On April 16, Director john a. powell joined the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism for a conversation on bridging and belonging. Drawing on themes from his recent book, powell discussed how the problem of othering has shaped the 21st century, the dangers of “breaking” narratives, and the role of journalism in telling bridging stories that foster empathy, nuance, and trust. powell highlighted how storytelling can either reinforce division or foster bridging and belonging.
Transcript
Shereen Marisol Meraji:
Hi, everybody. Welcome. Thank you all for being with us tonight. I'm happy to be together here at UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism. I've really been craving community, especially right now. And my name is Shereen Marisol Meraji. Thank you. I teach here at the J School, I head the audio concentration, and I'm also an assistant professor of race and journalism. I'm going to be the host this evening. And what can I say? These are uncertain times for all of us. Anyone who cares deeply about the future of our democracy, and human rights, and especially for our most vulnerable community members, this is a very uncertain time. And I think we could use some grounded wisdom and perspective right now. I know I can. And that is why I am full of gratitude that Professor John A. Powell has agreed to speak with us at Berkeley Journalism tonight. He's going to be silencing his phone, which is awesome. All of you should do the same.
And Professor Powell is the director of the Othering & Belonging Institute here on campus, which is a pioneering organization that supports research to produce changes in policy and practice on disparities. And we're talking about disparities related to race and ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, disability and socioeconomics. He's also a Berkeley professor of law and a professor of African-American Studies and ethnic studies, and he holds the Robert D. Haas Chancellor's Chair in Equity and Inclusion. I've said a lot of banned words already.Professor Powell has written extensively on a number of issues. We're talking about structural racism, voting rights, affirmative action, social justice, spirituality, and so much more. He's also written several books, I'm not going to list them all, but he's written Racing to Justice: Transforming our Concepts of Self and Other to Build an Inclusive Society. And tonight, Professor Powell is going to speak to us about his most recent book, and it's exceedingly relevant for these times that we find ourselves in. And it's called The Power of Bridging: How to Build a World Where We All Belong. And so I did that off the dome. I didn't even have to read that. So thank you for joining me in welcoming Professor John Powell to our stage. Thank you.
So I'm really excited to talk to you about the ideas in this book, and these are ideas that you've written about before, but because I think they're really relevant to those of us who make the news and, or consume the news. So these ideas are really relevant for those of us who are journalists in this audience, or who consume journalism. But before we get into that, I want to set the table and define some of the terms that you use often in your work. And we have a little slide to the left. And I don't know if this is perfect. I tried. So some of the terms that you use are breaking and othering, and bridging and belonging. And John, what is breaking and othering? You say that breaking undergirds othering.john a. powell:
Well, first of all, it's good to be here on this cold Berkeley night. And it's especially important, because you're journalists. Many of you are associated directly or indirectly with journalism. And I was thinking about these difficult times, and these are not the first difficult times, probably won't be the last. Some of you may know I spent 10 years at the ACLU and so I was thinking about the Scopes trial, the trial about creationism and evolutionism, which actually gave birth to the ACLU and the role of journalism and knowledge production. And that's 1920, a little over a hundred years ago. But people were fighting over knowledge, fighting over: no, you can't teach that. You can't talk about that. And we're fighting over knowledge now. And I think, again, journalism and education plays a very important role. And so many of our most important times in history are really organized around that.
You can think of sort of a "academic thing", but when people are feeling it, they're feeling it very closely. So it's good to be here. So breaking and othering. Let me start with othering. In some ways when we talk about many of the isms, racism, sexism, homophobism, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, we're actually talking about an expression of othering. Othering is a process. It's a social process where we basically come up with a reason to deny another person's full humanity. And most of the work, of course, is done within the group that's doing the othering. Oftentimes I talk to people and they'll say, "Something happened to me just because I'm Black," or, "just because I'm gay." Say, no, they should stop saying that. It's not you that's the issue, it's the people who are hoisting something on you. They're hoisting a story on you, and defining something about you that makes you a non-member.
So that's the othering process, and it's done not just at an individual level, it's done at a institutional, collective, national level as well. Sometimes it's done for populations all around the planet. But we are less likely to run across the word othering, and more likely to run across the word racism, classism, caste. These are all expressions of othering. And we do it all around the world. And one of the reasons we do it is because of belonging. And I'll come back to that in a minute. And so if you think of breaking, breaking is a process of othering. When you say, "It's not that they're just different than me, they're a threat." And one of the ways that we conceptualize someone as other and make them a threat is by the breaking stories we tell about them. The breaking stories we tell about them.
It's interesting you think about stories in journalism. So when someone is deeply othered and we're telling breaking stories, the story's about them, they're not telling their own story, someone is telling their story. And they tell their stories in very flat terms. So we actually don't know much about them. "What do you know about that person?" "He's Black." "Oh, wow. What's he doing here?" Right? I love, if that's the right word to use in this context, some of you may remember the Central Park incident, I love that story for a lot of reason. I love how it unfolded, right? Because these stories oftentimes play on tropes, they play on stereotypes. So here's, you say, do the setup. There's a Black guy and a white woman in Central Park. Okay, that's the setup. And then you let your mind just start ... Oh, what's going to happen?And what's the Black guy doing there anyway? What's the white woman doing there? Oh, the Black guy's there birdwatching. Wait a minute. Didn't see that one coming. Really? Are you sure he was birdwatching? You sure you didn't get them mixed up? Yeah, he was birdwatching. And she had her dog not on a leash, which it was supposed to be in Central Park, and he's ... The dog is barking, running around. He said, "Miss, would you put your dog on the leash? I'm trying to bird-watch." And she gets incensed. The story is just wonderful in some ways, right? Because I believe she's a white woman, probably, I think, self-identifies as liberal, but also I think from Canada, right? So I was like, wow, this is great. I'm loving the story. And then so she's like, "If you don't leave me alone, I'm going to call the police and tell them that a Black man is assaulting me." Right?
