In this episode we speak with Reverend Ben McBride. Ben McBride is a spiritual leader and longtime activist for peace and justice in the Bay Area. McBride serves as a national leader around reconstructing public safety systems and gun violence prevention work. In 2014, McBride launched the Empower Initiative to support bridging and belonging work across the country. McBride shares how he conceptualizes the building, bridging, belonging, and becoming frameworks. He outlines how cultural and structural belonging can occur, and the role that we each can play in creating a world where everyone belongs.
This episode of Who Belongs? is part of a new series of podcasts focused on telling bridging stories. Throughout the series we’ll talk to leaders implementing bridging work and individuals who have experienced the bridging transformation. This project is led by OBI’s Blueprint for Belonging project (B4B), and hosted by program researcher Miriam Magaña Lopez. This project is funded by The Annie E. Casey Foundation, Inc.
Transcript
Miriam Magaña Lopez:
Welcome to today's episode of a new sub series of the podcast Who Belongs? The Othering & Belonging Institute with financial support from the Annie E. Casey Foundation is developing a series of podcasts to capture examples of bridging to belonging. We want a world where everyone belongs. So how do we get there? The answer, bridging. Throughout this series we will talk to leaders implementing bridging work and individuals who have experienced the bridging transformation. My name is Miriam Magaña Lopez and I will be co-hosting this episode with my colleague EJ Toppin. EJ is a researcher at the Othering & Belonging Institute who has been conducting a year long project on the conceptualization of the term belonging. Together we will be speaking with Reverend Ben McBride. Ben McBride is a spiritual leader and longtime activist for peace and justice in the Bay Area.Miriam Magaña Lopez:
McBride served as a national leader around reconstructing public safety systems and gun violence prevention work. In 2014, McBride launched the Empower Initiative, to support bridging and belonging work across the country. During this conversation, we will be talking to him about how he conceptualizes bridging and belonging, and how we all can apply it in our everyday lives. Thank you so much for joining our conversation. To begin, can you describe the first time that you began to think about these frameworks? What were you seeing that made you feel like we needed to move towards a world of belonging?Ben McBride:
Yeah, I appreciate being a part of the conversation. I think as I began to move much closer towards those across difference, particularly around the notion of gun violence. I think in 2006, when I started getting engaged with communities and trying to build relationships from where I was positioned as a faith leader, I realized that there was much more that I would need to do besides just learn something or show up at an event that I was actually going to have to go on my own journey of formation. And I started kind of learning through trial and error what were some of the things that I actually had to do, what were some of the steps that I needed to make in order to find a way to make a connection across difference.Ben McBride:
And so it was more kind of piecemealing some of this together as it was more in service to some of the goals that I was trying to accomplish. And then I think once I got a chance to start hanging around john powell, that some of the language that he was using really helped me best describe some of the work that I was trying to do.Miriam Magaña Lopez:
What gap did the belonging framework or language fill but other ideas or frameworks such as inclusion, we hear that a lot. Did not conceptually touch or address?Ben McBride:
Yeah, I mean, I think the notion of belonging that is such a different idea to me than inclusion, or diversity, or equity, really is centered around the notion of power. Because when I think about belonging, it's really about this notion of co-creation which for me, is rooted in the question who gets to decide? And so when I think about diversity it's like, how do we get people that are not the dominant group in the space. Inclusion is how do we include them in the process? How do we make it more equitable for them? But to me, it fails to ask the question, should the thing we're including people in even exist? Or do we need something totally different? And who gets to decide? What I like about belonging, is it's asking those questions about power.Ben McBride:
It's asking those questions about agency, it's inviting people into co-creation. It's offering a willingness to ask ourselves the question whether what it is that we have inherited is actually what we want to pass on, rather than just assuming that. So, that's what resonates to me a lot about belonging is this notion of power, agency and the potential to have something different than what we've had in the past.Miriam Magaña Lopez:
Thank you so much. In your writing, you've also mentioned MLK and the idea of beloved community. How does your Christian faith inform your understanding of belonging?Ben McBride:
Yeah, I'm a student of Dr. King's practices of non violence and certainly the Black church spiritual tradition which really was rooted in this notion that, at the end of the human story, the goal is to create a beloved community or a space where everybody belongs. And in this idea of the end of the human story, there are these ideas that God is going to wipe away all the tears from the eyes of those who are crying. And there will be no more war, there will only be peace. And with that as a vision, Dr. King talked a lot about what did it mean for us to create a community of people that could move the story towards that end goal, move the story towards a human experience that doesn't include war. One that doesn't include people being in pain.Ben McBride:
And so when I think about beloved community, and I see the way that Dr. King and others during what I like to call the 1960s belonging movement, when I see what they were doing, it was the notion of recognizing that there was a unique story that needed to be engaged around how Black people were being othering the south, that didn't at the same time disappear a seat at the table for white brothers and sisters, or brown brothers and sisters, or others who wanted to come and sit at that table to also create that. And it was this notion that it was the diverse group of people around the table that would actually be able to usher the human story towards that end that we all want to get to.Miriam Magaña Lopez:
That's really beautiful. And it is really cool to see how this work has been happening and maybe it just hasn't been named. But now we have a vocabulary and shared frameworks that we can start to think about. So I really appreciate you for making that connection.Ben McBride:
