00:11:09.120There were Native people here when the Spanish or Columbus landed.
00:11:13.620So the point is that these are stories, and we live in stories.
00:11:16.900And it's not just reflecting what we're experiencing, it helps shape what we're experiencing, who we are.
00:11:24.220Thinking about Trump and the specificities of our country and culture, I'm especially attuned to the power of language when it comes to both the act of othering and the rise of fascism.
00:11:37.720All dictators understand the weight of words in shaping our understanding and perception of reality, or perhaps non-reality.
00:11:45.920and i think of hannah arendt the political philosopher who also fled nazi germany who wrote
00:11:52.440the origins of totalitarianism and she wrote quote the ideal subject of totalitarian rule is
00:11:59.200not the convinced nazi or the dedicated communist but people for whom the distinction between fact
00:12:06.040and fiction true and false no longer exist end quote so i'm hoping we could contextualize this
00:12:14.040quote in terms of collective anxiety and breaking versus bridging. You know, how can bridging and
00:12:20.620the language of belonging serve as an antidote to what Arendt references? I'm a student of hers
00:12:27.360as well. And I think she's right in terms, she actually says also one of the first things that
00:12:31.240died, which aren't there in government is the truth. And I think it's been well documented
00:12:35.600that Trump lies to Cusely. He's a habitual liar. It's also interesting that his base essentially1.00
00:12:42.360doesn't care i mean sometimes they literally interview people and they said you know they say
00:12:46.260well yeah we know he loves you know it's like um in a sense they're looking for a savior so they're
00:12:52.280willing to put up with a lot when you think about how powerful his base is among evangelists he had
00:12:58.640this someone who's what on his third or fourth marriage he's obviously have credible claims of
00:13:04.200um seeing a prostitute while he's married uh you would think that would be that would sink him
00:13:10.300but it doesn't, and people make a lot of excuses, like he's been sent by God, and God0.59
00:13:16.200used imperfect vessels, and stuff like that, but the truth of the matter is, he speaks
00:13:20.320to their anxiety about race, and part of the antidote is for us, who don't believe that
00:13:26.340the world is organized by hierarchy among people, who don't believe that you can judge
00:13:31.660someone just by the shade of their skin, who actually believe in the dignity of all people,
00:13:38.200except for us to not only tell good stories,
00:13:40.040but to engage and show bridging practices.
00:13:43.560We need to really think about this at multiple levels.
00:21:02.220And so the charge that we're all the same,
00:21:06.720while sounding good, actually erases some people
00:21:09.600and erases the needs and the context and the situation of those people
00:21:14.080Because when we say we're all the same, the assumption is we're all the same as me, the dominant group, which means I don't have to pay attention to your particularities or your needs, which is sort of a soft form of bigotry, if you will.
00:21:31.340There has been a resurgence of interest around our understanding of citizenship, especially in the last three or four years.
00:21:40.640And while I'd argue that citizenship has always been contested in this country and certainly manufactured and manipulated at the whims of the political elite in service to the creation of the nation state, I think that many are for the first time questioning what citizenship should mean as the world experiences climate change, globalization, and even the furthering of technology.
00:22:08.960And I'm specifically thinking back to something you shared at the Othering and Belonging Conference in Oakland this past month.
00:22:16.580And you said, quote, we're taking stuff from all over the world, but telling people you have to stay put.
00:22:23.560We're disrupting systems and climates all over the world and then saying you have to stay put.0.98
00:22:29.780We're taking oil from the Middle East.0.99
00:22:31.940We're telling the people in the Middle East, your oil can come, but you can't.
00:22:35.960we're taking minerals from africa and saying we need your minerals to build cell phones1.00
00:22:40.940but we don't need your people we have this global consumption and at the same time we're trying to0.65
00:22:46.860shut the door on people when the people try to follow their stuff then they become the problem
00:22:52.180end quote so i'd really love to begin by asking you how you are rethinking citizenship
00:23:01.560that's a great question i mean you know these the concept of citizenship in really many terms
00:23:08.080people have been citizens of countries for a long time but it's taken on particular meaning
00:23:12.640only the last couple hundred years where because you know in ancient england or france people were
00:23:19.840subjects and they didn't have much in the way of rights and the manicotta was a big step forward
00:23:26.400and saying no people have rights and they should be respected.