He's like, "Well, you want to do that? Here, I have a phone. Use it." I was like what? Then as the story unfolds, we find out, no, he's Black, he's birdwatching, he went to Harvard. It's like the thing is, the complexity of him, and all of us, makes the story much more interesting. And then later, when all this stuff comes out, people was like really pillorying this woman. And I think she eventually had to leave her job. And he comes to her defense, right? It's like, she's a human being, leave her alone. So breaking is where we don't get to those complex part of the stories. Breaking is where someone is reduced to a single or two-dimensional. There's a homeless person here. Wow, what do we know about them? What kind of vegetables do you think that homeless person likes? Literally this has been done, because when someone is deeply othered, we don't see them as human.
There's a part of the brain that lights up when we see another human being. It doesn't mean we like them. It doesn't mean we know them. It doesn't mean we're going to offer to buy them coffee, just means we recognize them at a deep level, unconscious level, as another human being. When someone is deeply othered, that part of their brain does not light up. We literally fail to see them as a human being. In fact, in some cases when we deeply other people, we see them, what gets activated is disgust, fear, a set of negative, repulsive emotions. And so there's an experiment where there are literally people hooked up and they're looking at a homeless person and that part of the brain is quiet, nothing going on for recognition.
And then the question is asked to the looker, "What kind of vegetables do you think that person likes?" And the part of the brain that recognizes the human being goes, wow. All of a sudden the person is a person. They're not homeless or they're not reduced to that one trait, they're complex. So that's what breaking and othering is about. And as you might imagine when we other people, especially in those of us who have been raised to try to be liberal, and when I was growing up, it was liberal and tolerant. I never liked that word, where it's like tolerant; come on in, we're going to tolerate you. No, thanks, I think I'll go someplace else.
So the first liberal reaction to othering is saming, which is one expression of it. And I had a lot of respect for him, I knew him, not well, but I know him. Arthur Schlesinger wrote a book called Disuniting America, and what he calls for in the book, it's dated now, he's passed on, is assimilation. That we all are going to become some normative thing. And I don't know exactly what the normative thing was. Again, in the '60s or '50s, maybe it was the WASP. We don't use those terms anymore, but it was like this normative thing that we're all supposed to be ascribing to and then we're okay. And that's saming. You're okay as long as you're like me. Then I say, "Who is this guy? Why does he think I want to be like him?"
And so the opposite of othering is belonging. We have a full expression of our humanity, and we tell stories and engage with each other in a way that allows us to bridge those social divides that we've constructed, which means we're curious about each other. What kind of vegetables do you like? What kind of music do you like? Oh, you like bird watching? You have a dog? Huh, interesting, I thought you were a cat person. And in terms of bridging, it requires recognition and requires curiosity. And so when we engage someone and we're bridging, we're engaging with the heart, not just with the mind. The mind, especially after you spend too many years in school and you wind up in Berkeley, we want to engage in critical thinking. It's like, what's wrong with what they just said? I read that book and they misquoted a footnote. And so the mind likes to be right.
And the penultimate victory is not just being right, it's where I'm right and you're wrong. That's it. That's it. So the mind is looking to be, oh yeah. Quick story, then I'll ... I was invited to debate someone on the First Amendment. This was years ago. A conservative. And I was invited to engage in debate. And it was after spending some time with my dad, where we had differences. And he was a Christian minister, and he was very disturbed about the concept of abortion or choice. And the election was coming up and he was going to vote for a candidate because this candidate was pro-life and anti-choice. And my dad and I were very close and I had a very different position, and we stayed up all night talking about this.
He went to bed, I think, at 5:30. I think I just stayed up. It was 5:30, what's the point? My mom came down in the morning and she said, "What did you and your father talk about?" I said, "We just talked all night." She said, "Whatever you talked about, he was so happy." And what we had talked about, which actually I don't even remember, but what had happened is that we had seen each other and we inquired together. Not to make him right or wrong, or me right or wrong, but as an inquiry, it was curiosity. It's like, just help me understand why you have this position you have. How does that lean into your faith, lean into your values? And so after that, I said, "This thing about setting up debates, a contest, a game where your whole role is to show how bad, how stupid, how wrong the other person is, I'm not doing that." And so these people call me up and they say, "Would you debate this famous conservative on free speech?" Literally, "We'll give you $20,000." And I said, "No." I said, "Okay, okay. 25."
And I said, "No." And they said, "What do you mean no?" They said, "Okay, how much do you need? How much money do you need to debate this person?" And I said, "I'm not doing the debate." And they said, "We just saw you on television. You've done debates." I said, "I'm not doing that." And so I said, "What I will do, is I'll have a discussion with the person. I'll inquire with them." And after much hesitation, they finally agreed, but they were really downtrodden. It's like no one wants to see an inquiry, people want to see a fight. And it worked out well. And literally for the next couple of years, me and this person became close, shared information, but also we were able to pull in audiences, which initially always started out skeptical.