Yeah. I mean, one quick thing I just would say on that is, I think it's important for us to point out where bridging and belonging has happened in the past, because if we don't, we think we're talking about something new. But I mean, that the notion of, like a lot of people have noticed about Dr. King also was that Dr. King was first in love with a young white sister when he was in college and wanted to marry her. Ultimately, he couldn't by nature of the racial dynamics and his father's disapproval and all of that. But there was a lot of bridging that was happening in Martin's life very early on both with white sisters and brothers and with Jewish relatives and Rabbi Heschel and others and the letters that were going back and forth between him and Cesar Chavez and the Farmworkers' Movement in California.Ben McBride:
There was always this cross cultural bridging that was happening. And so I think it's important for us that I think language matters. So when we call things a civil rights movement, we only make the movement about rights. When we talk about something as a racial justice initiative, we only make it about justice. But I think we also should be intentional with language to talk about where belonging happens, where bridging happens. And recently, we just lost our brother Bob Moses. And I remember I was in the room with him. And he told this story about how many folks in the South were arguing, we don't need to have these white folks at the seat at the table with us when they were planning the Freedom Summer.Ben McBride:
He said until we were doing the lunch counters and we were walking through the South on the freedom buses and the white folks are getting beat up right alongside us. He said, we came back into the meeting and said "Who can deny these white sisters and brothers who they themselves are willing to sacrifice in some of the same ways." So, there was a lot of belonging that was happening then I think we still are in need of a lot of belonging to happen in the future.EJ Toppin:
Pastor McBride, I just want to echo Miriam and say thank you for being with us for this important conversation and dialogue. And also just want to reiterate, that's a powerful point you bring up about past examples of bridging and belonging. You talk about Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King and his examples, we also have Fred Hampton in the Rainbow Coalition. So we have examples of the past. My question for you is that you are somebody who is a belonging practitioner, as well as a belonging theorist. And a lot of times people are one or the other. Can you talk about how your practical work informs your theory work and vice versa?Ben McBride:
Yeah, certainly. I mean, I didn't get engaged in the work of bridging and/or belonging by nature of just ideas. For me it was trying to figure out how to solve real problems that were in front of me with real people. And I think what I found was that, I won't say most people because I don't know what the data is. But what I found in my own experience is that a lot of people share a lot in common if they're willing to take the time aside to actually get engaged with bridging work. And so that's what was happening with me over the course of time whether that was spending time as a non-addictive person, as a normie, as they would call it being a deep relationship with brothers or sisters that were part of the addicted population, or somebody who's never been incarcerated.Ben McBride:
Well, at least up to that point, I ended up getting arrested in Ferguson, but up to that point, had never been incarcerated. Being in relationship with former incarcerated folks, or somebody that comes from a more square neighborhood being in relationship with loved ones who were perpetrators of gun violence, or whether that was me being a black person bridging with white folks, whether that was me being a Christian person bridging with non-Christian people. What I continue to find was that in all of those scenarios, there was emerging ideas and practices and rhythms. That I started learning if I show up this way, it's much more likely that we'll together be able to get to this outcome. So for me, it started very instinctively and listening to others and experimenting and trying things.Ben McBride:
And then finally, when I started really kind of working with this idea of the quadrant where I started trying to understand how do we bring people from different backgrounds together into a share place? It really started helping me identify that in any human scenario, people either have power, they have privilege, they are persecuted, they're prevented. And we all can find ourselves in those groups at different moments. And it's really about learning how to flex, how to move from the place that we spend most of our time with and learning how to engage with other people across different. So I think I got to the theory of it later after actually working it out in my own real life experiment.EJ Toppin:
And in some of your other work in past times I've heard you speak you've mentioned your thinking on belonging and people having a natural inclination toward belonging. Like it's something inherent within all of us. And I'm just wondering what ideas or sources are you drawing from when you make that claim?Ben McBride:
Yeah, well, I mean, I think some of it for me is being an observer of the human experience. I mean, one of the most beautiful lines that I've loved that john powell says is that, "We don't enter this world alone, that we literally come into this world connected to another human being." Just this notion that we are radically interconnected, we're wired this way. And certainly, I think I would be probably out of my league to try to start figuring out what studies I would point to around the people's human connection to one another in a powered source. I draw a lot more of my learning from watching people. And I remember seeing these two kids, a little Black boy that was throwing a tantrum in a Starbucks store before, and I'm sitting there and he's rolling around throwing a tantrum because he wanted his mother to get him some candy and she wouldn't give it to him.Ben McBride:
He's rolling around on the floor. And then a Latina mother comes walking in with her little Latina toddler daughter and she goes to get a coffee. And the little Latina sees the little Black boy rolling around on the floor, throwing a tantrum, and she stops, and she gets transfixed with him. And she leans over on her thighs and starts staring at him. He looks up at her and he starts staring at her, she reaches down, puts her hand on his shoulder, he sits up, he puts his hand on her shoulder, she puts her other hand on his shoulder, he puts his other hand on her shoulder. She pulls him to his feet, and they start spinning around in circles with their hands on each other's shoulders. And as the Black mother is leaving out, the little black boy starts walking out and the little Latina toddler walks out with him, right?Ben McBride:
