john a. powell

“E. B. Du Bois was characteristically astute when he observed, in 1915, that “the equality in political, industrial and social life which modern men must have in order to live, is not to be confounded with sameness. On”
― Darrin M. McMahon, Equality: The History of an Elusive Idea

“We are all androgynous, not only because we are all born of a woman impregnated by the seed of a man but because each of us, helplessly and forever, contains the other – male in female, female in male, white in black and black in white. We are a part of each other. Many of my countrymen appear to find this fact exceedingly inconvenient and even unfair, and so very often do I. But none of us can do anything about it. James Baldwin, “Here Be Dragons”
― John A. Powell, Racing to Justice: Transforming Our Conceptions of Self and Other to Build an Inclusive Society

“Perhaps we are by nature no more Hobbesian brute than caring altruist. As Erving Goffman once quipped, “Universal human nature is not a very human thing.” I propose this variation: Uniform human nature is not a very human thing. Our nature is different in different situations. What is universal is our vast potential to behave in such diverse ways. As the anthropologist Clifford”
― Geoffrey L. Cohen, Belonging: The Science of Creating Connection and Bridging Divides

“Our desires are insatiable. We seek from the limited the unlimited. We must fail. Our insatiability is a third incurable defect in human life.”
― Roberto Mangabeira Unger, The Religion of the Future