Like you're the liberal, she's the conservative, go at it. So that's what bridging is. Bridging is where you're really curious about the person. And I just say ideas about them, about their dreams, about their suffering, about their aspirations. And it doesn't mean you agree, but it does mean you acknowledge and are willing to see their humanity. And that's what helps us maintain belonging, is a willingness to see and engage each other's humanity.Shereen Marisol Meraji:
I'm not sure if you all can see Professor Powell's hat because of the flat brim, but it says "Bridger" on it. And in your book you write that you weren't always a bridger, and that being a bridger is sometimes difficult for you. So when did you realize this is who I am, I'm a bridger. How did you become a bridger? And then how do you maintain the focus to stay open and curious, and to have these open and curious conversations?
john a. powell:
That's a great question. So, I think, when I got the hat. No, actually-Shereen Marisol Meraji:
Yeah, exactly. Last week.john a. powell:
So one of the things to talk about in the book is that we all have multiple aspects to ourselves. In a similar way I've just been talking, I aspire to be a bridger. My father's a Christian minister, and so I spent the first 11 years in my father's church. What does Christian mean? It means Christ-like. Whether you call yourself Christian or Buddhist or whatever, do you really think there's anyone ... Do you know anyone who's really Christ-like? I mean, it's what some philosophers call a regulative ideal. It's an orientation. It's a way to try to move in the world. And it doesn't mean you always do it, but it helps you reorientate. It's like I have a friend who teaches conflict resolution, and literally she called me up maybe several months ago. And she has a teenage daughter, and it's like, "I had lost all that stuff, I was just pissed at her. And I teach this stuff." I say, "Yeah. Right. Right."
And so now you have some empathy. So at some point it became our orientation. And again, part of the ways we learn about ourselves and others is when we fail. So I wouldn't be too hard on us, myself included, by saying I'm a bridger, but it doesn't mean I can always bridge. And I talk about the book, under what conditions will you bridge and will you not bridge? Under what conditions will you open up the vulnerability of engaging with another person? And so a lot of times I'll say to people, and I talk to people all over the world, they're very different and similar, perspectives is my own, but I do have conditions. And one of them is no violence. And sometime people said, "I'm not going to agree to that." I say, "Fine, we have nothing to say. I'm not coming to your meeting." So you have to think about this for yourself.It's sort of interesting, because it's hard to really pinpoint when your values become your values. In many of us, when we look backwards, I sometimes say, "I'd like to think that when I was five years old, growing up in Detroit, it was called the Black Bottom, playing marbles, I was thinking even if I'm aiming at that marble, I'm really thinking about belonging. But I know that's not true. I was just thinking about that marble. So part of the thing I invite us to think about is that when we tell stories, and it's not that we're lying, realize that we are, to some extent, making it up. That we have multiple stories. There's no single story. I'm not just a bridger, I'm not just a Black man, I'm not just a professor. What am I?
All of those things. And if my family's around, do I do code switching? Not consciously, but probably. So part of it is relaxing into these different spaces. Last example. I have friends, too many of them who've passed away, but a number of them have mental issues in terms of loss of memory, Alzheimer's, dementia. And it's an interesting question, who's the real Alvin? Is it the person that's standing on before me today who doesn't remember me? Or is it the person that I used to play basketball with 30 years ago? Or is it a person ... So they have these different spaces in life. And we like to think, well, this is the real me. What? Was it when you were 21? 35? Or all of them, some aspect of you? So part of the thing in terms of being a bridger is also to hold the multiplicity and not get stuck.Shereen Marisol Meraji:
You've said and written that the problem of the 21st century is the problem of othering. What do you mean by that?john a. powell:
So if you look around the world, I mean, first of all, othering has been weaponized. It's not just at the individual and a personal level, it's literally nation states. It's coming out of the White House every day. Where whole groups of people, that most of us will never even meet, like the Venezuelan gang or El Salvadoran gang, it's like ... And in terms of what's happening in the world, there's these ways of evaluating where we are in terms of democratic practices. And for many years, looked like the world was moving toward more liberalism and more democratic practice. For the last 15 years, it's been moving in the opposite direction at a rapid clip. What it's been moving toward is authoritarianism. What it's been moving toward is some form of oligarchy or demagogue. And I mean those in the literal sense, not just in the pejorative sense. And so people are organizing. And so what's the playbook? What's the stories that demagogues tell us?
It's interesting 'cause it's a script, and just start looking for it. One part of the script is let's make, and then fill in the blank, India great again. And I'll say in a minute why that becomes important. And then in order to make it great again, we have to get rid of some people. In India, it's Muslims. The fact that people have lived there, and their families, for 800 years, they're considered now, all of a sudden, outsiders. They tell stories about them. Not engaging with them with their own stories. And those stories are uncomplimentary. And those stories do something that not only dehumanize the other, they also help constitute the group that belongs.And so that's what's happening all around the world. We are having these stories out of Turkey, out of South Africa, out the United States, out of Germany, out of Russia, about the real people and the other. So we have these governments organized with powerful messages, armies, nuclear weapons, redrawing borders, doing immigration, talking about the other. And there's a list, right? It's like, who's the true American? How can you be American? Because I have an image of American. So that's what's happening all around the world. And one reason it's happening is because people are feeling dislocated. This other thing is happening because people are longing to belong. Our sense of belonging is becoming frayed, and it's becoming frayed for a number of reasons. We sort of deal with life in many ways. We deal with life by telling stories. Stories are really important.