00:23:30.760But when we started this current strategy
00:23:34.480of our experimentation with the nation states,
00:23:37.700it's only a couple hundred years old, especially with democracy.
00:23:40.840There were a whole bunch of assumptions.
00:23:42.620The assumption in part was that our economies are national
00:26:16.820And we've done it to the benefit of certain countries.
00:26:20.020So the concern, to some extent, makes sense, that people are feeling anxious about all the change.
00:26:25.480The solution, though, is not a real solution.0.89
00:26:28.460The dynamics that's creating that disability or that disequilibrium is going to continue, even if we were capable of building borders, even if we were capable of building walls.0.93
00:26:38.500So part of the thing is we need a new way of thinking about citizenship.0.96
00:26:42.940We need a way where there's some parallel between stuff and people.
00:26:48.620We need to recognize that we need a way of sharing the earth with all people and with the rest of the earth.
00:26:56.220And it's not the United States has this corner.
00:26:58.840I mean, we have bases literally all over the world.
00:27:01.620We sort of see the world as our playground.0.58
00:27:03.620And then as yet we have this idea that, and under Trump at least, America is only for really white Europeans.0.55
00:27:11.600And there's this entitlement that comes with the conditioning of being especially a white American, that white Americans should be entitled to have anything they want anywhere in the world and not take care of the people or the places, the land, the waters that provide all of these luxury items or creature comforts.
00:27:37.580So I really get chills when I think about that and reading that quote that you had from
00:30:14.260But if you're lynching people, that's going to become a salient issue.
00:30:17.540And it should be relatively easy for liberal or progressive whites to say, yes, we have to pay attention to how other people are being excluded and otherized, whether it's through rape, whether it's through sexual touching, whether it's through police brutality, whether it's through children being locked up at the border, whether it's through pipelines going through people's country.
00:30:39.780So you can't tell people who are literally fighting life and death things to keep those things in abeyance while we deal with a big issue.
00:30:50.120I mean, so when people make comments about identity politics, like I said, we can engage in identity politics, what's called identity politics, in a way that's destructive.
00:30:59.900But that's actually when they turn to breaking politics.
00:31:03.220When one is, I'm not saying you, my issues are important, your issues are not important.
00:31:09.780those are breaking politics. But to say, your issues are important, and so are mine. That's
00:31:16.100not breaking. So yes, I don't worry about being accosted on the streets at night. But most of my
00:31:22.680women fans do. For me to say, that's not an issue, because it's not an issue for me. You know, I don't
00:31:28.040really worry about being homeless. But I know thousands of people in the United States are
00:31:32.080homeless. So do I say, I mean, part of it is kind of a group based egotism. I only care about what
00:31:38.340affects me directly. And that's all you should care about, too. And I hope that the Democratic
00:31:43.900Party, in essence, have matured enough, because frankly, it's running away from race was not
00:31:50.020simply saying the economy is most important. When it started doing that, when they saw how
00:31:54.360the Republicans were effectively using race. So it would be one thing if race or some musicians
00:31:58.740weren't on the table, but they're on the table, but it's only being used by one side. The other
00:32:03.560side, Democrats largely have been afraid. It's like, no, we can't talk about that. They can talk
00:32:09.180about it. They are talking about it. But if we talk about it, we'll get blasted by our white base.
00:32:15.440And that says you haven't developed your white base well. You should, and increasingly shouldn't0.90
00:32:21.580feel threatened because people of color are doing better. It's not a zero sum game. And part of it
00:32:27.340is to make that story clear. We're not talking about helping Latinos and not helping blacks,
00:32:31.920helping Blacks but not helping Native Americans,0.81
00:32:52.500And I refer to that as targeting universalism.
00:32:56.220I have so many questions based off that response.
00:33:00.540And I don't really know how to frame it right now, because I do see the complexity that everybody's problems needs to be heard, because they're all different. It's hard to say that there is a hierarchy of issues, but I think probably there is.
00:33:17.880But who gets to decide that? Then again, we're like mired in these complications of dominance. And then I feel like we kind of swirl into this crashing moment of, well, how do we even start? Or where do we even begin to look at all these issues at once? And who's deciding which issues are prioritized?