And what hit me in that moment is even without language because the Latina mother was speaking Spanish, the Black boy was speaking English, without them having known each other before. Something instinctively told them that they belonged to each other, that they were connected, that they were each other's responsibility. And so, I think some of this is not rocket science, I think the traditions of the past have helped us see that we are radically interconnected. And if we could figure out, I don't think it's about what it is that we actually need to learn. I think it's more about what we need to remember. And it might be more about what we need to unlearn in the sense that too many of us have been socialized, including myself. We've been socialized that the only way to find safety is to be segregated from people that are different from us.Miriam Magaña Lopez:
Thank you so much for illustrating that beautiful story. It is amazing how much we are connected. And like you mentioned, different policies or people have created this fear that makes us fear people who look different than us, who act differently than us, who live in a different area. And I think rethinking that idea of coming back to I guess, more like you said, it's this unlearning that we have to do. We've been taught all this fear and how do we unlearn that to help us move forward and begin to see all of us as part of something together rather than focus on who we are as individuals or just with people who look like us. Thank you so much for touching upon your thinking and what you've done.Miriam Magaña Lopez:
What has inspired you to incorporate belonging and all the thinking that you've done on it. For listeners, I love to start to break down your thinking. So that people...we mentioned vocabulary is important. Having these definitions that attach to vocabulary is important so that people can begin to name what they are seeing. We've distinguished between the outcomes of belonging as either cultural belonging, or structural belonging. You say that we must do both at the same time. Can you briefly outline what you mean with this distinction? And the roles that cultural and structural belonging play separately and together?Ben McBride:
Yeah. So when I think about cultural belonging, I think about the notion of hearts, minds and relationships, right? Cultural belonging is how do we impact the way that we feel, the way that we think and the way that we live that out in relationship to other people, that's cultural belonging work. And so that to me can happen a lot around the notions of conversation and bridging circles and the way in which we connect our hearts. We learn how to feel one another, how to resonate with one another. How to hold somebody else's story even if we don't agree with their perspective, their point of view, their story, how do we learn how to identify with their feelings? How do we learn how to widen our circle of human concern with our mind? And how do we learn how to relate to other people? And how do we engage in bridging? That's what I kind of call cultural belonging.Ben McBride:
When I talk about structure belonging, I'm talking much more about systems, structures and institutions. How do we ensure that systems and structures and institutions are designed and built in such a way that even if people don't want to do cultural belonging, we have structurally created environments and communities that ensure that people can find safety? I think it's James Baldwin that said some years ago, "I don't care necessarily that a white person hates me, I care that they have the power to lynch me," Right? And so when I think about the difference between cultural and structural belonging, is that notion that we want to ensure we're building systems and structures that protect everyone, protect everyone's ability to live, to be alive, to thrive, we need to have systems like that.Ben McBride:
But I also would probably push even on the notion that our elder, the deeply brilliant brother James was saying around the notion that I don't care that white people don't like me. I think we all do care to some level about how we all feel about one another. I think we're socialized that way to care. And there is a psychic effect to experiencing the negative cultural othering that communities can show up. As a black person, it affects my psychic health to experience anti-blackness in cultural ways through people's rhetoric, through the way that people show up in culture. In the relationships I've had with undocumented relatives and immigrants, the xenophobia that is pushed towards those communities affects people in a psychic way.Ben McBride:
And so the way that I think about it is, we don't have to only do one, I think we actually need to do both at the same time. We need to be thinking about how are we advancing initiatives that are bringing people's hearts, minds and relationships together, while at the same time we are working towards transforming systems and structures that can protect all people including the people that we disagree with? And I think that's the big question that's honest when we talk about belonging. Are we seeking to only create a world for people like us? Or are we really trying to widen the circle of human concern even for the people that we disagree with the most?Miriam Magaña Lopez:
For some people who are learning to begin to think about these ideas, the idea of structures may seem sort of arbitrary. Like what do you mean when we say we need to create structures of belonging? I wonder if you can give an example that will help illustrate this point to people who are just beginning to think about these issues?Ben McBride:
Yeah, certainly. So when I think about structures, I like to give folks images. And so, when I think about belonging and structure belonging, I think about a house. In order to provide people shelter from the elements of the weather. You have to erect structures that actually protect people from things that will happen that are out of their control. So if I am an unhoused person, we know that you can care about me being unhoused, you can care about me potentially getting hypothermia. You can care about all those things, we can even be in relationship with one another with me as an unhoused person and you as a housed person. But until we move from a culture of belonging of you caring, to structural belonging in the sense that we erect a house that ensures that the elements will no longer put me at risk to get hypothermia, expose me to the weather, render me without a reasonable level of security.Ben McBride:
We really have not created an environment that I can actually survive in. And so in the same way that we take that very simple kind of metaphor, and take it into larger public systems. We can care about Black and brown folks living in communities that don't have good education, that don't have access to healthy food, that don't have community based programs and resources for young people, all we want. We can have our hearts and our minds and even relationships with folks, we can engage with acts of charity and mercy and we can be mentors and we can buy backpacks for the back to school activity, and we could drop off Christmas gifts for these under resourced families.Ben McBride:
But that's cultural belonging, structural belonging is when we begin to think about what does it mean for us to erect the kind of public systems that are necessary to ensure these families are not in need of our charity, and are not in need of our mercy. This is why belonging brings about the question of power. Is we want to ensure that these families who we are helping, have the same kind of power and agency in the story with us to co-create a structure that doesn't render them in need. And so, when we build structures we are creating long term solutions that ensure people get to make the same choices that we all get to make some of us that are not living in subordinated groups or in levels of challenge.Ben McBride:
And here's one of the things that's important I think to nuance, creating structural belonging does not mean that people will make great decisions within the structure, right? So let's go back to my simple metaphor, we can build a house for an unhoused person who can still choose to leave that house and go sit outside the house, and still die in the elements of the weather that are there. But what we want to ensure is that the structures are there so that people have that option. For too long, America was developed and it's where I live, United States was developed in a way that builds structural belonging for white males, and the women who were married to them and landowners. That who the houses were built for using my metaphor, right?Ben McBride:
And so, what we now need to do is to ensure that houses are built for everyone so that people can make the choice about whether they want to experience life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness within the structures that are available. But right now we don't have those structures. And so when I'm inviting people to think about structure belonging again, if we go back to that metaphor, you don't show up to that place where the unhoused person is with a house. You're going to have some conversation, the culture belonging, we are going to co-create together, we're going to figure out what kind of house they need, we're going to talk with others, we've got to go get materials, we've got to get a plan. There's a lot of work that goes into structural belonging.Ben McBride:
It's not just about a one and done, but it's about the long term work in a co-creative way of ensuring we are erecting institutions and we are erecting safety and the ability for people to have agency.Miriam Magaña Lopez:
Thank you so much for giving that great example. And I appreciate you also mentioning that this idea of creating structural belonging is not new. We've done it, we've just done it to a very limited population. And what we need to do is to expand that structure belonging to include everyone. To move on to the next question, putting things simply you describe the process of bridging to belonging as expanding, who is included in the idea of we. In order to do this you outlined four steps, building, bridging, belonging and becoming. To begin, you are building to the bridging to belonging language. What do you mean by building? And how does it interact with bridging and belonging?Ben McBride:
Yeah, so I've been trying to figure out how do we get people into the space to bridge? When I think about bridging, I'm always thinking about the notion of bridging across difference. But I began to experience in my own journey that there was a step before bridging which was what I like to call building shared humanity. That building shared humanity is really about creating space. We are living in a world that has segregated us away from people who are different from you, not just around the notions of race, but around the notions of class, around the notions of geography and how neighborhoods are designed and built. Even the notion of post-pandemic and us living in the safer at home era, most of us are experiencing each other behind the screen now. We're not engaging with people, there are things outside of our control that are limiting the kind of space that we have.Ben McBride:
And without space I think we get a smaller circle of human concern. So when I talk about building shared humanity, I'm talking about how do we create space? It can be physical space, it can be digital space, but it's how do we create space for our story and the story of someone else? Now, this is literally about ensuring that we're learning how to create spaces that are large enough for multiple stories, multiple narratives to exist, bridging is what we do in that space. But I begin to think about the notion that we need to learn and empower people on how to actually build those spaces themselves. And so we want to build some shared humanity, we want to create space for different worldviews, for people to show up as their full selves.Ben McBride:
And then the bridging is what we do once we get into that space to begin to step into the shoes of someone else to look for the commonalities, and to pay attention to our differences. To learn how to hold one another's perspectives without agreement, and to look for the opportunity to find that third way forward that can lead us into co-creation.Miriam Magaña Lopez:
Thank you so much. And the next steps in your framework are bridging to belonging which our listeners have heard about. And since we have limited time, I don't want to focus too much on those two steps. But I do want to talk about this additional step that you're adding to the framework which is this idea of becoming. What is the process of becoming? And what are we moving toward? What does the metamorphosis process look like to you?Ben McBride:
Yeah. So, I feel like the wrong first question is, what do we need to do? The right first question is who do we need to become? And how does that becoming inform for us the kind of doing that is not currently within our reach? When I think about the notion of becoming it's about us becoming a deeper, more expansive, wider version of ourselves. And there are some steps I think, that kind of can help us track our trajectory of becoming. I think one thing that's important for us to recognize is that none of us is one thing. We all have dominant identities and subordinated identities. I mean, I guess there could be a scenario where there might be some people who are all subordinated identities or all dominant identities. But I think most people find themselves with dominant and subordinated identities.Ben McBride:
And so I think because of that, that means that all of us are always on a journey of becoming around thinking about, how do I ensure that in the areas where I have been positioned in the story with a dominant identity, that being your whiteness, that being your maleness, that being your Christianness, that being your straightness, that being you're ableness, right? Whatever it is that dominant identity, how are you constantly on a journey of becoming where you are closing your proximity to the pain of those who are living on the subordinated spectrum of that dominant identity? And so when I think about the trajectory, I think there's about, I've called them the five A's over the course of time I will see if I can remember them all.Ben McBride:
I think that the first one I talk about is in our becoming is about our awareness. That we need to grow in awareness around the difference of others and what is happening on our journey. But as we grow in awareness we also need to grow in accountability. And then after we grow into accountability then we move into articulation. We grow in our ability to talk about the things that we're becoming aware of. And then from articulation, we should move into advocacy, where we now learning how to talk about it, we learn how to show up as allies for others or show up alongside others. And then ultimately, we live into activation where we are actually helping to bring more people into awareness along that journey.Ben McBride:
So those are the five A's that I've kind of thought about becoming around awareness, accountability, articulation, advocacy and activation. But really for me, what the trajectory is around in our becoming is there's always something for us to know about, become more accountable around, learn how to talk, show up as an ally for others, and then get engaged with being an actual drum major for justice as Dr. King would say.Miriam Magaña Lopez:
Thank you so much. I really appreciate the last addition to your framework because it does sort of signify how important, how much of a lifelong process this is. It's not like you can just bridge and you're done. You really have to keep moving, our society is changing. And it's not about just engaging conversations and saying, you're done. It's really about putting in the work to make this change both culturally and structurally. So thank you so much for illustrating that.EJ Toppin:
I also think it's great that you bring up this idea that we have multiple identities within ourselves. We have dominant and subordinated identities. And sometimes those identities even within us are conflicting in intention and rubbing up against each other. Sometimes one is more prominent than the other. And that leads me into my next question because when we're thinking about our dominant identities, a lot of times associated with that dominant identity we have implicit biases. And you've done a lot of thinking about implicit bias and how it can interrupt the bridging process and keep people from seeing each other as equal partners in the co-creation process. And co-creation depends on us seeing each other as equals in a collective effort. So are there other prerequisites along the lines of checking our biases that we have to overcome to be able to co-create? And are there structural considerations that need to be accounted for if we're to enter spaces as equals in the co-creation process?Ben McBride:
Yeah, whenever I start off trying to work with co-sojourners on this journey towards belonging or working with leaders, oftentimes lift up implicit bias as the most in our face challenge and obstacle that we have towards getting to belonging. Because you cannot avoid what you don't see. And I think the challenge of implicit bias is that if we don't do the work of being aware of it going back to what I was talking about with becoming in terms of awareness. If we don't get any awareness around it, then we'll go down the journey of trying to create belonging, and we'll be causing a lot of harm. I remember I was in a public safety meeting trying to advocate to get more resources for loved ones that were involved in gun violence. And before we got engaged in the public safety conversation about the gun violence, the brothers who were trying to get bike lanes put in the city were talking about bike lanes.Ben McBride:
And one of the young white brothers had a very interesting line. He said, "You know what I'm concerned about when I'm riding a bike?" He said, "I'm not concerned about that 25 year old guy in the red Mustang who's got the dual exhaust pipes. I can hear him coming two blocks away, I can avoid him without looking back because I can hear him coming." He said, "The one who I'm concerned about," He said, "Is the soccer mom in the minivan." He said, "Because she has so many good and responsible things happening inside her car that if not careful she will just run me over making a right turn trying to get her child to the soccer game, not because she wants to harm me or not because she's aggressive, but simply because she does not see me." And what he was arguing for in terms of the bike lane is that he needed a structure built because of her inability to see.Ben McBride:
I use that notion around inability to see and then bring it back to implicit bias, is that I think we've all been positioned in a story to see certain people and we've been positioned not to see certain people. We've also been positioned to see certain people and make meaning of how it is that we see people, that then shows up in the way in which we treat people. Whether we understand people as being worthy to participate with creating belonging, or whether we see them as being unworthy, or even a threat to how it is that we're understanding belonging. We cannot engage in bridging or in co-creation until we are first willing to both become aware and accountable about the limitations of our own vision and our own foresight. And if one is not willing to do that personal work, one by their inaction is saying that they actually are not ready, willing, or responsible towards really the goal of belonging.Ben McBride:
So it starts with us becoming aware of our own limitations. I grew up as a Black boy in San Francisco to a heterosexual couple with roots from the South, a part of the Black Christian church tradition. And so that means that that is the lens that I inherited, I don't have to judge that lens. I don't have to be angry at that lens, I actually like the lens, but it is a lens that let me see certain people and restricted my ability to see others. And so I think when people are thinking about belonging, using the science that's out there. Dr. Jennifer Eberhardt with her book Biased, I think does a brilliant way of talking about both the personal and cultural ways that implicit bias functions while also talking about the systemic and structural ways that bias functions.Ben McBride:
I think us doing that kind of work, being committed to that kind of science is incredibly important because without that we can be very well intentioned and continue to be agents of trauma and harm to people who deserve much better.EJ Toppin:
I appreciate you bringing up some examples of, in the room work between different groups and some of those discussions that take place. And in thinking about this, I'm wondering about those scenarios, those situations. A lot of times when we talk about bridging and belonging, they are described as messy and challenging processes. But especially when you're reading more theoretical texts, it often stays in that very theoretical and abstract place. It just names it as messy and challenging, but doesn't give us the details. So from your on the ground experience, what does that messiness look like in practice? What is it like to work with that?Ben McBride:
Yeah, well, I'm here to tell anybody that wants to be engaged in bridging and belonging, you better put on an emotional hazmat suit, because it is going to be very messy. One of the clear examples that jumps out to me is when we showed up in the streets in Ferguson, Missouri, after Michael Brown had been killed on Canfield drive, August 9th, 2014. And we showed up because we wanted to come and stand alongside young people and others in the call for Black Lives Matter that was emerging from the hearts of poor, young black folks from St. Louis and St. Louis County. And as we came out there we had our clergy collars on as a part of our tradition to wear our collars to demonstrate that we're faith leaders here in solidarity and as allies to the young people in the struggle. And some of the young brothers saw us and he told us, "Get the fuck out of here before you get your ass whooped." Excuse my language. But that's what he told us.Ben McBride:
Because for him in that moment, our religious attire represented something. He had a reaction that was rooted in his experience about what we had to do and how we did or did not belong in that place of trying to fight for justice. And so what bridging looked like for us was not to take it personal around his pushback, around what was happening in his experience but rather to become curious. And it took weeks of being shot with rubber bullets alongside the young people and being smoked out in the streets alongside the young people where that bridging took place. And then we got into relationship with folks. But then there was moments where those relationships fell apart, because we did come from different parts of the society with different backgrounds and different experiences. And we would trigger one another, that would lead to a decrease in trust, and folks would pull away and we would have to come back together and bridge again.Ben McBride:
And so, what I found in the work of bridging and belonging, it is not a one time action. It is an actual way of being. That's why I talk about this book Coming Peace, because as a bridger you are constantly bridging because we are always changing. And it has always been this way. In the belonging movement of the 50s and 60s, you had Dr. King not just bridging with white folks and others, you had young people like John Luis bridging to Dr. King. You had folks like Dr. King and Stokely Carmichael bridging to one another, you have folks, enough stories are not told about Ella Baker who left the SCLC because of the patriarchy and the misogyny inside the SCLC in the black Christian male space and started SNCC alongside young people and she is a black woman bridged to these young black people. All this bridging was happening.Ben McBride:
Now, in the middle of this relationships would fall apart and they would come together. But it was learning that practice and being committed to the spirituality of bridging and belonging. Not religion, but the spirituality of bridging and belonging. This notion that we are radically interconnected and our relationships and connection to one another is worth fighting for even when times get difficult. And so, all of the bridging work that I've been in has been difficult, whether it was in Ferguson or whether it was when I was engaged with helping to try to mend relationships between the police and the Oakland Police Department in our community. I was engaged with training a lot of law enforcement, around implicit bias and procedural justice and get the very people that I was trying to bridge to, it became aware that in the press that they had been involved with sexually trafficking a young brown child in our community.Ben McBride:
And so that bridging had to stop and I had to move along with others to get a 1000 people on the freeway to shut the Bay Area down so we could make it very clear that young Black and brown children being sexually trafficked in our city was not going to happen. And yet once that protest was done and once they got done harassing me and trying to arrest me and they calmed down, I came back to the bridging table again for the purposes of trying to undo gun violence in our city and work to save the lives of Black and brown young men whose blood was washed in the concrete of Oakland. So bridging is messy, it's not clean, it's not a panacea. Sometimes it's expansive, sometimes there is limits. But I do believe it's a practice that if we'll lean into it, we'll be able to strengthen that muscle and come back to it again and again.EJ Toppin:
I think these are such important points to remind us that bridging isn't always a straight line, sometimes you take steps forward and sometimes you take steps back. Sometimes things are put on pause to regather, to regroup, to rebuild coalitions. And it seems to me, what struck me from your comments that to really know if we're achieving some level of belonging requires deep involvement. People on the ground who are involved in these messy scenarios and situations have a finger on the pulse of whether or not we're reaching belonging. Are we making progress or what's happening? And a lot of times in the literature, there's an effort to sort of systematize measuring belonging. You see this in psychology literature or the sort of business corporate, DEI literature, trying to quantify belonging.EJ Toppin:
And it's important to have indicators, right? But the systemizing or the quantification, I don't know if that exactly captures what we mean when we talk about belonging. There might be things that are left out that aren't considered and we try to make it so formulaic. So I'm wondering from your perspective, from your experiences, doing the tough work with people. How do you measure belonging? How do you understand if we're moving towards greater belonging? Are we achieving the goals that we've set up for ourselves?Ben McBride:
Yeah, well, I think you said it brother EJ, I mean, brother Glen Martin out in New York says that the people closest to the problem are closest to the solution. And I often times agree with your notion that the folks who are most impacted in any certain scenario are the key indicators as to whether we are creating belonging, or whether we're just simply creating more inclusion. And I think it's important for us to listen to those who are most impacted in any scenario. They will tell us and certainly, I think data helps us learn over the long haul where these efficacy and best practices that are showing up. But I do think that there is a lot of knowledge and learning to be gained by simply listening to people who have been othered when we are engaging and trying to create more belonging and having them share with us whether they are feeling more belonging.Ben McBride:
I think the tough part and I found this even with myself as somebody that leaves a couple organizations and is involved in a variety of different things, when you have more power, whenever you have any power, most of us are socialized to hold on to that power. And we're not always socialized that listening to the people who have the least amount of power is going to get us who have the power towards our end goal. Let me break it down to a simple metaphor of a family. I was not socialized that talking to my youngest daughter is actually how I'm going to figure out what's best for our family. I was raised in patriarchy, I was raised with some of the norms that come from white American Christianity that has I think in a negative way, had way too much influence on our society of a white male European construct of men know best, elders know best.Ben McBride:
So if you're a man and if you're old, or if you've got some status or some land, you're the one that needs to make the decisions for everybody else. So, I think in order for us to shift towards belonging, we have to learn how to develop the muscle to listen to the people who have the least amount of power. And that's where I think like, when I think of organizations and companies and others that are trying to figure out how to create culture, you have to actually redesign your systems in a way that actually prioritizes the feedback and the input that comes from the people that have the least amount of power. But that I think is a big journey around becoming. Because certainly in my faith tradition they used to say the Golden Rule was treat others the way you want to be treated.Ben McBride:
But then, somebody told me there's another Golden Rule which was the Roman Golden Rule which is, he who has the gold makes the rules. And I think too much of our society is probably built on the Roman Golden Rule than it's built on a more egalitarian framework.EJ Toppin:
I want to pick up on this thread that you started speaking a bit about. The idea that people and our society are shaped by this notion of a White American Christianity. But from the way you're describing it, I get the sense that what you're talking about is more of a structure or a system that adds shaped to our world and thinking. So what do you mean by this idea of our world being shaped by a White American Christianity? And what do you mean by not becoming the new white people, but transforming or becoming people with new identities? And along the same lines, I'm wondering how you think about the idea that through the becoming process, our identities will necessarily be transformed as we build with each other towards a more just and equal world. But at the same time, many of us have aspects of our identities that we'd like to retain. So how do you talk about this to people who may be skeptical about the need to bridge because they don't want to lose certain important aspects of their identities?Ben McBride:
Yeah, no, I think it's a dope question. I mean, I think one of the challenges we have when I talk about White American Christianity I'm very much so talking about a Eurocentric system that in the name of religion sought to commodify everything and every one. It reduced human beings to property, it reduced the earth simply to property, it's something to be taken, something to be commodified. And when something is commodified, you can do anything you want to it. You can steal it, you can sell it, you can beat it, you can abuse it. And this notion of someone's way of being needing to be spread around the world and to disappear everyone else's way of being. Whether that's around the notion of religion, or culture, or dress, or food, has less for me to do with Christianity and has more to do with imperialism, colonialism and supremacy.Ben McBride:
And so I think, it is important for those of us in the United States who are living in a nation that is a so called Christian nation. But the expression of its so called Christianity has shown up more as insurrection, has shown up as taking away rights from women, has shown up as rejecting the immigrant, has shown up by killing black people. That form of imperialism and supremacy and colonialism is a system that must be deconstructed. But in order for it to be deconstructed, it must be replaced with a different system. Now, what I'm arguing in our work is we must really spend time thinking about what is the new system we want to create? Or are we simply arguing to become the new white people? Meaning, we get to become the people who dominate, who are imperial, who get to be colonial, who get to be supremacist.Ben McBride:
I actually want to live in a world that does not have any emperors or supremacist, or people who are seeking to erase other people's beauty, culture, spirituality and the way in which they are. But I think in order to do that we're going to have to get a new story that informs the way that we show up. I mean, I say all the time when I think about the crosswalk, right? Like all of us walk in the crosswalk because somebody somewhere told us that if you walk on the ground between the white painted lines on the concrete, a vehicle that is flying 40 miles an hour will stop if you are standing between the white lines on the black concrete. Even though all of us have seen videos where somebody either got hit in a crosswalk or almost got hit. We keep walking through it because we have been given this story that this is how we move, right?Ben McBride:
I think we need new stories that help us think about how do we move throughout the world in a way that we're able to take care of ourselves without us having to become the new white people. And by that again, I don't mean people have a Eurocentric descent. When I say white people, I'm talking about the kinds of people who need to maintain all of the power, use violence, disappear the beauty of other people's tribal identities and affinity groups in order to somehow substantiate their own. Now, I think it is a real thing because of the story that has been that some people don't want to bridge because of the impact of whiteness and the violence that it has created in too many of our lives. When I was first launching some of this belonging work in a more formal way back in 2019.Ben McBride:
We had a big conference of activists and organizers, we brought about 400 people together to talk about belonging. And after the first day, about nine or 10 people from Southern California, Black folks, got back on the plane and went home. And one of the brothers who knew them and knew me pulled me to the side was like "Brother Ben I got to tell you, some of my people they got on the airplane and went home." And I said, "Why?" He said, "Because they was like, man, we thought brother Ben was cool man but I ain't trying to bridge to the white folks. Like all the pain that white folks have caused us, I'm not trying to bridge to the white folks." And I said, what I had to realize in that moment was that their orientation was fair, they weren't ready. And not being ready to bridge to everyone is fair, being protective over our own spaces of tribal identity is fair.Ben McBride:
When I am calling us to come towards the middle, towards an intersection point where we have a wider circle of human concern, it doesn't mean that we disappear the beauty of our tribal identities. It doesn't even mean that there's anything wrong with our tribal identities. Actually for me, moving back into an exclusively Black space sometimes is very healing for me. Because it's in that space where the wisdom of the elders and the spiritual songs and the black cuisine and the electric slide at the Black wedding to a [inaudible 00:53:04], you make me happy. I need that at times the motive to just get a dose of that Black joy to remind me that I am beautiful and that I belong. And so, it's really about how do we flex between the beauty of our back corners, and move towards the center where we can hold space with others?Ben McBride:
And I think colonialism, supremacy and imperialism doesn't let us do that. But if we can get a vision of a new world and this is what I'm excited about with the notion of belonging. I've never been in that world and I don't think any of us have. And that's what exciting to me. We have the opportunity to actually pioneer the next expression of the human experience that doesn't need to look like plantation culture. And if I'm preaching any message, it's that message to figure out how to begin those of us that want to be on that freedom train to move towards that end goal of belonging. I think that's something to live for.Miriam Magaña Lopez:
You've sort of alluded to how different structures have either promoted belonging or impeded belonging. I'm curious to hear from your perspective, how does capitalist thinking and commodification disrupt bridging? How much are you challenging capitalism in your quest for building a world of belonging?Ben McBride:
Yeah, I mean, this is a great question. It's something I've sat with for some time where I've said, is belonging inherently opposite towards the notion of capitalism and free market thinking? And is it only compatible with a more socialistic marxist framework when people think about the notions of economies and political structures? And I don't believe that it is incompatible to a capitalistic structure. I do think that it is incompatible to a hypercapitalistic structure. And so I separate the notions of capitalism and hypercapitalism and in the notion that, and it's my theory and again, I'm not a political science or an economist. So, I'm moving a little bit out of, I'm coloring a little bit outside of the lines on my paper here.Ben McBride:
But I will say that I believe that in the United States we are living in a very hypercapitalistic country, that has commodified the human experience of the earth. And that belonging is incompatible with the way that our public systems and our economy runs, it is just incompatible to it. I do think that capitalism if it is to be a financial system that is kept, has to be reimagined back towards a way that is learning more from what we were learning a little bit in the beginning at the end of the civil war during the period of reconstruction. Because oftentimes, the way in which we think about history is we jump from the civil war right into Jim Crow. But there's a failure of a conversation of reconstruction began to happen.Ben McBride:
You had the emergence of Black business and Black market place and the emergence of Black financial power, Black folks entering the political sphere, et cetera. It was the clap back of white supremacy that came after reconstruction that instituted Jim Crow. And then took away Black folks voting rights and took away their ability to have a sense of belonging inside a capitalist structure. So, I'm less and it might be just because of my lack of expertise, I am less worried about whether we have a capitalistic or socialistic economic structure for belonging to happen. I do think that a capitalistic system that is functioning in the way in which ours is now that has simply commodified everything rather than just created a free market space for people to do business with one another.Ben McBride:
The hypercapitalist system we have is not going to kill us, I think it is already killing us. And I think that if we do not disrupt this hypercapitalistic energy that is literally destroying the planet, then we're in danger and it's simply fueled by greed.Miriam Magaña Lopez:
I want to thank you so much for outlining your inspiration, your definitions of these frameworks and hopefully inspiring listeners to implement this work themselves.EJ Toppin:
Reverend McBride, I also want to extend my deep thanks for spending this time with us but also for the work that you're doing and the sacrifices that you're making towards this work. And you are putting so much effort to just really deep care for the lives and well being of all folks. And just really appreciate that work and appreciate you expanding on what you're doing in this conversation with us and for the listeners as well. And my last question is just, is there any work that you're doing or any projects that you are engaged in or engagements that you'd like the listeners to know about? Or anything that they can participate in that you just want to give a shout out to for folks?Ben McBride:
Absolutely. Yeah, we are excited to be engaged with trying to think about how we empower more leaders, organizations, to really think about this idea of belonging and foster and belonging in a much deeper and profound way. And so, we certainly invite folks to come by and say hi to us at the empowerinitiative.org website page. Just go ahead and go to the Contact Us tab and leave us your information so we can follow with you. Thinking about how it is that you can bring belonging influence to your job, to your organization, to your company, to your community organization. We believe that we are in a moment right now where we're losing our ability to have the skills to bridge across differences.Ben McBride:
So we are getting engaged with organizations that really want to take seriously, how do we do it? How do we bridge? How do we get on that journey of becoming? How do we transform our organizations to be one that is rooted in cultural and structural belonging? And then outside of that we encourage people to keep coming back to our website, empowerinitiative.org. Sometime later this year, we will be unearthing a new online learning system where I'll be unpacking a lot of these ideas around belonging.Ben McBride:
You'll also see coming up towards the end of the year, a book project that'll be coming out where people will be able to hear a little bit more about some of the stories that I've mentioned and the thoughts that I have around the notion of belonging. And then we certainly invite folks who might have any means or resources that want to find ways to support belonging work that is happening on the ground. There's two initiatives, one that I felt start called the California Black Freedom Fund, where we are raising $100 million to resource Black Power Building Organizations across the state of California to work on structural belonging.Ben McBride:
And one of the organizations that's doing that is Live Free California, where we're actually bridging 20 black organizations across California who normally don't work with one another, to work together to reduce gun violence and police violence by bringing people who've normally been on the opposite side of those conversations into a shared space. So you can find all of it at empowerinitiative.org or you could also go to benmcbride.com. Say hi to us and we'd love to figure out how to be a part of your story and be on the journey with you.Miriam Magaña Lopez:
That was Reverend Ben McBride. Thank you for your time. And a special shout out to my colleague EJ for co-hosting this episode with me. And to our listeners, please check out our other podcasts where we discuss belonging and bridging in more detail. For more resources and curriculums on belonging and bridging, please go to belonging.berkeley.edu/b4b that is slash letter B, number four, letter B. To follow Reverend McBride's work, go to benmcbride.com. Until next time.