And the purpose of telling stories is to make meaning, is to give us purpose. But the stories we lived with for decades, if not hundreds of years, no longer quite work. There's something happening. And so part of it is to give us a sense of control. And the sense what we need is a more complicated story where we don't need to be in control. So what the demagogue tells us is that, yes, the world is pretty shitty and your life is pretty shitty, but I can fix it. I alone can fix it. And I may have to ripsaw over some things called the Constitution, or the rule of law, or whatever, but you're going to be better for it. And you belong, they don't. And so the othering becomes a very powerful ... So in every story, every demagogue has an other in his or her story. More likely his story. More men than women, but a few. But they all have a designated other that's the glue for the group that they would call the people.
And they tell fantastic stories about the past, because the future is too scary. So in India, they talk about Indians traveling through space, going from stars to stars as astronauts thousands of years ago. I say, I know you had good drugs in India, but I didn't know they were that good. Or Putin, make Russia great again. Said, "Okay. Pardon me, Mr. Putin. Tell me, when was Russia great?" He said, "Are you serious? Don't you remember Catherine the Great?" I said, "Okay. Fine." So Trump, let's make America great again. It's terrible right now. When was it great? Most Americans think, who embrace that, somewhere between 1850 and 1950. But everything after 1950 was terrible. So the othering process has been weaponized, and you're supposed to be fearful of the other, and therefore the demagogue becomes a savior. So that's the situation we're in, not just in the United States, but all over the world.
And it's being propelled by rapid change, and change happening on multiple levels, but one of the changes is demographic. So we noticed some time ago, for example, that whenever the census would say America won't be majority white in 2045, or thereabouts, literally we could measure the anxiety of the country would spike. Even though people say it's not important. So we have a hard time processing change. And what the demagogue offers us is the past, because they can't deal with the future. Don't worry, we're going to go back to how things used to be before civil rights, before women's rights, before environmental rights. Before, before, before. They trying to sell us a past that never existed, because the future is too scary.Shereen Marisol Meraji:
You talk a lot about stories and the importance of story, and we know stories shape our world, stories give it meaning. So if I ask you to step back and analyze the overarching story that mainstream journalism is telling about this moment right now that we find ourselves in, what do you think that story is?john a. powell:
Well, a couple of things. So mainstream is-Shereen Marisol Meraji:
I know that's hard.john a. powell:
... the word, right? I mean-Shereen Marisol Meraji:
Let's say NBC, ABC, CBS.john a. powell:
Yeah. Right. When I was growing up, literally-Speaker 7:
NPR.Shereen Marisol Meraji:
NPR.john a. powell:
Right? See there. See there. When I was growing up, there were three stations on television and they went off at 12 o'clock. So we could talk about that then. We'd talk Walter Cronkite, we could talk about mainstream. Who is mainstream today? Our news is fractured. They're influencers. The biggest megaphone is Trump right now. More people get their news from social media than from New York Times, Wall Street, Washington Post combined. So there are different stories. That's part of it, is that it's hard to have a national dialogue anymore 'cause everybody's in their own bubble. Half the country believe the election was stolen when Biden won. A lot of people believe there're lizard people running around the country eating babies.
And then, so this is what I would say. When people are afraid, and there's a general who just wrote something in the New York Times, he said, "Don't be afraid." And he talks about this is not normal fear, this is manufactured fear. So the demagogue actually wants you to be afraid so that he can then appease you. So there's one story about fear. Now what the mainstream journalists are inclined to do, although they're getting a little better, I think, is when someone says, in terms of QAnon, "There are lizard people running around the country stealing babies."They say, "That's ridiculous." When they say, "There are people stealing your cats in Ohio." They say, "Come on." They go interview someone. "Do you have any cats?" "Yes." "Have any of them gone missing?" "No." "Okay."
So what we have is actually a conversation that don't connect, because what we say is that that is ridiculous to believe that. It's ridiculous to believe that people used to travel between the stars. That's just stupid. And this is the important piece. What the demagogue is doing is telling a story to the lizard brain. We all have a lizard brain, and for a reason. In the lizard brain, it's about emotions, but it's also a lot about fear. It's not about fact checking. The lizard does not fact check. And so CNN, New York Times, they fact check. And the lizard is like, "Fact check? F check?" So what does the lizard do? First of all, I mean, if any of you have children, a child is afraid. You don't come up and say, "Your fear is irrational and stupid. Grow up." "I'm three years old, man." What do you do instead? You bridge, you empathize. You're afraid. The world is scary. I get that. And what is the lizard most afraid of? Not belonging.
So the Proud Boys are marching with tiki torches, and they're saying, "The Jews will not replace us." They're not being subtle. They're not saying define anti-Semitism, they're just saying a world is emerging where we might not belong. And that's what Trump trades on. He says, "I'm going to make sure you belong, and in order to do that, we got to get rid of DEI. And those immigrants coming over here, not just stealing our women, but stealing our cats." I mean, come on. So part of what's happening is that many mainstream journalists still is speaking to the prefrontal cortex. They're being rational, they're fact-checking. And for those of us who are at Berkeley, it's like, we like that. We're looking at the footnotes. We actually read the footnotes, but that's not mainstream. So how many of you been to a movie lately?Just a show of hands. Have you noticed something happening with movie theaters? What?
