On Monday, March 24, 2025 OBI Director john a. powell and researchers tried to contextualize the current moment our world is experiencing in a 90-minute virtual conversation. They looked at what is driving the rise of authoritarianism across the globe, and discussed pathways forward to build a world where everyone belongs and no one is excluded.
Resources:
- Download a copy of the speaker slides
- Revisit the Padlet board where 200+ audience members shared their visions for a better future
- List of OBI Tools and Resources relevant to this conversation
Speakers included:
- Rachel D. Godsil is a Distinguished Professor and Chancellor's Social Justice Scholar at Rutgers Law School and a Co-Founder of Perception Institute.
- Míriam Juan-Torres is a multidisciplinary researcher, writer, and public speaker with expertise on authoritarian populism, polarization, and human rights. Míriam is the Head of Research at OBI's Democracy & Belonging Forum at UC Berkeley.
- john a. powell is Director of the Othering and Belonging Institute And Professor of Law, African American, and Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.
- Eli Moore is a researcher and facilitator with the Othering and Belonging Institute where he leads transformative research processes with community-based organizations and networks.
- Ashlin Malouf (moderator) is the Deputy Director of the Othering & Belonging Institute.
Transcript
(This realtime transcript may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings)
>> ASHLIN MALOUF: I am Ashlin Malouf I am the deputy director at the Othering & Belonging Institute. It is my genuine joy to welcome you all to this webinar on Making Sense of the Moment, we join this webinar from different locations, time zones, identities, ideologies, life experiences and we are grounded in a collective belief -- That all of us deserve a right to belong in a world where no one is the "other".
We are often asked at the Institute, what is the work of this moment? And I offer to you that while the circumstances are changing, the mission is very much the same. At the Institute we are endeavoring to make longing without othering a norm by 2040 so that will become to expect from systems and structures is recognition, inclusion, connection, and the opportunity to activate our agency. That whether it is systems of healthcare, education, finance, transportation, the media, the norm is to expect longing without othering We know that the climb is steep together and it will require endurance, care, cooperation, tenacity and rest. Our hope for today is to share ways in which we can make meaning of the moment, and offer tangible ways of moving forward and making progress towards this goal.
At different times, we will invite you to reflect on what you have heard so I invite you to grab a notebook and a pen, to write your notes, your reflections and questions that you will have the opportunity to ask at the end of our time together. If you would like to refer to this recording later it is being streamed on YouTube, so you can access it there in the future.
It is my privilege to introduce Dr. John Powell the director of the Othering & Belonging Institute, a Professor of law, African-American in ethnic studies at UC Berkeley and published Belonging without Othering: How We Save Ourselves and the World and the Power of Bridging --How to Build a World Where We All Belong, John has seen this worker many tides and seasons and brings a layered analysis, perspective and deep spiritual foundation to the work. I invite you to take the floor, John.
>> JOHN A. POWELL: Thank you to all of you to joining, OBI and friends participating this morning, we can see -- we recognize people are oftentimes struggling to make meaning --while some people are is celebrating others are mourning. And it is not just happening in your neighborhood or your country, it is happening all over the world. There is an unsettling that is happening. It is not just things that are happening, one of the questions is how do we make meaning of this? How do we understand it and how do we engage?
So one of the things that I want to do is give a little context. You often hear that there is nothing new -- that we've seen this before. I want to challenge this proposition. We have not seen this in this form before we have seen expressions similarly but nothing like today. And yet, there are lessons from the past.
I like to remind people that when we think about what is best in America, we think about the civil rights movement and Rosa Parks -- I have a picture of her in my house, we think of Reverend Dr. King, we think of the Montgomery boycott and Brown versus Board of Education in 1954.
But we don't think about Joe McCarthy. We don't think about southern American activity -- we don't think about J Edgar Hoover and the deep underbelly that was mainstream America that was affecting millions of Americans lives all across the country.
And so it is a dark time in America in some respects, there were rays of hope. Of American challenge, it became a blaze and we had the whole civil rights movement -- and a lot could be done but never complete. I'm suggesting we celebrate Dr. King, and we forget that we were in the midst of a very dark time where some people didn't have the right to participate, lynching was still not a federal crime and the country was struggling.
So when we think about positive things it's not that we think about it just when we are in a beautiful field or beach, we think about it in the midst of the struggle itself and that is what carries us through the struggle. So the 1960s was full of a people and transformation.
Part of this is thinking about what we do in the uncertain times? As I think about that, I live here in California, and we have earthquakes, what is more uncertain than an earthquake? More uncertain than stepping on the streets in the ground and it moves? Fortunately, it doesn't happen all the time but it does happen. When will it happen? We are getting better at about we still do not know what I mean by that is we need some degree of certainty, that things will be okay, maybe.
We also constantly live with uncertainty. This is not to suggest all uncertainty is the same, we know our kids go out to school in the morning and they will come home at night relatively safe. And yet, there's always uncertainty. So part of it is to have the proper balance, and never believe that we have absolute complete certainty, it is simply not possible.
At the same time we need to have a certain amount of things we can rely on. And I want to suggest the thing that we should rely on and we need to rely on is each other. And so how do we actually turn toward each other? Instead of turning on each other during these hard times?
And so in the 1960s, we had both impulses happening at the same time, we had some people saying, including President Nixon, there are all those criminals out there, he wasn't talking about people who were stealing or burglary – he was talking about people who were demonstrating against the war. He was talking about Dr. King. Dr. King, To remind people it was Reverend Dr. King deeply spiritually grounded. He was part of the beloved community. And he refused to make even the segregationists his enemy. He refused to "other" -- and by many accounts he was one of the most if not the most powerful transformational leader, certainly in the 20th century. So this call for belonging and not othering, people say can you do that now?