00:33:40.940And, you know, you don't have to answer that question because it's not really a well-formed one, but I definitely feel.
00:34:50.260It's like we build an escalator to get people from one floor to the other.
00:34:55.360And then someone comes along in a wheelchair.0.79
00:34:57.860So the system we built doesn't work for that person.
00:35:01.480And so it looks like that person is asking for something special.
00:35:03.980But that person is asking for what everyone else is asking for.
00:35:06.720the resources and support to fully participate in society as a person and as a human being
00:35:13.280to contribute but what people need to get there what groups need to get there
00:35:17.760are going to be different and so there's not a absolute priority but there is recognizing that
00:35:23.880some people are more on the edge than others and in some in some ways it's not even issues
00:35:29.500it is issues but it really starts with respecting our human dignity once i really respect and care
00:35:35.600about people then they'll tell them what they need and and you know but if i'm saying those
00:35:41.400people don't count or those people aren't visible that becomes a priority when we change the
00:35:47.400structure oftentimes if we change for the most marginal everybody else benefits think of uh
00:35:54.900curve cuts my friend hendry blackwell talks about this a lot curve cuts uh was for people
00:36:01.340largely in wheelchairs. But if you have a roller bag and you catch a plane, or if you have a baby
00:36:06.960stroller, use curb cuts. If you have a scooter, use curb cuts. So oftentimes when you change the
00:36:13.220structure for the most marginal, it also benefits everybody else along the way.
00:36:19.140This next question is around white supremacy. And I've been thinking back enslaved Africans who
00:36:28.520were forced to the British colonies in 1619, meaning that this year actually marks the 400th
00:36:36.500year since enslaved people were forced to the United States. And this act has fundamentally
00:36:43.180shaped this country in a multitude of ways. And I know I've heard you previously speak to
00:36:48.480Toni Morrison's work where she poses the question around what has slavery done to white people?
00:36:54.980And so I want to broach this question around whiteness, supremacy, and separation when it comes to whiteness as an ideology. And I'm simultaneously thinking about the invisibility, privilege, and torment of whiteness.
00:37:11.920I think privilege in the benefits white people reap in our racial system, invisibility in its assumed status as the norm, and torment in the inherent perversion that comes from benefiting from a system of dehumanization.
00:37:27.600And so I know this is a huge question, but I'm hoping to ask you to speak to the necessity of a different sense of understanding of whiteness and how that is a part of liberating us from ideologies of dominance and hierarchy.
00:37:44.220That's a great question. A couple of things. I would assert that a lot of the ideology of dominance comes from anxiety and fear.
00:37:52.740And so part of this is to think about what is the underlying anxiety and fear.0.65
00:37:57.640And I would say whiteness as an ideology has all these apparent benefits, but it actually has all of these problems associated with it as well.0.87
00:38:06.280If you think of a small we, like the ethnic nationals do today, and it's not all just around whiteness, sometimes around Hinduism in India or around, you know, religion or white people talk.0.71
00:38:19.340So whiteness is the expression that takes the dominant form in the United States with organizing around race and some other important axis.0.70
00:40:09.160Not slip away. We should send it out with a big party. But here's the thing. What will take its place? And I would say white culture in the United States and England, but even more, doesn't have much experience. England has more experience having lost its colonies of what it means to be white and not dominate, what it means to be white and be a co-partner with the rest of the earth.
00:40:36.500And so part of it is that can we have a new expression, a new story where no group is dominating?
00:40:42.420Because this is not trading one group for the other.
00:40:45.600We're not saying whites step back and now people of color are going to dominate.
00:40:49.160We're not saying men step back now, women are going to dominate.
00:40:52.120We're saying can we actually imagine a society, a world where we're not dominating, not dominating each other, we're not dominating nature or trying to dominate nature.
00:41:07.540Someone said the EU could be thought of nations who've given up the idea of global domination.
00:41:13.780Okay, for hundreds of years, English and French and Spanish all sort of went around the world
00:41:18.340trying to figure out who the world belonged to among the three of them, right,
00:41:21.220as opposed to belonging to all the people who live on it.
00:41:24.560And they had various success, even though they had the most success.
00:41:28.120But that success, if you want to call it, that is over.