Speaker 8:
Empty.john a. powell:
They're empty. They're disappearing, right? Berkeley, downtown Berkeley had four. Now how many does it have? None. None. Okay. Okay. So movie theaters are going away. Bookstores. Bookstores are going in the same route as movie theaters. So people aren't going to movie theaters, and they're not buying books. What are they doing?Shereen Marisol Meraji:
Watching TikTok.john a. powell:
Watching TikTok, playing video games, going into all these ... Whatever. So this is sort of the fractured ... I mean, the internet, the social media is really corrosive. The idea was that it was going to help bring people together. Just the opposite. But you can tell all kinds of conspiracy, and people was like, yeah. I mean-Shereen Marisol Meraji:
So what do we do? I mean, you've said that the solution to othering, and breaking and othering, is bridging and belonging. And as journalists, can we play a role in this solution? Is there a way that we can tell stories that can bridge, or is there just no appetite for that anymore?john a. powell:
No, I think, yes, there's an appetite for it and we've seen it all over, but people need to have ... I mean, part of it is we have to learn to talk to the lizard. As long as the lizard is dominating, you go to a meeting and you think, so maybe they were right. Maybe the QAnon people were right. There are lizard people. It's us. We're the lizard people. But how do you tell stories to the lizard? That's a different type of story. And cultural workers are very good at it. Some writers. I was talking earlier; Pixar. I've written a lot of books. I think, I don't know the exact number, double digits.
And I'm six of nine children. And my brother, he collects all of my books. He hasn't read one. I'm not exaggerating. And he's very proud. He's all, "You got a new book? Send it to me. I have a pile." And what he says, he says, "I tried to read your books. It gave me a headache." And people have said to me, "This is really interesting." I don't read all of them, but some of the reviews of my book. Stephen and I wrote a book called Belonging Without Othering.Shereen Marisol Meraji:
I read that book.john a. powell:
Literally one of the reviews said, "It is so dry."Shereen Marisol Meraji:
It's a bit drier than the new one.john a. powell:
So my point is, I'm giving people information, but I'm not talking to the lizard brain, at least in the first book. I think Power of Bridging does some talking to the lizard, but part of it really is to know how to connect with people. If people feel like they've recognized, they're seen, they're valued, then magic happens. So how do you do that as journalists? Make it clear that you see people, that you care about them, that they're reflected in your stories. And then when that happens, when the lizard is quiet, then you can talk to the prefrontal cortex. But when the lizard is active, prefrontal ... I mean literally when we are steeped in fear, it overpowers the prefrontal cortex. So that's what I would say. You have to figure out how to do that. And when I figure it out how to do that, then I'm going to write a book that my brother will read.Shereen Marisol Meraji:
All right. Well, I'm going to open it up for all of you and not suck up all the air in the room. So yes, we are going to take some audience questions now. And wait for the mic to come to you. And if you have a question, raise your ...Speaker 3:
Yeah, just carrying on on this notion about what journalists can do. I've been thinking a lot about the town crier and the griot, and how human beings previously got information in community. And we're talking a lot about belonging. And do you think that part of the problem is that journalists are too focused on conveying factual information as opposed to bringing communities together? And maybe we need to really rethink the distribution model and maybe get people into rooms more often? I'm wondering if that is maybe one way.john a. powell:
Well, I think people coming together is really important, what you do with them once you have them together. I mean, I don't know your politics and I'm not asking. I don't particularly like Trump, but you have to acknowledge he's a great storyteller. He had people laughing, joking, feeling good. I talked to a journalist who went to one of his rallies and at one point he turned to the guy next to him, he said, "I don't follow what he's saying." And the guy said, "Who cares?" Right? It's like he was touching them. I don't know if any of you've gone to a really good Baptist preacher. Or I lived in Tanzania. And so I'm in a taxi. This woman is a taxi driver, and she's playing this music. And it's bringing me to tears. And at some point I said, "Excuse me, miss, could you tell me what that song is?"
"Oh, I'll turn it off. I'll turn it off. Sorry, sorry." I said, "No, no, no. Don't turn it off. Turn it up." I have that song on my phone right now. I don't know what it's saying, but it touches me. Every time I hear it, it's like it's haunting. So yes, we got to get people in the room, but there're people who are great storytellers and they tell complicated stories. And I'll just give you one quick example. How many of you saw the movie Black Panther? Okay. So who was the hero in Black Panther? Who was the villain? Yeah.
