Dumbo Feather – July 2019

[Laughs].

So what were the beginnings of you formally starting to share
these ideas, starting to share and inspire others to consider
belonging as a tool to improve and change our society?

You read yourself!

It makes me think, my son is in middle school—and in social studies they literally start

ancient history with tribalism and how, unless the group was together, the lions or tigers or

bears would consume them and they would die. And then when they tried to find resources

they would have to fight it out sometimes with other tribes or groups for those resources to

survive. So it seems to be very ingrained in us to tribalise and other-ise for survival.

There’s a guy

named Amartya

Sen, a Nobel

economist. And

he writes that

And when that identity is not threatened, it’s more fluid. So America historically has

threatened people because they’re not white. And that becomes more acute when you’re in

extreme white spaces. Which Stanford was. I think there were 23 of us out of like 1100 in one

class. And the school was not deliberately unwelcoming. But it was clumsy. For example

they literally brought us together and had psychologists do a picnic with us on the lawn in

Stanford and this young white woman served watermelon.

Exactly. But then there were threatening things. Some white men were threatened by our

presence or felt threatened and tried to push us away and so we had little physical fights at

Stanford. And classist. So there are all these expressions of being othered and being attacked.

And I think out of that it’s natural for something like the black student union to form. To

actually try to create a space where you could be safe. The problem with that, if there’s a

problem, is that you can form a bond with your group, to protect yourself, but the bond can

become categorical. And it can become a form of othering others. When you come together

but you’re not necessarily disparaging, that’s called bonding. When you come together and

you’re disparaging and attacking other groups, that’s called breaking. And when you connect

with other groups that’s called bridging. So you could say us coming together as a black

student union had probably all three of those aspects: some bonding, some bridging and

some breaking.

Well in a more formal sense, and I don’t know

if you’ve had this experience, but sometimes

I’m researching an idea that I’m trying to get

grounded on and I’m digging and reading

really brilliant people who are saying something. Then I read this article, and was like,

“This is pretty good!” Then, “Oh, I wrote this 15 years ago.” Literally completely unaware.

I read myself! [Laughs]. “That was pretty good john!” [Laughs]. Of course sometimes it’s

not that way, right? Sometimes it’s like, “I wrote this? That was so dumb.” Ten years or so

ago I started shifting very explicitly to the concept of belonging. I spent some time in India

and some time in Africa. And just seeing the way people belonged to each other and the

way they belonged to the earth. I use the South African Zulu expression sawubona, which

is, “I see you.” Another expression of it is, “The god in me sees the god in you.” But here

at Berkeley, the Institute has all these different ways of dealing with race, gender, sexual

orientation, disability. And I felt like all of these things, even though they have their distinct

history and expression, they’re all about belonging. And they’re all confronting the concept,

when some aspect of your identity is threatened

it’s just like being threatened by a lion: one, that

aspect of your identity becomes heightened, and

two, you’re likely to bond around that identity.

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