This is what is called to be done. If we are not othering and getting along there is no need to have this conference. I mean we can come in to celebrate but we need to step into the work even now and I know it is hardened people are struggling, but we need to make sure we struggle together and reach out to each other. And in our struggles, make sure that we do not engage in othering with those who do not agree with us.
So, when we think about the house un-American activity went from 1938-1975. A long time. What does it mean to be American in the house of un-American activity? People from all across the globe listening. But one of the things that made you un-American sexual behavior -- so we had this prescription as to what it means to be American.
But one of the hard nuts associated with the house of un-American activity was the fear of communism. I would say this not the fear of communism it was fear itself but it was fear that was driving most of this activity. Roosevelt in one of his famous speeches made the assertion that we have nothing to fear but fear itself. We are back in that space where fear is rampant and we don't know what the future will bring. And we are deeply enmeshed in fear. It is easy to fall into breaking and fragmentation which you will hear more about later today.
When we are acting out of fear, part of the brain that becomes affected is what I called lizard brain, the amygdala. Fear is not bad -- it is part of our human experience in evolution but when it takes over and it is maladaptive that is where we are now.
And one thing we have to do is engage with the fear and learn to speak to the lizard brain. Learn speak to the lizard brain. What is the lizard brain afraid of? What is the language it speaks? It does not speak citation, it does not research or fact check, it speaks the language of meaning, it speaks the language of stories, and what it is most afraid of is not belonging.
And so, the last thing I want to leave you with is much of the conflict that is happening today is happening around who belongs.
And so what we are asserting, and all of you are as well, longing without othering. Belonging with othering is easy, everybody does that. When you have your own little club, everybody that is not in my club do not belong. They are not fully human and they do not deserve dignity and respect. Worse, they are a threat. We have to either monitor them, control them, move them off the land and in extreme cases, kill them.
Part of what it -- is going on now people are trying to be safe by controlling the real -- the imaginary other, we are saying can we have belonging without othering? That's the radical expression of this work and that is what this work is calling for.
And so we are very clear that when we talk about this arc that has been made famous by King, the moral arc of the universe may be long, but it only bends toward justice, we bend it toward justice and sometimes it is being bent toward justice and sometimes it is being benefited other direction. If we go back 200 years, 400 years, we find most people did not belong.
You go back before the US became a country where France became a country, no country was organized around the concept of equality. That started only 250 years ago, so really the moral arc of the universe does with some help bend toward belonging and we have to banded Britain we should recognize in that effort, there will be pushbacks and challenges. But even if there is a pushback and a challenge I think it is important for all of us to struggle with remembering that there is no other, that everyone belongs.
I think I will turn it over to Miriam who can talk about some of the things happening locally with populism and demagogues, conflict entrepreneurs, the people that trade on other people, everybody except their narrow group does not belong. They want to construct a very small "we" and they use a lot of techniques to do that. Miriam?
>> MIRIAM JUAN-TORRES - OBI: Thank you, everyone. Thank you everyone for joining us it is a pleasure to be here today, even if to make sense of something very complicated that makes a lot of us --
>> JOHN A. POWELL: Sorry, to interrupt, tell people who you are. I have the pleasure of working with you but many people do not. So why don't you introduce yourself as well.
>> MIRIAM JUAN-TORRES - OBI: I am Miriam Juan-Torres a researcher and writer and public speaker and my research is comparative -- Europe and North America and I focus on authoritarian population and human rights. I lead research at the Institute at the Democracy in Belonging Forum which I hope you are member of and if not I invite you to check us out.
I want to give us a little bit of the international context of the political movements we are seeing. How the US is situated in that particular context. And then also provide a little bit of references and maybe some historical movements that have been similar to what we are speaking of today.
So, of course, as we know, should know by now that the US is not exceptional in this respect, we are seeing the rise of movements that are fueled by authoritarian politics across the board and the globe. We see that happening in Europe, Victor Orban the Prime Minister of Hungary has been in power many years now, but we've also seen over the past few years like Builders in the Netherlands and in Austria, the Freedom party has one elections, the leader of that Freedom party was a member of the Nazi party. We see Meloni, the leader of Italy, the constitutional arrangement that the countries have, so others have been rising significantly but because they are small party system that is sometimes preventing leaders to achieve power.
And I want to say there's a factor that we should consider as well. Over the past few years there's been a strong anti-incumbent effect that's benefited movements so we've seen across the board there has been a backlash against the parties that were in party that these movements have been able to benefit from -- this is also in part the antiestablishment sentiment so the movements, and I will touch on these briefly, have these populist discourse that often runs against the elites and that is something they've been able to benefit from in the past elections.
That said, I think that it is important to remind ourselves that we should just focus on political leaders, Fascism and other movements across the globe we can have a highly personalized way of looking at the exercise of power so we shouldn't just scrutinize the leader alone. We can focus a lot on Trump or Musk and it is in evitable especially given the extremity of the movements or the actions they are adopting it is hard not to do so but we also need to think about the movements on the voters and make strong distinctions between these things so we think of the political leaders and those that contest elections and represent electoral politics we can think about the movement, the think tanks and the organizers that often support this movement and think of this political leader as the best conduit for the mission. We can also trace the background to a lot of what we are seeing today across the decades so if we think of the great replacement theory, this is a theory that some may be familiar with, conspiracy theory that has gained traction in the US and other parts of the world including Tunisia. It is one that underscores white supremacy and the idea that others are coming to replace whites in Europe or the US, etc., it is a theory that emerged in 2011 by a French author. We can see t transnational nature of what we’re seeing and also were seeing in the 60s and 70s this was emerging so there's a long-term strategy fed, that has influence in what we are seeing today.
And we need to think about the voters. And that's particularly when we are thinking about not othering in speaking of different politics and ideologies as well. Voters unnecessarily fully support the agenda of a lot of the political leaders who are not well-versed in the movement. But also we can think of more engaged voters -- and this was particularly an important trend in the US in the last election.