Speaker 9:
Oh, Black Panther was the hero, and ...john a. powell:
Killmonger. Does everybody agree?Speaker 4:
It's debatable.john a. powell:
It's debatable, right? It's debatable. Most of us end up cheering for both, right? It was a complicated story. It wasn't a good and evil story. It wasn't a black and white story. It was a story that was complicated. And it was the first billion dollar superhero movie starring Black people. So there you have someone who would tell a story. And so part of it is, you're in journalism, some of you in journalism school, so learn. I don't say avoid fact-checking, you got to do that, but learn to talk to the lizard. Learn to connect with people at the emotional level. And we do that some when we tell "human interest stories". So just one question. When we're not telling a human interest story, what kind of story are we telling? A story that's not an interested in humans. I don't know.Shereen Marisol Meraji:
Are we telling mostly breaking stories, do you think, as journalists?john a. powell:
Yes. Yes. There's always-Shereen Marisol Meraji:
Because outrage sells. I mean, that does speak to the lizard brain, right?john a. powell:
What did you say?Shereen Marisol Meraji:
That's a different way of speaking to the lizard brain; outrage.john a. powell:
Outrage, that's right. But we also know ... I mean, I was just in India, right? It's interesting. India's a big country. You see statues of Gandhi everywhere. He's still a hero, even though he's a little bit controversial now. When people go to South Africa, they invariably, if they have time, go to Robben's Island. They tell a story about Nelson Mandela that's enlivening. They tell the soccer story. So what I'm saying is that people like good stories. When we think about the bright spots in America, many of us will think about Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King. Interesting thing, I think it's April 20th. April 20th, I believe, is Jackie Robinson Day. And there's a big controversy now because the government, Trump, is trying to erase Jackie Robinson. He says he's a DEI. So what he could hit, this is DEI. And similar thing with the first woman who flew in the military, trying to erase her.My point is that Jackie Robinson touched people. So during the time of Jackie Robinson, during the time of Martin Luther King, these are stories that we love to tell ourselves. This is the bright spot in America. But when Jackie Robinson and Martin Luther King were in their heyday, J. Edgar Hoover was doing the kinky stuff he was doing and watching Americans. And he had a buddy, and it was called the Committee on Un-American Activity. Any of you heard of that? So it was a dark time in America. And yet when we remember it, we don't remember J. Edgar Hoover. We think about the good time. We don't remember the people who got killed, the students. So what I'm saying is that when we look at these bright moments, they happen in the midst of incredible repression and darkness.
And that's where we're in right now. We have to be those bright moments. I can tell you, the other day, and I'm writing about this now, but when I woke up and saw that Harvard had said no, it was a good day. And then interestingly enough, what happened afterwards, Columbia said, me too. The symbolism is extremely important. So it's not just bad news, people like good news too. And the thing with Harvard, which is interesting, I thought they did a really good job. It wasn't a breaking story, they just said, okay, we made some mistakes around the anti-Semitism. We're fixing it. But you don't get to tell us ...
I wish they hadn't said private universities, because implications is that here at Berkeley, you can tell Berkeley to do anything 'cause they're not private and they don't have $50 billion tucked away somewhere. But the point is is that the symbolism of someone standing up, the Jackie Robinson's, the Rosa Parks', the Martin Luther King, the Gandhi's matter to people and enliven people as much as the bully. And so part of it is to tell those stories, the really wonderful stories of people standing up for our better angels.
Shereen Marisol Meraji:
I'm really happy that you said that, because I feel like in journalism school, human interest stories are looked down upon as fluffy and soft, etc. And so what you're saying is these are the stories that can make real change and that can actually speak to people. So thank you for that.john a. powell:
Let me just ... One question. And you know I'm a professor, so I have to do this. How many of you know the Gettysburg Address?Speaker 10:
Like buy heart?john a. powell:
No, no, just know it, right? Okay. All right. So how does it end?Shereen Marisol Meraji:
The Gettysburg Address.john a. powell:
Okay. The point is, Lincoln ... This is after Gettysburg, right? Which is thousands of people have been killed. This is, by some estimations, the most important political speech in American history. And he ends it, he doesn't talk about the carnage and the killing, he talks about calling forth our better angels. I mean, that sounds really touchy-feely, right? Thousands of people just died and you calling forth our better angels? And it stuck. It gave us the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendment. And we would be a different country if Lincoln hadn't been killed. But my point is is that he gave something for people to aspire to in a time of profound darkness, so that's part of what we can do is remind people that there is something to aspire to. And there are all these beautiful examples of that.
The United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, 1948. Over a hundred million people died in World War II. And in 1948, Eleanor Roosevelt, with others, called for a declaration of human rights. A global declaration of human rights. W.E.B. Du Bois was annoyed. In fact, he was pissed, and he called her out. He said, "What are you talking about? Africa is colonized. Women all around the world don't have the right to vote. Black Americans are being treated badly. And you're talking about everybody should be treated with dignity? Where do I see that? When I look around the world, I don't see that anywhere. 1948, 6 million people, Jews, had just been killed. What are you talking about?" He said, "What you are doing is just symbolic." And I have tremendous respect for W.E.B. Du Bois. I say he was right and he was wrong. He was right that it was symbolic. He was wrong that it was just ... Symbolism, in the proper hands, can be one of our most powerful tools.
Literally there are thousands and thousands of laws all around the world now organized around the UN Declaration of Human Rights. At the time that Eleanor Roosevelt planted that flag, it looked like, what the hell is she talking about? In a similar way, when Jefferson and his committee wrote the Declaration of Independence, and he starts it off by saying, "We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal." Some historians said that is the most consequential phrase in U.S. history. But then someone said, "Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Didn't Jefferson have 600 people enslaved?" Yes, you're right on that. So how do you square those two things? And again, the historians, if they're right, they're saying, and we're still fighting over that and that phrase starting off with our constitution, "We, the people." We, the people.
