%20filename%3DJustice_and_the_Othered_Minority_Lessons.pdf&X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Credential=AKIAIWOWYYGZ2Y53UL3A%2F20200218%2Fus-east-1%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20200218T010152Z&X-Amz-Expires=3600&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Signature=7bf2ced278b8293aa1bf8105460e6cb912c7a764d07ff94af269e48e039e698f Jensen, S.Q. (2011). Othering, identity formation and agency. Qualitative Studies 2(2), 63-78. Kitzinger, C. and Wilkinson, S. (1996). Theorizing representing the other. In: S. Wilkinson and C. Kitzinger (eds.), Representing the Other (1-32). London: Sage. Leroy, M. (2019). Controlling the ever-threatening ‘Other.’ ANGLICA – An International Journal of English Studies 28(3), 133-144. Lister, R. (2015). ‘To count for nothing’: Poverty beyond the statistics. Journal of the British Academy 3, 139-165. powell, j.a., & Menendian, S. (2016). The problem of othering: Towards inclusiveness and belonging. Othering and Belonging. Retrieved from http://www.otheringandbelonging.org/the-problem-of-othering/ powell, j.a. (2012). Racing to justice: Transforming our conceptions of self and other to build an inclusive society. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Rosenberg, T. (2018, September 13). The business of voluntourism: Do western do-gooders actually do harm? The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/sep/13/the-business-of-voluntourism-do-western-do-gooders-actually-do-harm ...