I think that can also influence how we perceive the amount of buy in to the exclusionary agenda when people who were voting did not necessarily know about the agenda or the specifics.
And of course, from a historical perspective I think John mentioned as well, what we are seeing now in some respects is unprecedented but in others, it is not. There are many historical presidents of oligarchies and rule of the few. In the US and what has happened in Hungry and it's a nascent process in the world is a regime change, regime change probably is as old as times. It is a grandmother who has gone through a monarchy short lived Republic, 40 years of dictatorship, democratic transition and the constitutional transition toward democracy that has also evolved, and that's the lifespan of women that are in their 80s.
It is true that the trend we are seeing now is one towards what some scholars call competitive autocracy, political innovation, there's a lot we do not know yet but it is a system in which there are parties, elections but there's a lot of abuse of power of the party in power, in the way that tilts the balance in their favor quite a lot.
I think that is what we are seeing in the US as well but at the same time it is a reminder that change is possible and that while we may be seeing the change towards a competitive autocracy but could also see change to something else, not going back to what was before because democracy is as we have known it has also I think it can give us a little hope as well, change is possible and positive direction.
One of the questions we have asked ourselves at the Institute is why these movements are also being so successful at capitalizing from antiestablishment sentiment and attracting mass support. As John mentioned, fear is very much a driver and these dynamics bid but we also speak of authoritarian populism, authoritarian populism is a political approach that brings her polls from the authoritative and the populist playbook. So this is a model that we use to think about the strategies and tactics when it comes to narrative and building a lens through which to perceive reality so in times of uncertainty and in general we have a narrative about reality that we overlay on events and we see and filter through that what happens. And Trump or Giorgia Meloni, they are building everything in adverse terms that is anchored in othering and it brings in the populist element. In the populist element, it's important as well because it does serve as a legitimizing aspect of authoritarian policies so what I mean by that is by populism we usually think about a narrative or discourse that poses elites versus people and the political leader in this case, for example Trump, speaks of the elites and defining in a particular way whether it is institutions or universities, whether it is scientists and the people whom he says he represents.
And the threat that is posed by the other is so important and so grand that it justifies antidemocratic and authoritarian measures. So if we can go to two more slides please -- I will just go to the next, thank you. I think one of the questions we can ask ourselves in the current political moment is having used populist discourse so much and having been able to capitalize on antiestablishment so much is the fact that a lot of very wealthy, tech oligarchs are joining this coalition, is it something that will lose -- that will make Trump lose its populist ability so to speak? This could happen or maybe not there's a lot we do not know.
They have particularly --Musk has the so-called Department of Government Efficiency has been presenting himself not as someone who embodies traditional elites but a disruptor who will go fast and break things in order to defend against this gigantic threat that the US is facing, but it could well be the people to realize that they are failing to provide to the people. And I think will --Eli will speak to that as well in his organization. Wealth expansion they want to obviously continue to have across the globe. And we've already seen backlash across Europe as well as to the role these individuals have been trying to play. Another thing to consider as well is whether these big coalitions that has brought Trump to power but other authoritarian populists to power as well as whether we think of them as having a shared ideology. There's a conversation that we have had with a lot of researchers but I think we can agree in certain respects that in a lot of ways there's not one shared ideology, set of ideas of what ought to be. Which in a way allows them to be flexible in bringing a lot of people, different voters into the coalition come into the vote base, but also may be an element that brings fractures. And I want to mention some of the historical context as well.
What historians of fascism have realized is that even Hitler and his movement and Mussolini had a lot of ideological flexibility as well, but what grounds them and grounds this movement as well at their core is nativism and anti-pluralism, nativism is the preference for an in-group said to be the true native but actually very narrowly defined. But we're seeing in the US we are seeing whether it is against migrants or across in terms of white supremacy and race or gender but also persecution of journalism's, big law firms now, etc.
So I think one of the things to ask ourselves is if there's not a shared ideology what is uniting a lot of these movements? On the one hand, their shared enemies. So there is the commonality of stoking fear. And we see how they construct enemies that are shared not in the United States only but across the board, so if you think about woke ideology or the ideas of woke ideology or would gender ideology we see how they are used by Milei and Argentina or across Europe as well.
An example I want to bring is gender ideology, which is one that I think comes up a lot in narrative in the United States come across the board as well. So we see, for example, if we think again in terms of the political leaders, the movements in the voters, so institutions like the Heritage Foundation which is an extremely far right think tank in the US has been sending out briefers on gender ideology and one of them came out about defending women from gender ideology and this emerged with the Trump administration over the past 5 or 10 years, but actually gender ideology was a concept created in 1994, two major gender ideology becomes what it is today and that feminist advancements and gender advancements are countered.
And the other aspect is in these efforts is mainstream ideas against gender justice and the fear mongering around gender ideology have been truly intersectional and they don't necessarily distinguish between one enemy and the other, but construct narratives on gender that has a very strong racialized component for example and so on.
To go back to the previous one, the other commonalities they present themselves as agents of change, and they also speak always in the name of democracy. So I think the idea of that Mirror World, if we listen to the narratives and discourse of these movements we see how they have re-appropriated a lot of language around democracy. So that is something to consider because all of this is implications for how we think about -- what this means is narratives, strategies and the tactic we can adopt, as well as in order to provoke longing without othering.
So, there is a lot of literature on nonviolent resistance and a lot of practice and experience that I think we can learn from. I like the work of someone called Erica Chenoweth was an expert on nonviolent social change and they've done a lot of research on nonviolent resistance across the world as well as the speak about the need to develop effective power building strategies, from an ecosystem of perspective that considers that we have a wide area of tactics available to us, and the strategy we developed can also inform the sequence of the tactics we use.