Those symbolic fights are huge. And they can be done in a way that's not necessarily breaking. And I would say the story of Jefferson should be a complicated story. One is, is he just a hypocrite? Maybe, but maybe not. Maybe it was more complicated than that. Maybe it's a story that allows us to see that, no, he wasn't an angel, but neither was he a demon. And if we could begin to tell those stories, because if there's a clear binary, people ask, who's the hero? Who's the villain? We all are heroes and we all are villains. That's a much more complicated story. And there's research suggesting that complicated stories, told well, stick with people. And we haven't, as journalists or otherwise, oftentimes really engaged in complicated stories.
Shereen Marisol Meraji:
I agree with that. Does anyone else have a question in the audience?Speaker 4:
Yeah. I guess I'll stand up. Shereen, when you mentioned the mainstream media and how we tell that story, how do you tackle the audience of one? Because if it's a TikTok, Instagram, whatever it is, you're the only audience that the algorithm is feeding, so you don't have the person to bounce against and saying, "Hey, I saw this," or, "We both saw this together. What's your thought on it?" It just feeds that recursive loop.Shereen Marisol Meraji:
And how are we dealing with that as journalists? I think that we're really confused about this moment that we're in. And we're trying very hard to figure out how to tell stories that will connect with people on multiple mediums. And it feels, to me, like we're throwing spaghetti at a wall at this point. I mean, especially when it comes to trying to tell stories on a social platform. Where just the other day I was in class with my students, a Race in Journalism class, and I showed them a two-minute, what I thought was a very socially engaging video that had a message where we had somebody say an entire thing that had a beginning, middle, and end. And I thought he wasn't misquoted. This was very gripping for me. And they're like, "Oh my God, that was so boring." Like, "That was so boring. He talked really slowly. You should cut him here. Maybe the way you should do it is just have him talk for 15, 20 seconds."
I mean, Daniela, you were in the room. "And then maybe we can have another video after that where he finishes his thought." And I was like, "But what if no one ever watches that other video? And then they only have a partial version of the message that he's trying to send." And so we went back and forth in the classroom and they were like, "Well, what does it even matter if nobody's going to watch it? Because it's kind of slow and boring." And I don't know how to answer that question. We're trying to figure it out every day, how do we do this so that it sticks?
Knowing also that the algorithm is really privileging outrage. And if we're really trying to say something that's complicated, complex, nuanced, how do you do that in a minute and make sure that that person doesn't speak slowly, and it's really entertaining? I mean, to answer your question, I have no idea. And every day we're experimenting and just trying and just putting things out there. Which John, we talked on the phone and you were just like, "Just try it. Just put it out there." I mean, that's the first step.
john a. powell:
It's a good question. It's a great question. And people have heard me say this before and I'll say it again. So I used to teach the mind science. I'm one of the people who sort of got all this stuff about implicit bias out there. And I stopped teaching it after a while, 'cause ... Anyway, another story. But again, part of it was that it's complicated, it's nuanced, and you really have to engage people, and it's like people were misusing it over and over again. And then I saw Inside Out. They nailed it. Nobody went to sleep, nobody said it was boring.Shereen Marisol Meraji:
So does it only work in movies and fiction?john a. powell:
No. No.Shereen Marisol Meraji:
Does it not work with-john a. powell:
You can have boring movies too. My point is, so part of it is the algorithms. Social media has learned to hack the human brain and emotions in a way that most of us don't know how to do it. I saw an ad for a tire that sold really well, 'cause studying ads, and they had this very seductive woman dressed, whatever. And she had on red boots. And it was like, what was the red boots doing? And they were doing something.
Shereen Marisol Meraji:
Talking to the lizard brain.john a. powell:
Right. So part of it, we have become more sophisticated. And not all of us will do all things. I mean, we need [inaudible 00:57:12] fact-checker analysis there too. But then it has to be translated. So you have to do both. And the social medias keep changing very fast. And I've talked to a lot of those folks, including the guy who started TikTok, not TikTok, but what is it? X? Jack Dorsey. He said, "They don't understand it." I mean, something's happening at a speed and in a place where even the people who are designing it, it's not like they're really in control. So it's a challenge, but let's meet the challenge and-Shereen Marisol Meraji:
Try.john a. powell:
Try. Yeah.Cecil:
Thank you very much. My name is Cecil. I don't know if I have a question, but hopefully there'll be a question at the end of this. So first, I like this, it really makes a whole lot of sense. While you were talking, it reminds me of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, she's a Nigerian novelist. She had a TikTok title, Danger of a Single Story. The West have the story of Africa. Africa is a continent. Is a country actually, many people think Africa is a country of people suffering, of poverty, and all that. That we, in Africa, have an impression of the West; the people of gun violence. When you come to the streets, I mean, you could just be shot. When I tell people back home that there are homeless in America, they said, "Nope, there can't be homeless." I said, "There are homeless in America." So these are all kind of single stories we hear and we all form impressions around it.
And there is also this film by Kamau Bell, 1000 Me: Growing up Mixed in the Bay Area. It talks about being mixed in the Bay Area, impressions and stereotypes. So all you're saying actually helped me, got me thinking about this. So I feel like we have a lot to do. I, for instance, some people ask me, do you actually feel some kind of racism around? I really don't care. That is a fact. Look, sometimes I just tell people, it depends on how much you carry yourself. If you make yourself feel like you are so dependent, you just want to belong, I feel like somehow you're going to recognize that you actually need me.
