Crossing the Boundary of Other: Taking a Step, Telling the Story
Civity’s hallmark is creating relationships that bridge across social differences. Though the members of the Civity team have a range of backgrounds, the common thread is that we are all “boundary-crossers.”

Malka grew up as a biracial (South Asian and white) girl in a pre-tech (and pre-Indian!) Silicon Valley. Early on, she learned how to find common ground with people who called out her difference.

Palma is a European-American white woman married to a Black man and with 3 biracial children – now all adults. Bridging the difference of race with conversation and relationship has been an integral part of her life for more than 40 years.

Crossing social boundaries doesn’t mean ignoring, discounting, or dismissing difference. Instead, it calls for naming, staying with, and connecting through difference. It invites us to turn our faces toward people who are different, people who are “other.” It asks us to treat “other” as “you.”

***
We often hear the word “other” used to set people apart as less-than, as objects, as permissible means to other people’s ends. When we hear someone refer to “those people” or “those kids,” we see this kind of “other” – “other-as-them” –
doing its work of exclusion and oppression.
 
“Other-as-them” places people outside the circle of “us,” outside the circle
of community and collective concern. 
 
***
 
Civity rejects the idea that “other-as-them” follows inevitably from difference. Civity puts difference on the table precisely to offer a choice: the choice of “other-as-you.” 
 
“Other-as-you” names and acknowledges difference as part of what it means to be human. “Other-as-you” demands that we look at and see people who are different, that we listen to and hear people who are different. 
 
In our social lives, difference is a resource, a strength rather than a weakness. Difference is the spark of creativity and innovation. Difference provides the diversity that we need for social resilience.
 
“Other-as-you”makes it possible to tap into difference by drawing the “us” so that everyone is inside the circle of community and collective concern. We are all connected; we ALL belong. 
 
Being intentional and authentic about crossing boundaries, about moving from “other-as-them” to “other-as-you,” is the core of civity. It lies at the center of our workshops and trainings and coaching. It is the essential story through which we understand and approach the world we live in.
 
Take a step toward civity practice: This month, we are offering our first virtual open-to-the-public Civity Workshop. We invite you to join us on Thursday June 24 at 7:30 Eastern / 4:30 Pacific for an hour-and-a-half introduction to civity practice. Each of us can take steps toward crossing boundaries in our everyday lives. Register now!
 
Imagine a civity story about race: Last month, we recognized the one-year anniversary of the death of George Floyd. We join with the surge of antiracist protest and activism that has crescendoed over the past year. At the same time, we are part of a larger imagining of how to move toward solidarity and justice while still cherishing our differences. The Push of Antiracism & the Pull of Civity illuminates how civity can help create this new story, this new way of being together.
 
We are honored to be on this journey with you.
 
Palma & Malka
Join us for Virtual Civity Workshop on June 24!
We are pleased to offer our first virtual open-to-the-public workshop! If you haven’t experienced a Civity workshop yet, you can take advantage of this from wherever you are.
 
Get a first-hand experience of how Civity works with leaders to build “social muscle,” cultivating relationships of respect, empathy, and trust across difference.
 
You’ll have a chance to connect with others in a series of intentional, authentic one-on-one conversations over Zoom in a relational and welcoming way. You’ll also learn actionable strategies for building relational infrastructure in your life and work, such as how to deepen conversations, how to establish authenticity through storytelling and active listening, and how to “put difference on the table.”

WHEN: Thursday, June 24

TIME: 4:30 PT / 7:30 ET

LENGTH: 1.5 hours
The Push of Antiracism
& the Pull of Civity
By Palma Joy Strand
Beverly Daniel Tatum, psychologist and author of Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?, provides a metaphor for racism that captures the feeling of being part of a larger system: the moving walkways that are found in many airports. Once you step onto the moving walkway, its motion carries you along. Even standing completely still, you continue to move.

Similarly, long-standing structures and institutions and policies move us all along toward racialized outcomes. This happens even though many of us are not trying to make those outcomes happen. Things just seem to be set up that way. Systemic racism is like that moving walkway.

Tatum uses the moving walkway metaphor to alert us to what antiracism calls for, which is not simply standing still but turning around and starting to walk against the direction in which the walkway is taking us.

I appreciate the way Tatum uses a familiar experience to invite each of us into using our individual agency to resist passivity, to resist “going with the flow,” to resist systemic racism.

I appreciate the way Tatum invites us into antiracism – drawing attention to how systemic racism operates on and through all of us and sparking an intention to move in a different direction, to take counter-action.

But once I turn around on the moving walkway, once I start heading upstream, I realize that antiracism only warns me where not to go. Antiracism alone isn’t enough to chart a course to where I do want to go.

The socially-constructed difference that is race has been used for centuries to channel interactions between people designated white and people designated not-white into patterns of domination and oppression. These interactions are interactions of exploitation and enrichment, of violence that is both “fast” and “slow.” These interactions have created a system in which advantage and disadvantage are distributed based on race.

Antiracism condemns those interactions, condemns that advantage and disadvantage, condemns that system.

Civity offers an alternative way of interacting: intentionally building and strengthening relationships of respect and empathy. Respect means seeing people as fellow human beings; empathy means listening to their stories and seeing our shared humanity as those stories resonate with our own. Respect and empathy bring people into relationship in a way that is fundamentally inconsistent with racism. In this way, civity is antiracist.

The civity vision and action of engaging in relationships of respect and empathy with people who are different also provides an affirmative direction. Once we have turned around and begun moving against the moving walkway, against systemic racism, our commitment to antiracism keeps pushing us; civity pulls us.

Civity relationships pull us toward creating a different kind of system. With antiracism, we begin to reject routine acceptance of inequities and unequal outcomes based on race. With civity, we can build a relational infrastructure that scaffolds us toward equity.

As Chenjerai Kumanyika in the “Seeing White” podcast says, “we’re going to actually have to redistribute some things, at least some rights, resources, and representation.” Relationships of respect and empathy across difference – relationships that grow from a root value of human connection and belonging – are the foundation for embracing a common good that reaches everyone.
In the project of dismantling systemic racism, it’s essential to understand the destination that the moving walkway keeps moving us toward. Antiracism represents our repudiation of that destination.
In the project of creating an alternative system – a system of solidarity and justice, it’s essential to envision the destination that we want to move toward. Civity represents our embracing that alternative destination.
 
Antiracism knocks us off the walkway; civity help us to chart a new course. Push and pull together catalyze us to create a new system, a new culture, in which we all belong.
Want to grow civity? Lead by example! Here are some things you can do right now:
 
1. Practice Civity Brushes: see, and say hello to (and thank), the people you do come in contact with – people in the grocery store, your mail carrier, the person who delivers your takeout, people you see on the street (from 6 feet away!).
 
2. Keep people who are more vulnerable than you during this pandemic in your thoughts and donate time or resources to support the initiatives and organizations that are supporting them.

3. Demonstrate your support for government policies that help members of our communities whose lives are precarious even in ordinary times.