I will briefly conclude here that there are many things we can think about when we are considering the authoritarian populist playbook and what it means in terms of strategies and tactics but when we think in terms of resistance, we often think of the pillars of support which are the institutions and sections of society that supply a regime with their resources of power grid I have mentioned already the political leaders, the movements in the voters, and how we think at different levels. But in this respect it's important that ridging is very important as well so that we can make sure that actually people who support the regimes stop supporting the regime as well as been one of the most impactful strategies, in terms of toppling authoritarian regimes across history.
We also need to think in terms of how do we approach the ideas of pluralization and polarization. Some are focused on de-polarizing and not raising the heat and pointing at injustice and we need to do both they are not incompatible. Finally I will make the point that obviously we need to make sure we are collectively making meaning and developing a vision, authoritarian populism is very much a way of actually building a lens through which to see reality in creating longing through othering, so we can think about how we do an alternative which is belonging without othering as John was speaking about. And I believe that here, thank you very much.
>> ASHLIN MALOUF: We had an opportunity to hear from John in here from Miriam, we want to give you a few minutes now to reflect on what you have heard, what questions may be coming up for you, what thoughts may be coming up for you. So please, make use of the chat, we will give you about three minutes now, so not a world of time but a couple minutes, to reflect -- the music will play and what is stops playing that will be your cue to come back for the next presentation.
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Nine thank you for the questions and chat with will have time at the end dig into some of these questions now we will hear from Rachel Godsil is English Professor, social is discolored at Rutgers Law school and -- are of Perception Institute, she will share with us results of groundbreaking studies of perception and it provides data in helping to interpret election results and how to forward a picture without longing ending it to you, Rachel.
>> RACHEL GODSIL: Thank you, it is exciting to be -- having an opportunity to follow John and Mary about how we can how we can think about creating narrative for collective change is the research we did you racial ideology mapping was in response to asking questions of how is it that those of us. I wish this belonging without othering ending of the areas of marginalized side we have those discussions in ways that are effective-I will give you an example of how this research development talk of the various areas in which most powerfully oftentimes racial disparity -- the work were trying to do and addressing those disparities it is the way that people feel concerned about those inequalities, is it effective and there were a few studies showing that when we begin a conversation about seeking policy to address social justice issues generally or progressive issues generally, where the acute arm is felt by communities of color bringing the conversation to beginning the conversation with the data about who is harmed most? We saw it drop down and political support to address those issues. We didn't publish the studies because we were looking for an alternative that doesn't just involve stopping discussions of racial equality which we didn't think would be effective. But there was a study where she and her colleagues showed images of people incarcerated for nonviolent drug offenses and the question was, would people signed a petition to alter those nonviolent drug sentences, which were quite many peoples accounts overly long, -- and what they found was when they showed people images that had more black faces, the support for sentencing reform dropped by 25%. That was consistent with the studies we been involved in, so beginning the conversation, entering into a discussion of inequality with racially disparate data had these harmful effects on political support.
On the next slide there is a set of insights about the effects of this similar what we are calling disparity framing, how that affects people who are in the communities to whom these disparities are communicated because along with the effect on clinical support broadly speaking, where disparity framing was harmful, an array of studies showed that having this framing also had particularly acute effects about able whom this data was shared with the stories told, the studies showed increased feelings of stress and hopelessness when data about educational outcomes talk about one's group, again, succeeding less well, so the disparity data.
There is also the effect of perpetuating stereotypes often when you begin with the disparity data with no other context that can trigger a set of stereotypes that have been so long communicated in society, and finally, there is research by young people when disparities are shown about the group they can increase stereotype threat or stereotype load, making tasks that require cognitive focus more difficult.
So we have this powerful combination of a drop in political support and harmful effects from those who are ostensibly were justices is directed at that particular group is
We have an important exception in this slide but people who seen themselves as advocates, perhaps as many on the webinar do, as I do, when we hear about disparities at the beginning of a conversation it often has the effect of triggering a sense of moral urgency why these inequities exist and it triggers a sense of speaking truth to power, naming what people see regularly that the data is confirming what we are seeing. So people and activist groups beginning with the data can be catalyzing. But it also has this attendant potential for harm, again, politically among broader communities, and also for many people of the group who are not necessarily in politically aligned communities.
So the next work we at Perception did was to come up with an alternative way to address the issues of concern we have, including bringing the data to the fore, and what emerged was something that was consistent with what John identified that the civil rights community did decades ago, you name the goal, the world you are trying to create.
So on this slide we give a description of what a sequencing can look like that does not have either of those harmful effects that we described. So this gives the sequence. We call it goal framing because you have this broad goal as epic at the beginning of your frame but we also recognize, and this is consistent with what John and Miriam said, people are going to be in different places with respect to the issues we are talking about, either because it is about the community they are part of or it may feel like we are talking about a community that is not them and they are unfamiliar with the world we are describing, or there may just be a general feeling of helplessness or frustration of in politics generally and to have credibility we need to meet people where they are, this is what Miriam was describing as essential to any kind of messaging we are engaged in so we need to meet people where they are so that acknowledgment will be crucial. And that universal goal that keeps us all belonging without othering in the aperture, with specific vivid examples of what that world can look like, and then we bring the data or the challenges or the disparities into the frame, so that we know what it is we are trying to address. We include a call to action. We realized this acknowledgment of where people are, how do we know?
So we embarked upon in this slide what we call racial ideology mapping because we're thinking that it is so clear that attitudes about race have so much clinical power that we are often assuming those attitudes are about race and then concentrated into people's own race or ethnicity and we did not think that was true. And we wanted to ask the question. In part, this would sugared by the unlit experience finding that the most predictive question they could ask any voters and this is before the election, was do you support the Black Lives Matter movement and the answer to the question predicted views on climate change, redistributive policies generally in a whole host of issues and so they wondered why.