I don't know, maybe I'm just so unusual or I just think out of the box, but that's me. Talking about the practice of journalism, I am in a data class, I work around data and all this stuff. So they'll tell you 45% of this, this percent of that. So somehow, because the 23% are seemingly a minority, we don't get to talk about them so much. We don't focus on this. Whereas there are stories around that 23, 28%. So I think the practice, we need to go outside trying to talk about stories of the majority. There are some minority stories there that we just don't count and are pretty much important. Thank you.Shereen Marisol Meraji:
Can we take ... Okay, one more question? Okay. Maybe-Speaker 6:
One?Shereen Marisol Meraji:
No. Go, go.Speaker 6:
Okay.Shereen Marisol Meraji:
You, definitely.Speaker 6:
Thank you all so much for convening this talk. So I'm not from the school of Journalism, I'm situated over in education, working in engineering. Engineering education is kind of my thing. I'm also stepping over into social sciences. But I say that to say it's interesting to see, I guess, how othering and belonging, how you're discussing them. And I'm curious to know what you see is maybe the possibilities and limitations for this as a framework. Because what comes up as I'm hearing this, and as someone who has never read anything you've written, I am so sorry, but what's coming up is where does repair, if at all, fit into something like this? And then as I was thinking about that, I'm like, okay, well is this more of a ... Like does this stop at storytelling? Or is this something that we can be thinking about materially as well? And how might something like this complicate the ways that we think about repair and who is owed something like that?
john a. powell:
Great question. It's sort of too bad that we talk about storytelling, because it's actually much more significant than what that phrase suggests. One of the pieces that I've written, that probably no one's read in here, I was approached by a foundation, this is 20 years ago, whatever. And they asked me to do some research and do an analysis on what kind of policy it would take to end Black poverty in the United States. And I said, "No, I'm not going to write that." And the same thing, they say, "Well, how much money do you need?" I don't know if people think I need money. And I said, "Look, there are a lot of people who are very smart who've written hundreds of examples. It goes nowhere." And I said, and a number people have said this since then, "Poverty in the United States, and in most 'developed economies' is a problem of belonging. And if you decide, consciously or unconsciously, that someone's not human, but is actually a threat to you, you're not going to fund them."
So it's not that we don't have enough stuff. Some sociologists say in a highly developed economy, scarcity is a social construct. It's a story. And we think about, I mean, President Reagan talked about the deserving poor, where he's saying, let's separate out the deserving poor from the undeserving poor. The undeserving poor. In fact, he went on to say, he told about the welfare queen who drove a Cadillac, and went to the bank where she had a million dollars. Of course there's no such person. It was a story. And what he was saying is that you foolish liberals, especially white liberals, who care about these Black people who are ripping you off, you got to stop doing that. That was sort of the end of welfare in the United States. It took a few more years. So it was a story. So part of the thing in the secret power of humans, according to Harari and others, is our ability to cooperate with each other. Our ability to hold stories that allow us to see how we are interconnected.
So yes, the material matters, structures matters, institutions matter, but they're held together by stories. So it's not just a story, it happens at all those levels. And structures tell stories. Structures say you don't belong. You come here in a wheelchair and there's no ramp, the structure said, this is not your place. Go someplace else. And the research is really powerful on this. I mean, for example, in terms of students, there was UT Austin, Black and Latino students weren't graduating in school for like six, seven years, not graduating. They spent millions of dollars trying to renumerate, get those students up to speed. One time, at one point a teacher or professor said to a student, Black student, "How does it feel being here?" And all this torrent of stuff comes out. It feels terrible.
And he's then called these students together. They started meeting. And within a year or two, the Black and Latino students were actually performing on par with their white counterparts. They were performing so well that someone thought they were cheating. It's like, no way these students could be doing this. They thought the problem was lack of capacity. The problem was lack of belonging. So it's not a small thing. Maslow's hierarchy of needs, right? And I'll stop, 'cause I know we're over time. But he says the third most important human need after food and security is belonging. His students said, "Professor Maslow, you're smart, but you got it wrong. It's belonging, food and security." They said, "You don't get food and security unless you belong." So it's not either or, but it's like ... And you could debate the order, but the point is it's really, really important. It's not a small thing.
And so we have these very deep stories about people not belonging, about people not deserving. And this is why I wouldn't do this project for this foundation. And so I wrote a piece, and they said, "Okay. Do both. You can write your belonging stuff," 'cause they're skeptical, "but also give us some policy. We want both." And so I did. And I wrote a book, a piece, an article about poverty and belonging. So it's not that we don't have enough money, it's not that we can't come up with good policies, it's that we've decided that some people are not worthy. And until we ... As long as we have, they're not worthy. So what do we do with them? Those not worthy people, we lock them up.
And last story I'll tell you. They ask some people, if prisoners, people who are incarcerated, do you think we should have policies that say they can get a high school and college degree while they're in prison? Overwhelmingly, no. Like 70, 80% of people said no. They changed the question. Do you think we should have a policy making people incarcerated get a high school and college degree? 70% said yes. As long as it's punitive, we support it. It wasn't the policy at all, it was just, we just want to punish those people. So anyway.
Shereen Marisol Meraji:
Thank you. Do you want to wrap? Okay. Thank you so much, John. I really appreciated this. Thank you all for coming. And Professor Powell has books out those two double doors that are for sale. And yeah, thank you. It was wonderful being in community with all of you, and you especially.
