There are cities that live in you long after you leave them. Minneapolis is one of those places for me.
When I heard where Renée and Alex were killed, I did not need a map. I could see it. I know where George Floyd was killed. These killings did not arrive as distant news; they arrived as a rupture in a place that shaped my life.
When Violence Hits Home
There is a particular pain I feel now — not because of the victims’ race or citizenship status, but because of where this happened. I know these streets. I know the institutions. I taught at the law school when the state’s attorney general was a student there. I know many of the judges. I had personal relationships with a former mayor and with police chiefs. My son went to school with their children.
For nearly a decade, Minneapolis was home. Despite its struggles — and despite the brutal winters — it was a place I cared for deeply. Indeed, a place I love. I still know the neighborhoods by heart. I know how the cold sharpens everything, including grief. I know the blocks where people gather, protest, and mourn. I know the places where state violence has already marked the ground. And it is especially hard to watch the people of your home suffer.
A Moment That Demands Reflection
There are moments when a society must pause — not to look away, but to look more carefully. Moments when we are asked not simply to react, but to reflect. To ask what kind of people we are becoming, and what kind of world we are quietly consenting to build.
When we accept othering as a justification for violence, we normalize a system where belonging becomes conditional — and no one is truly safe.
When a person is killed by the state, and that killing is met with silence — or worse, with justification — we are standing in such a moment. There are so many heartbreaking events now that it can be hard to keep up, hard not to become numb, hard not to turn away. But we cannot turn away from these painful acts of violence and killing without turning away from ourselves.
Too Many Killings, Too Little Accountability
There have been too many killings.
Too often, we do not know the names of the victims. Too often, we are encouraged to distance ourselves from their lives, their humanity, their stories. While this may be understandable — even inevitable — it is never right. Minneapolis is unusual in this regard. We know Renée’s and Alex’s names. We know they were citizens. We know they were white.
But none of this should matter. And yet, we know it probably does.
What These Killings Mean
The question before us is not only what happened, but what it means.
What does it mean when a life can be taken with impunity? What does it mean when those entrusted with public power assure us that this taking of life is acceptable — even necessary — because the person killed was not “one of us”?
The Work of Othering
At the Othering and Belonging Institute, we use the language of othering to describe this move. Othering is not merely disagreement or difference. It is the act of placing someone outside the circle of human concern — outside the boundaries of empathy, protection, and accountability.
Othering is how violence becomes legible. It is how harm is explained away. And it is often how grief is denied.
In the aftermath of the killings in Minneapolis, the initial response from the federal government was not to center investigation or accountability. Instead, it was to shape a narrative — one offered quickly and without evidence — that those killed were dangerous, criminal, or terrorists. A narrative that asked us to see them not as people, but as threats.
This quiet work of othering both precedes and enables the more violent expressions of othering: the pushing, the beating, the shooting.
We are told that those killed were the other. And yet, there has been no showing of criminality. No due process. No opportunity to be heard.
Still, the story persists.
When Othering Becomes Law
This struggle is not only rhetorical or moral — it is legal. It is unfolding in our courts. Judges are divided over whether race, ethnicity, or accent can ever be a legitimate basis for stopping or questioning someone. Some suggest such practices may be permissible; others insist — correctly — that they are not.
This debate reveals a deeper fracture: who is presumed to belong, and who is treated as the suspected other. Is it really acceptable to kill someone because we think they are the other?
Profiling is incompatible with dignity, democracy, and belonging. When identity becomes evidence, belonging becomes fragile. The promise of equal protection, equal dignity, and equal humanity is denied. The presumption of innocence becomes the presumption of threat. These are not just nice ideas. This is the bedrock of our democracy and our humanity.
Belonging Is a Moral Commitment
Belonging without othering insists on something deeper and more demanding: that there are spaces in our shared life where everyone belongs — no exceptions.
The Constitution reflects this wisdom. It tells us, more than once, that all persons are entitled to due process of law. Not just citizens. Not just the favored. Not some races and opposed to others. Not just those judged innocent in advance.
All persons.
This is not a loophole or a technicality. It is a moral commitment. It reflects an understanding that unchecked power is dangerous, and that the dignity of each person is bound up with the dignity of us all.
When the State Claims Absolute Power
When the state claims absolute immunity — when it asserts the right to kill without investigation or accountability — it is not only failing those who were killed. It is poisoning the very structures meant to hold us together. It is thinning the fabric of belonging.
Belonging is not sentimental. It is structural and spiritual. It lives in our laws, our institutions, and our willingness to hold power accountable. It lives in our faith and our dreams. It must be redeemed in our practices and our stories, not just our statutes. It must happen not only in courtrooms, but in neighborhoods and schools.
Grief, Justice, and the Refusal to Look Away
The narrative that asks us not to mourn — because the dead were supposedly bad people — is an old one that must be rejected. It has always been used to justify exclusion, violence, and silence. But our constitutional order, at its best, refuses this story. It reminds us that no human being is beyond the reach of dignity or justice.
To grieve is not to excuse. To investigate is not to condemn. To insist on due process is not to weaken the nation — it is to strengthen it.
Holding the Circle Open
This moment invites us to widen, rather than contract, our circle of human concern. To resist fear-based narratives. To remember that belonging is not something we extend only when it is convenient. It is now more than ever we must embrace the belonging of all.
The true measure of a democracy is not how it treats those who are familiar or favored, but how it treats those who are vulnerable, marginalized, or easily cast aside.
Belonging is not sentimental. It is structural and spiritual.
In times like these, the work of belonging asks us to stay present — to hold the circle open, even when it would be easier to let it close.
Because when we accept othering as a justification for violence, we normalize a system where belonging becomes conditional — and no one is truly safe. Humanity struggles to survive in such an environment. Democracy cannot.
We cannot use the power of the state to make others into threats, because in the end, we are the other.
john a. powell (who spells his name in lowercase in the belief that we should be “part of the universe, not over it, as capitals signify”) is an internationally recognized expert in the areas of civil rights, civil liberties, structural racism, housing, poverty, and democracy. He is the director of the Othering & Belonging Institute at the University of California, Berkeley, a research institute that brings together scholars, community advocates, communicators, and policymakers to identify and eliminate the barriers to an inclusive, just, and sustainable society and to create transformative change toward a more equitable world. This post first appeared at Othering & Belonging