So we want to know and here we describe a little bit what the method was we involved and I will go into great detail but we began with academic literature to see what the racial ideology metrics were and we didn't find any that seemed adequate, we did qualitative research and then finally in August 2024, we had a 91 question survey that was nationally representative, but also, again, engage deeply with different communities of different identities to make sure we were truly getting meaningful representative sample. We want to share what we found. We think it is helpful, both in understanding the outcomes of the election, but also more meaningfully, in responding to what both John and Miriam were calling for.
To begin we identified a racial ideology metrics. And on the next slide we begin to show you what that looks like.
So, again, we asked a slew of questions, 98 that asked about policy areas, people's visions of their own identity, views of racial threat, the great replacement theory, and we see a zero sum economy -- and I will begin to share what came out of this extraordinary multifaceted study.
The takeaways tend 10 the dimensions of racial ideology emerge, when people seem excluded on racial matters either from the perspective of nondominant group or dominant group, that is powerfully predictive of whether they will be essentially racially progressive or racially conservative. When people recognize this link -- racism in the link between racism and status. It tended to make people racially progressive and denied it existed in go the opposite way. The power of Black Lives Matter support being a refractor for whether or not social change is positive when it comes to becoming more belonging without othering in a meaningful way across race or ethnicity or whether it seemed scarier threatening -- so seven segments emerge.
Three are fairly progressive in this ended up being 35% of the population, two were very much in the middle, 34%, and then to a greater degree, the racially conservative was 31% but the segments among the seven were interesting and quite revelatory to show the differences and where people are. And what drives those differences. The first question was is a racial index, racial ideology index useful or predictive? And on that next slide we show how the index maps across the population of the US.
As we can see, most racially conservative to most racially progressive, pretty flat. Not a large curve at all. The question of whether it was predictive, it was extraordinarily predictive, both in preferences for political outcomes but more specifically, preferences around policy paid on the next slide, we shall briefly two specific policy matters that tend to map powerfully when it comes to, again, to the degrees of progressive policies versus other.
The first is the people identified as racially conservative, almost 100% are supportive of deporting undocumented immigrants, versus those who are racially progressive work goes the other way exactly. Those who see the importance of protecting gun rights, those are racially conservative, racially progressive the other bit supportive of taxing the rich at a higher level, the exact opposite. Supporting redistribution policies like SNAP, so strongly correlative with support or opposition to what are considered to be progressive policies.
On the next slide, we move into what these profiles are. This gives a picture of what this looks like and we can have titles that we hope are illustrative of what these mean.
To the furthest level of being progressive, we have those who identify as disenfranchised disruptors and interest-only those who we are calling privileged progressives were of the group have virtually identical policy perspectives and views of how race and identity play out in the world. But the difference is whether they feel seen or unseen and if they have access to power and privilege themselves and those are -- the disenfranchised disruptors are racially diverse and privileged progressives are rescuing white. We start to move into a group who are largely apolitical, largely disengaged and they feel unseen and feel like the system is not working and it is broken.
To the right, Those who identify as Republicans and feel like racial progress has going too far but the furthest to the right group, this is a group that expressed and openly espouses the great replacement theory, they feel threatened if other groups do well, they do not, so that group is differentiated from the group before them.
I will show a slide that shows an interesting illustration of why this feeling seen versus unseen was so powerful. We try to do something slightly different in a study that is often done with large-scale studies, which is we took the information from the qualitative research and used to design questions to make those questions more meaningful to people, so this was one that was really important. If you have a map, I'm sorry if you have a ladder and you see those who the government and whose policies generally favor, where do you see yourself on that ladder, from 1-10, and where do you see people of different racial or ethnic groups than your own?
That emerged as a really interesting indicator, and also a differentiator among those different segments. So for the last couple of minutes, I want to share with you what the segments look like, what is present in the different racial ideology places people find themselves, and who is in them?
On the next slide, we begin with the -- I know this is tough to see it is super small and we will share more later, but this group is the disenfranchised disruptors, these are people who see themselves at a 4.3, they see people who identify as white as 8.6, and Asians, Latinos, Middle Eastern, black African-Americans and Native Americans much further down. This group is 55% white. The remaining 45% range across groups of color in this group feels like they are disruptors and they do not feel the system is working and they feel unseen and are racially progressive when it comes to applicable positions, and they see the system is not working at all for them. And for people and groups that are, again, in the US seen as marginalized.
The next group has a virtually identical policy positions and so on the next slide -- virtually identical policy positions and identical attitudes towards how race and ethnicity play out in the world but the big difference that they themselves, this group is largely white, they themselves feel like they are doing fine, they are at a seven. They see other white people doing well, this group is largely college educated, largely affluent, they are politically identical to the group before them but they themselves experienced the system very differently. Interesting to see how these two groups are similar and the very significant area of difference.
The next group, the typical in some sense, demographically affected Democrat, this group seems themselves at 4.3, but they see whites, Asians and different groups of color a little closer to where they are, they are not as racially progressive as the two groups before them and they see the system as potentially working somewhat potentially well, so systems justifier versus disruptors, they see the system as potentially working well although they of critiques and their quite racially progressive when it comes to many policy perspectives. But for example, they are more supportive of gun rights, more supportive of documenting people who -- deporting people were undocumented so their politics skew a little less progressive than the groups before them.
Next group, again, on the next slide, this crib is similar to the -- before them, with the significant difference they see themselves as doing pretty well. They see themselves as being largely seen but they see racial inequality as a concern and they see systems rather than individuals as the explanations for racial inequality, so they are seeing themselves having agency but they see the systemic inequalities in the world and they think the American dream exists and can be achieved but they think more needs to be done for others to achieve it, they are collectivist and not meritocrats and not looking for a system that works just for a few. They see as being different by sharing the goal without the othering The next group seems themselves so there're age agency is low and the system doesn't work well. Their politics are middle-of-the-road in terms of they do care about inequality and you think taxing people who make -- who are more affluent make sense but they don't see the system is working, the percentage that tended to vote was 44%.