00:41:30.600And so the role of the elitism is important in this discussion because white supremacy, white privilege, has always actually been a misnomer in some respects.
00:41:44.680It's only, you could say, a privilege and supreme in relationship to people of color.
00:41:51.340That may sound obvious, but it's not privilege and supremacy in relationship to the elites.0.88
00:41:59.140in fact pretty clear the least consider themselves better than what's called the middle stratum so
00:42:05.220what we actually call white people are the middle stratum and that stratum is being squeezed and
00:42:10.040should be squeezed that stratum has been reluctant to identify and work with the people at the very
00:42:16.600bottom and aspire to be part of the top so that's the thing we also have to break that aspiration
00:42:23.840It's like, no, you know, we got to actually challenge the top itself and we have to build a society which are people along without people being dominated.0.69
00:42:33.180Now, the good news is a number of whites indicate in some social science research, that's where they're leaning.0.64
00:42:40.640But we don't have a story. We don't have a practice. The numbers are probably around 35, 40 percent.0.84
00:42:46.360But how do we get those numbers up? How do we actually institutionalize that? How do we actually make it real?
00:42:51.820So we have, again, a future where we all belong.
00:43:21.820We'll make a grateful sum and back it up with a grateful song.0.78
00:43:29.580Young or dumb am I, I've seen a few people die.
00:43:36.820Seen a few people living in a way that's getting off line.0.97
00:43:42.820I look to my left, I look to my right.1.00
00:43:50.820I know that these conversations are more often than not uncomfortable, especially because white
00:44:11.240people are not taught to or forced to talk about race. And so there's a lot of white fragility that
00:44:16.700can come up for people and additionally the conversations that are happening and the
00:44:21.000narratives presented in the mainstream refuse to confront the structure and the systems
00:44:25.980that perpetuate white supremacy so i'd like to ask you both the importance and necessity of
00:44:32.740being uncomfortable and then how we can contribute and create conversations that confront structural
00:44:39.760racism and the reality that we are a country that has and continues to devalue life in
00:46:31.220So you want to, in a sense, control stress.
00:46:34.640You want some tension, but you don't want it to be where the person is actually doing harm.
00:46:41.620So that's the balance we're trying to get.
00:46:44.440I'm going to say, when people say we want a safe place, I say, but not too safe.
00:46:48.620You know, you didn't come here to take a nap.
00:46:51.060But also, there's a danger sometimes of people sort of turning on each other and thinking that to be uncomfortable, to essentially break, is a value in and of itself.
00:48:00.700And the way we actually invite people into a conversation is to also acknowledge their pain without equating it to other people's pain. And so I think sometimes our desire to have these conversations means we rush too fast to, in a sense, not recognize someone else's psychological, not recognize someone else's pain, and we want them to recognize ours. That generally doesn't go well.
00:48:24.760Thinking about, you know, your work with the Haas Institute at UC Berkeley, and it serves as a hub for organizers and policymakers and researchers to, quote, identify and eliminate the barriers to an inclusive, just and sustainable society in order to create transformative change, end quote.
00:48:43.080And I saw that one issue that the Haas Institute devotes a significant amount of energy towards
00:48:50.840is that of creating new economic structures, not just economic inclusion.
00:48:57.020And that feels like a topic that is so central to so many conversations I've had on For the
00:50:41.720And so part of it is to think about not just communities, but that's certainly important, but also think about the planet.
00:50:48.160And the fact that we have a sane number and growing number of billionaires is also problematic in the sense that all the time is not money from not just individuals, but corporations distort the whole political economy, the lobbying.
00:51:03.120You know, it's interesting when corporations were first stripped of their government credentials because at the early part of the United States, corporations were an extension of the government.
00:51:14.780And then in the 1830s, they started moving away from that.
00:51:19.760And one of the first Supreme Court cases that dealt with that said, okay, we're going to create this space where government and corporations are separate.
00:51:26.240But corporations will never be able to influence the political structure.
00:51:30.720That was the Supreme Court saying that.
00:51:33.520Because they were saying even then, in the 1830s, we recognize that if they're allowed to influence the political structure, they have unfair advantage.
00:51:41.300They have the concentration of money, a lot of which is not theirs.