My Experience With "Othering"

With the 13th anniversary of the Twin Towers attacks passing last week, I'd like the focus of this blog post to be around the concept called "othering."  This term was somethinWg that new to me until recently, even though I have been surrounded by the effects of it almost all of my life.  The general act of othering is the act of comparing ourselves, usually on a cultural scale, to another group in order to distance ourselves from that other group.  It alienates another group of people in order to make our culture normal and right.  

My experience with othering dealt with the culture of the Middle East.  All my life I remember seeing videos and clips of radical groups from the Middle East on the news or in movies, fueled by the United State's conflict with them.  I became accustomed to this view of the Middle East, and although I did not realize it until recently, this viewpoint also instilled a subconscious level of fear of the Middle East.

I grew up in a small town with hardly any diversity, I had a huge culture shock when I moved away for college and found myself in the midst of many different cultures.  I was not used to living in such a diverse place, and it took me a little bit of time to move past my previous notions about certain cultures.

From the news and what I had gathered in my (little) knowledge of the Middle East, I knew them to be a violent culture.  I also knew them to be a culture that did not appreciate or respect women.  These thoughts were never something that was explicitly taught to me, but rather they were my own opinions that I had formed based on the knowledge I had.  I have always thought of myself as an open minded person, so the narrow view I had of Middle Eastern people was not something I was proud of.  

  With these prior opinions in mind, I was hesitant to reach out and make friends with the Middle Eastern students.  It took a visit from some old friends in high school to get me to look beyond what I thought I knew and find out first hand how they were.  My friends are avid hookah smokers, so we ended up at a local hookah place.  There happened to be quite a few Middle Eastern men there as well, and our groups ended up hanging out together and talking.  Much to my surprise, the Middle Eastern men were so kind to me.  They even stuck up for me when my friends playfully picked on me.   They also told my friends not to curse in front of my because it was disrespectful.  They joked with me and laughed with me and had conversations with me and I was so very wrong about any previous thought I had about people from the Middle East.  

Going back to the term othering, I am so disappointed to think about how many other people had the same thoughts that I did based on how the Middle Eastern people are portrayed here in the US.  It saddens me to think that an entire group of people is defined solely on the US's conflict with them.