The next group, now we move into where becomes the more racially conservative. This group we are calling post-racial Republicans, largely Republican, -- so largely Republicans, they see themselves largely white, they see themselves as quite low on the ladder, they see African-Americans are black people doing much better than they, so they hold this idea that racial progress has gone too far, the whole racial resentment, but they are not people who explicitly say, if things go well for other groups they do not go well for my group. They refer to themselves as color-blind, refer to themselves as wanting a society in which race and ethnicity do not determine people's destiny. Their policies are quite racially conservative, their intentions to vote were high and intentions to vote for President Trump were high but they describe themselves as not espousing a society in which white people are in charge.
The next group, this group, again we are calling them highly threatened disruptors, they are disruptive, they think the system does not work, they are people who appear to be in control right now, they do say that when one group is helped another is harmed, meaning their own group is again, overwhelmingly white.
What we hope this racial ideology map and these different segments can potentially do is help us to think about if we are going to construct these messages, broadly speaking, to meet people where they are, we get more of a sense of where they are and what we can do with that information.
Our goal with this is to use it as a mapping that can be coupled to people as we move forbid I know I have gone over, thank you so much -- I look forward to continuing the conversation.
>> ASHLIN MALOUF: Thank you, Rachel. Time importantly spent no apologies. We are going to take another couple minutes here for reflection point. And I want to try out a tool for you all to be in reflection with each other but so let us go to the Padlet slide, is a link being put into the chat you can access or you can take a picture of the QR code. And get to the Padlet platform that way. You will click the plus symbol to add to our comments and we will have an interactive discussion right now for the next three minutes.
We have heard a lot about the importance of the story how people being seen and being invited into the vision of the possibility is important to reflect on the question of what is your vision of the good life, for your family, community and the planet? What possibilities for expanding belonging do you see?
So we spent time in the world as it is, let us spend few minutes in the world that we would like to see and then we will come back in here for the last speaker. Go ahead and play the music and when the music stops, that is our cue to come back.
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>> ASHLIN MALOUF: I hope you are finding as much life as I am from reading these comments bit a place where we are accepted as we are, my children can work towards being able to provide for themselves and their families. Peaceful interactions. A safe, healthy and compassionate world. Living simply. Reflecting on the richness.
So many beautiful aspirations. And vision making here. Now, to introduce Eli Moore, researcher and facilitator with the Othering & Belonging Institute and leads through transformative research processes with community-based organizations and networks. You will be speaking about how we build an economy that fosters well-being for all in this time, and how we can align our varied efforts to win an economy where all belong and living systems we rely on our thriving.
>> ELI MOORE: Hello, everybody, thank you, Ashlin, good to be here to talk about how we are making meaning of this moment. I want to start by naming that we are in a hard place, defending against these profound attacks. While also urgently needing to make progress on extreme economic inequality, planetary climate crisis, worsening well-being, racialized and gendered inequities in highly concentrated power, so how do we defend while also putting forward vision for the future that we need? What is our shared vision for the economy I will offer questions and framework for how what we have been hearing from the partners and let's take what is useful and build on it.
An economy in which all people belong means to me that we are entering thriving ecological systems, human health, equitably distributed power, and valuing the dignity of all work, and guaranteeing basic well-being for all people.
How do we get there from here? How can we move towards this vision from this moment that we are in? With such pressure pushing in the other direction?
We can anticipate that they will fail to deliver substantial improvements to well-being. They are false solutions of massive cuts and othering will fail to deliver well-being for all or even for the majority. Putting people who want to destroy government in charge of public agencies is not new, it is just being done in even more extreme ways now than before.
The rating of public assets and selling the government for parts. Objectively, defunding these agencies will not make life better for the majority, it will make life worse. There will be shocks where people are pushed off an economic cliff, and slides where the uphill climb toward a good life becomes even steeper.
While the material benefits will fail to materialize, like affordable housing and food, safer schools, or healthcare, living wages, they will turn to othering, claiming it is the fault of DEI, immigrants, trans kids or some other. They pick a pain point like the devastation of fentanyl and blame it on a marginalized group, it's a distraction but an attempt to create an illogical wedge on top of the social hierarchy -- they cannot deliver the material benefits they will claim to deliver symbolic benefits, telling anyone who is not the targeted other that they are more deserving, more valued.
When WEB Dubois coined the term the psychological wages of whiteness he was observing how poor white people didn't only benefit for material racism but also benefited from this social status. And more.
The risk is that we return, that we respond by advocating for a return to normal. But the antiestablishment mood in this country is too strong for this to resonate, and Miriam highlighted how this is true in general.
During the pandemic some people feel that conditions before Trump were better, at least we had a democracy -- so we should at least go back to that. It could also be tempting to focus entirely on defending targeted communities against the attacks. This is totally necessary, but not sufficient. Defeating the attacks or going back to normal won't weaken authoritarian populism much because it fails to the widespread suffering and anxiety that existed before Trump
Put simply, too many people were suffering before Trump to return to a normal narrative, to work.
The work will be to expose false solutions and point to real solutions, while affirming the way people are hurting and struggling. Real solutions been having proactive agenda of policies and projects that would actually provide broad, meaningful and needed benefits. It means having common sense arguments and stories of how these solutions have worked, and the positive impact they will have.
Part of this is having a more compelling narrative about government, for over 50 years, Republicans have cultivated antigovernment sentiment, over the course of decades, they moved the small government ideology from the fringes to so taken for granted the Democrats have often gone along with it. We need to build back people's understanding of government and vision for an effective response of government.
What is government good for? What can it do for us?
One truth that we must repeat and a way to think about this and tell stories to illustrate is that government can make things accessible and easy. The question is which things and for who? This may sound crazy in this time because we have been taught to distain free things from the government, think about city parks, about public schools, about clean air and safe water, these are all essential for living a good life and belonging. We cannot have these free things without government. Government is how the people write the rules for an economy that ensures well-being for all. Government allows us to care for and provide for the common good, being able to meet the needs of people at scale. Maintaining laws and standards that ensure collective care and well-being. Right now a few billionaires have taken hold of government to make public assets like the Internet and energy systems accessible and easy for them and expensive and harmful for the rest of us.
