Check out these major updates to our groundbreaking Roots of Structural Racism Project
We are excited to present an update to our 2021 Roots of Structural Racism project, which broke ground four years ago with its revelation that racial residential segregation across the country had actually been getting more pervasive over the decades despite efforts aimed at closing equity gaps. Our update to this project unveiled today includes new data on economic segregation added to our interactive map, two fresh essays, new sortable lists of the most segregated cities and metropolitan areas in the country, and much more.
Here are all the new and updated items included in this package:
The most significant update to the map has been the addition of four economic segregation measures. This is the first time the interactive map includes economic layers so users can visualize the relationship between racial and economic segregation (see screenshot above). One of our new essays compares all of the major measures of racial residential segregation over time to present and analyze how they behave over the time of our study. And the second essay takes a look at the relationship between diversity and segregation.
The shocking finding that more than half of metropolitan regions in the United States had become more segregated since 1990 remains unchanged since the report's last update four years ago since both are based on 2020 census data. But the new sortable tables of most segregated cities and regions now include data from the 2023 American Community Survey, and they allow users to toggle between that data and the 2020 data. They also allow for sorting based on different measures of segregation.
Learn more about these updates on our project overview page, and by reading our press release. |
Housing for Belonging
Join us in learning from UC Berkeley’s graduate students in two new policy memos on housing policy for belonging, adapted from their much longer student projects! These memos offer lessons for advocates, funders, legislators, and other change-makers and serve as a resource for future research.
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Essay: Who Is Included in and Who Will Fight for “We the Civic”?
In a new piece for Nonprofit Quarterly, OBI Director john a. powell talks about how a lesson he learned from his elementary school days has resonance today as institutions face a dilemma of whether to fight or give in to the demands of fascistic leaders. When some older bullies went to pick on a younger boy on john's school playground, the boy remained defiant. "It was a reminder that even when confronted, even when outnumbered, you don’t surrender your ground without making it clear that those who come after you will know they’ve been in a fight," john wrote.
Separately, but in the same defiant spirit, john recently published a blog on our website criticizing the administration at UC Berkeley for handing the names of 160 students and employees over to the Trump administration amid its crackdown on pro-Palestine speech on college campuses. In it, he writes, "I am aware that standing up has risks, but I am also aware that not standing up may have greater risks."
Disclaimer: The ideas expressed in these writings are not necessarily those of the Othering & Belonging Institute or UC Berkeley, but belong to the author. |
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From Spontaneous Rage to Sustained Struggle: A People's Movement Roadmap for Post-Protest Indonesia
In an original piece for OBI's Global South Lab project, Indonesian scholar Hasriadi Masalam wrote a powerful reflection concerning the anti-government protests that erupted across his country over the summer. The piece provides context for the protests, which were prompted by a salary increase for government officials, and offers a roadmap to ensure that the movement achieves meaningful, and long term gains. "The unfinished business of our independence is not a task for a new president or a single movement. It is a daily practice that allows every Indonesian to become the author of their own destiny," he writes.
Disclaimer: The ideas expressed in this blog are not necessarily those of the Othering & Belonging Institute or UC Berkeley, but belong to the author. |
Register for our 2026 Othering & Belonging Conference!
In case you missed our announcement last month, we have opened registration for our next Othering & Belonging Conference happening in Louisville, Kentucky on March 31-April 1, 2026! Whether this is your first O&B conference, or fifth, we invite you to come to Louisville and take an active role in shaping this dynamic two-day conference alongside us. Our conferences are designed to be fully immersive spaces that bring together leading thinkers, doers, and visionaries to share strategies and purpose on building societies rooted in care and the fundamental belief that all people have the unconditional right to belong.
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Does One Size Fit All?
In the 10th essay in the "Legacies of Eugenics" series published by the Los Angeles Review of Books, Jay S. Kaufman shows how the science of human body size is suffused with cultural assumptions. Kaufman is a professor of epidemiology, biostatistics, and occupational health at McGill University. OBI is helping to support LARB's Legacies of Eugenics essay series along with the Center for Genetics and Society and Berkeley Public Health. Click here to see all parts of this series.
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Richard Aviles, OBI's Transportation Analyst and Arts and Culture Strategy Lead, recently presented OBI's findings from our recent Greater Social Equity in Brownfields Cleanup and Reuse report at the California Land Recycling Conference. The workshop Richard led at the conference looked at how contaminated lands that dot urban neighborhoods and rural lands across the country and the world can be cleaned up and put to reuse in ways that ensure environmental health, social equity, and thriving local economies.
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Letter: Stop Starving Gaza
A few weeks ago a number of OBI staff members authored an urgent letter calling for an immediate end to Israel's forced starvation of Palestinians in Gaza. We invited our colleagues at other departments, centers and organizations inside and outside of Berkeley and the general public to add their names to the letter, repost it to their websites, and speak out publicly on this moral calamity happening before our eyes in Gaza. The letter remains open for you to add your name to, which you can do at the bottom of this page.
Disclaimer: The ideas expressed in the letter and in this email post are not necessarily those of the Othering & Belonging Institute or UC Berkeley, but belong to the signers. |
Real Solutions Podcast Livestream Launch
Join us on Oct. 21 from 9am-10am for a livestream launch event of a new podcast series called "Real Solutions" we're hosting featuring interviews with leading advocates from across the country to uplift and insist on bold policy solutions that would move the country towards belonging and wellbeing for all people.
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+ WORK WITH US We currently have one staff position open:
Check our website regularly for the most up-to-date information on job vacancies. |
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Together, we can make belonging the norm, not the exception. – The Othering & Belonging Institute |
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