JOHN A. POWELL BUILDS A BIGGER ‘WE’
OCCUPATION Civil rights academic
INTERVIEWER Lori Lakin Hutcherson
SUBJECT john a. powell
PHOTOGRAPHER Nick Bruno
LOCATION Berkeley, US
DATE July 2019
ANTIDOTE TO Exclusivity
UNEXPECTED Black Panther analogy
I am in awe of john a. powell before we even exchange a word. Not just because he is an esteemed law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, the head of Berkeley’s Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society, the lauded author of Racing Towards Justice: Transforming Our Conceptions of Self and Other to Build an Inclusive Society, and a renowned thought leader on the concepts of othering and belonging, but also because he does not seek to define himself by any of these accomplishments. In fact, john powell does not even capitalise his name because he believes we should be “part of the universe, not over it, as capitals signify.”
We speak on an early summer morning in California: john in the Northern part and me in the Southern, connected via computers and good will. He is as warm and familiar as the relation you don’t often see but are elated to when you do, with a generosity of spirit and genuine curiosity about ideas and people that are infectious. I immediately understand how he has been able to sustain his lifelong dedication to the difficult and sometimes dispiriting work of social justice. He understands the foundation to any meaningful change is human connection and a willingness to be open and influenced by new models and deep solutions to age-old problems.
john not only possesses academic brilliance, but also the rare facility to harness esoteric ideas and present them as functional realities. He tells stories that can make anyone understand complex concepts in the amount of time it takes for him to share them. And when he draws from popular culture to illustrate his points (I couldn’t have been more thrilled to chat out the motivations of the lead characters in Marvel’s Black Panther and how they poignantly echo othering and belonging) my nerd heart soared proud. A conversation with john powell leaves you feeling like you want to be a card-carrying member of his tribe. Which, ironically, is the biggest tribe of all: humankind.
“The problem’s not simply who dominates, the problem is domination. We’re not trying to just get rid of that dominator, we’re trying to end domination.”
LORI LAKIN HUTCHERSON: You’ve dedicated decades of your life to this cause of othering and belonging, and I’m curious to understand how you got to be doing this. I read that you’re the son of sharecroppers, you’re one of nine. And I’m wondering, are the seeds of belonging there in being part of such a large family?
JOHN A. POWELL: It’s an interesting question because it’s not something I noticed, but I understood more and more the role of narratives and stories. Not just externally but by some counts we don’t have a coherent self until we have a coherent story, an internal narrative. Internal narratives help us constitute, to some extent, who we are to ourselves. But those narratives are never really complete and they’re always multiple. And to some extent even made up. I was having a meeting with an environmental Buddhist activist named Joanna Macy. When we first met she said, “So tell me your story.” And I said, “Be happy to. You know, we have many stories.” And I said what I said to you. And she said, “Well, just pick one.”
[Laughs].
And I did. The reason this is important is that I think sometimes we believe too