What do we want to make accessible and easy? Stable housing, quality education, living wage jobs, clean air safe climate?
I keep think about the meaning that movement in 1968 when Doctor King came to the US and said where do we go from here, chaos and community his last book. He analyzes how much harder it would be to address the racial justice issues related to housing employment and education. He saw that justice would take major investments read he wrote that the practical cost of change for the nation to this point has been cheap, even more significant changes involved in voter registration are required neither large monetary nor psychological sacrifice. Spectacular, turbulent events that dramatize the demand, created an erroneous impression that a heavy burden was involved. The real cost lies ahead, the discount education given to Negroes in the future will have to be purchased at a full price if quality education is to be realized, jobs are harder and costlier to create than voter rolls, the eradication of slums, housing for millions is complex far beyond integrating buses and lunch counters but Doctor King saw the struggle for quality jobs, housing and healthcare and education to be more difficult because it would require major public investments and sadly the nation did not make these investments and the issues of lack of stable quality housing, education and healthcare are still pressing 50 years later. So what would it look like to take upward Doctor King left off in 1968? We know federal government will not be responding to the need for at least a few years, to make these investments, so what do we do? Do we wait and see? We cannot wait, we have to make use of the economic power and resources we have to divest from the economy of othering and invest in an economy of belonging, democracy is a verb, it is not an abstract destination or vote you make every four years, it is the power that you feel work, their respect you feel on the street, how much your ideas are honored at school. But most of all democracy cannot be separated from our economy, exerting democratic power in our economy will lead to more well-being for all and more capacity for a responsive and effective government in the future.
Divest and invest is a frame that many movements have used, now recently and historically, it is a useful way to think about strategy to build a belonging economy, this is about shifting the resources within our control towards the world we want to build. Our labor, our investments, our purchasing, our endorsements, our time and energy.
The current regime has a version of it, divest from people on the planet, invest in oligarchs wealth and power. But what is our version of it?
We have to divest from fossil fuel products and industries, financial as capital low-wage extractive industries, racist companies and companies that finance othering and other harm.
And what are we investing in? How are we thinking about those priorities and how are we building institutions of belonging in the economy? Community wealth building and models for shared prosperity, like mission driven enterprises, cooperatives, community land trusts, social housing, an example is the sage development Authority that is launching a $340 million native owned wind project to provide clean energy while bringing economic growth and prosperity to the region of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe investing in supply chains to serve the public good, these are reliable networks of diverse businesses and platforms for fair trade. To ensure access to food and other essentials. A good example is the Cleveland Evergreen cooperatives that created a network of green industrials cooperatives to supply anchoring institutions in Cleveland.
Invest in rebuilding the Commons, public and community owned energy systems, transportation, secure public communications platforms, healthy recreation spaces. Investing in human care, care for elders and children, holistic healing, access to health services, reproductive justice, an example is the resilience hubs that communities are building which provide a place for residents to connect with each other, prepare for and respond to crises.
Investing in ecological restoration and carrot to clean up and ecologically resource soil, water sources, forests, an example is the transformative climate communities program in California. Which funds major holistic and community driven climate solutions.
We need models to make big-ticket expenses accessible again, while saving the planet. We have a thing based economy that prioritizes gadgets and products to use and throw away. It's high waste, low wage and damages our system.
So what power do we have two invest and divest? At the community level, we have worker organizing and strikes so that we can borrow for the common good to build institution and get workers and communities governing power and we have community purchasing power, boycotting and consumer conscious campaigns and we can create a new cooperative that links producers and consumers and community controlled funds. where communities govern power we have consumer governing power, boycotting and consumer campaigns.
We can create a new cooperatives that link producers and consumers and community controlled funds, where communities govern how investments are directed and of course walkouts and slowdowns in mutual labor where you can direct your energy towards what is needed.
At the institutional level we have to question how some of our institutions are complicit the economy of othering and meet the moment with a bigger move like foundations investing more of their endowments into a belonging economy. Which some are already doing, union pensions, anchor institutions like universities and hospitals and shareholder actions to bend corporations toward the public good.
And lastly, local government has power in some places to divest and invest in a belonging economy. Some examples are the Mansion tax in Los Angeles which is generating 30-$50 million a month for social housing and homelessness prevention. Another example is excessive compensation tax in Seattle, with similar investments in social housing. Or the polluters pay initiative in Richmond which put a tax on the refinery and allowed the city to negotiate a $550 million tax over 10 years to invest in a just transition.
So we cannot just react we have to put forward our vision for how we will make meaningful benefits and advance well-being for all. We have to begin now to divest from the economy of othering and invest in an economy of belonging for all. There will be crises and crises create pain but they also create openings and change what is considered legitimate and change what is possible and Sophie get ready we do not have to -- if we stay ready we do not have to get ready for those moments, we can take advantage of those openings. I will leave it there, thank you.
>> ASHLIN MALOUF: Thank you so much, Eli. We are now going to move to some Q&A we want to recognize we are not going to have time to answer all of the questions, so please put them into the chat and we will collect those and we are also putting a link into the chat that has a survey that you can add your questions to so we can do a Q&A response doc at a later time. You're also getting in that chat and afterwards you will get an email with a list of resources. So John, I am wondering as we move into Q&A and you include some of your closing remarks in this, if you could talk about what makes this moment distinctive and unprecedented, what is distinctive about it? How do we do a better now?
>> JOHN A. POWELL: There are so many ways. We've never had to think about in the technical sense the -- founders were very conscious in creating checks and balances. When Trump ran in 2016 there were a number of Republicans called him out in those Republicans have either left or have aligned themselves behind Trump. So we never had the alignment with the richest person in the world, Elon Musk and government. And at the same time we have the global movement pushing back against democracy. So one of the things -- we think the United States, courts, legislature and executive. But there's actually four or even five. But certainly for, the fourth one is in some sense the most important. And that is citizens, people. In a sense, the traditional government isn't operating the way it is designed to. We really need people engaging in collective action. And strategic -- court are sort of holding -- that is unusual, it is unprecedented. And at the same time, and then I will stop -- think about the media, social media in particular. Who owns the Washington Post, who owns YouTube? The oligarchy has really taken hold in America. Not just in terms of the economy but in terms of our important social institutions. The final thing that I will say is the 22.4 billion Americans who work for the federal government the idea firing them and laying them off, they won't be cheering, the resources that we rely on every day. When planes cannot fly because we don't have air traffic control, when the water is not clean. So we are in the middle of a revolution. We are cutting down through the mire. So to restore this will be hard but if you have a leaky roof in your house you don't take a wrecking ball to your house. You build the roof and were taking a wrecking ball to our institutions. At the same time, is a handful of America that's calling it something different but that's being ignored right now largely.
>> ASHLIN MALOUF: Thank you, John. Miriam there's a request for you to talk more about bridging, examples of that and to expand more on this idea of polarized and de-polarize.
>> MIRIAM JUAN-TORRES - OBI: So maybe I'll try to answer both collectively and I apologize that we don't have more time these are complicated matters. But in terms of the polarized depolarized conversation I've done a lot of research on depolarization and we talk about it in a variety of ways whether people hold different views or dehumanization of the other.
And we know that there is some intentions from those who say we need to de-polarize and focus on de-polarizing and others who say the situation is very dire. And it is not the time to be accusing others but I do think that is actually a false binary. It kind of obscures the reality that polarization is not just a state of affairs, it is a strategy that is often time used to create version. I think we can think of in terms of a strategy of polarization, of pointing to injustice, while at the same time while they do that not falling for dehumanization as John was saying earlier. And I think that--bridging as well. A lot of the historical evidence that we have in terms of the coalitions that have brought authoritarian power to fall down, it speaks about bridging and combining strategies, both in terms of pointing to injustice but also building big tent coalitions of actors around particularly one issue, and through that way managed to turn the pillars of support that I was mentioning entering allies away from authoritarian regimes.
And I will end with this point, an important reminder that we should all have as well is authoritarianism generally is a phenomenon of a bunch of rich powerful people who are grifters and take advantage of a lot of people. Sometimes with mass public support but as John was saying when we fail to deliver but the balance sometimes is tilted. Combating authoritarianism, in this respect, shouldn't be a left or right issue we should be able to build coalitions that transcend certain political identities as well. That seems to be key as well even in recent years. So I would point for example, to the experience in Poland as well.
>> ASHLIN MALOUF: Thank you. In the time we have left I'm hoping we can hear from each of our speakers about how do we counter fear mongering in this moment? Let me start with you, John.
>> JOHN A. POWELL: As I suggested, sometimes we start off by saying we've got to get rid of -- bridging to our peer, and really what I talked about earlier, talking about calling people in rather than calling people out. Hearing peoples fear. Meeting people where they are. So there are things that are scary. There are hard times, that is real but it doesn't mean we out if that create the other. There's a fork in the road. We can create a larger tent or a smaller tent. And also great structures. One reason we are relatively safe when we are safe is the structures and containers are working. So it's -- we don't have time so I will just stop there and just say it's hard to figure out what to do now but I would say do something. I'm a vegetarian so the analogy is how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. Don't try to take on everything but take on something and take it on with someone else and be with someone else. And take a break.
>> ASHLIN MALOUF: What is coming up for you, Rachel?
>> RACHEL GODSIL: That finitely share everything that John described, so much of the work we have done has been in response to the aspirational vision that all of you at OBI have constructed and I think our research did give us a source of more hope than we expected in certain respects because the vast majority of people in this country actually reject the great replacement theory, and the idea that we must be divided by race or ethnicity and actually there's so much more commonality of vision. And I think if we can reach toward people and particularly if we can recognize that we do not know what someone thinks about the world based upon how we identify them. And to be curious and be bringing people in this broad tent John described I think that is why the vision of belonging without othering is extraordinarily powerful. Feeling unseen is at the heart of so many peoples -- in some sense, political ideologies that seem counter to the world that we want to create. If we can really see people, they may be able to be invited in too.
>> ASHLIN MALOUF: Eli?
>> ELI MOORE: Yes. I think fear is connected to hope. And our sense that there is no way out of this is often what gives us deep fear. We've been told for a long time at the system is the best that there is to have. And if we respond to that with stories of hope in a practical way, of proofs of what is possible, it could be at a small scale or it could be historical or it could be aspirational. But that we have to help folks understand that there is a path forward with while still listening for their pain and listening for the underlying anxiety. In finding where our shared common ground is very vision of the future, where there's the type of well-being that resonates with them and resonates with us and others. So that we can start to orient the stories of hope towards that vision.
>> ASHLIN MALOUF: Thank you, Eli. And since we are over time, Miriam has let me know that she is okay with passing, I don't want you all to think that I am skipping her and her amazing thoughts. So, let us close with reminding ourselves that the path from fear is towards help, that that happens by recognizing each other, by imagining and living into what is possible, by not making assumptions about each other but living into curiosity and holding those differences with curiosity. At the Institute, we are often reminding folks that the opposite of othering is not saming, it is belonging. So let us see each other in our uniqueness and write a story, to John's point, that is constructing something new.
Resources will be sent afterwards in a follow-up email but I know there have been many requests for Rachel slides. Those are not in the chat but those will be included later on today. Yes, let us listen and co-create, thank you, John. And again, this will be on YouTube if you want to listen to it in the future but much appreciation for all of you and your time.
