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Jamie Banks
English 1050
Professor Briggs
15 February 2015
Othering
When I began researching to write this essay, I found myself
feeling a little unprepared. Here I am, a young white American female,
trying to compose a strongly worded argument addressing the injustice
of marginalized minority groups in society when I myself have never
felt truly excluded from any conversation that directly affected myself
or others of my race. I am, by definition, part of one of the most
privileged groups on the planet. I kept trying to figure out exactly
where I fit in all this. It was only after I took a step back that I realized I
am likely part of the problem. Do I, or most people, knowingly
marginalize minority groups? Of course not, but it absolutely happens.
The practice of othering, whether subconscious or intentional, is the
unfortunate root of many issues influencing race relations in America.
However, we cannot begin to work towards solving this problem until
we first analyze its historical context.
The best way I have found to describe exactly what it means to
be the other is from an article publish In the American Journal of
Cultural Sociology, Defilement and Disgust: Theorizing the Other.
The author, Steven Seidman, describes it perfectly:

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The Other experiences a withdrawal of the status of full
personhood; she surrenders basic rights and respect,
forfeits a sense of civic belonging, and is assumed to lack
decisional autonomy the Other occupies a symbolic
border region between the human and the non-or-subhuman. As a figure threatening chaos and ruin, the Other
may be subject to forms of governance that suspend
routine customary and juridical conventions (Seidman 6-7).
This specific definition fits well with the abhorrent treatment of blacks
in the south during the early part of this nations history. The legislation
enacted to support the slave trade in the Confederate states served as
a way to keep blacks legally marginalized for some 70 years. In a
speech he gave on July 4th, 1852, Frederick Douglass noted, There are
seventy-two crimes in the State of Virginia, which, if committed by a
black man, (no matter how ignorant he be), subject him to the
punishment of death; while only two of the same crimes will subject a
white man to the like punishment (466). Douglas knew very well just
what it meant to be in bondage in the south, as he himself was born
into slavery.
Even more recently in history, white Americans have made
successful attempts to demean others whom they felt were inferior. In
1848, well before immigrants from Europe started pouring into Ellis
Island, Chinese began immigrants traveling across the Pacific Ocean to

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join the gold rush that was sweeping California. While they were
initially tolerated, it wasnt long before attitudes towards the Chinese
soured over concerns that they were stealing labor from Americans. In
1882, President Chester Arthur signed The Chinese Exclusion Act into
law. In 1905, the government built an official immigration station on
Angel Island, located in the San Francisco Bay. Chinese were still
attempting to enter the country, but had no idea what they were in for.
In Week 2 of our discussion, classmate Ryan Gardner observes:
The immigrants had heard of the opportunity available in
America, and made great sacrifices to come here. Many of
the poems reveal that the immigrants were unaware of the
required interrogation before being allowed to enter the
country. They believed that the travel across the ocean was
going to be the greatest struggle, only to be imprisoned on
arrival.
After the Chinese Exclusion Act, the government continued to pass
discriminatory legislation enacting entry quotas for certain minority
groups until the Immigration Act of 1965 was signed into law. Angel
Island remained the dedicated point of entry for immigrants coming to
California until 1940, when the government found the facilities to be
expensive to maintain and largely inadequate (USIS).
Id like now to fast forward to 1985. On the topic of Black English
and its roots that run deep into black culture, University of California

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Berkley professor June Jordan wrote an essay reflecting on her time
teaching a class on the topic. In it, she expresses her displeasure with
how the use of Black English is almost always frowned upon when she
says, We hide our original word habits, or we completely surrender
our own voice, hoping to please those who will never respect anyone
different from themselves (158). She felt like the dismissal of Black
English as a legitimate version of the English language was just
another means of marginalizing and demeaning the African American
community and their outlets of self-expression. I have to agree with
her. While I dont foresee a time when I personally will need to know or
use Black English in my life, I dont believe its within my right to
dismiss those who do. If the tables were turned, and I was the one
using a language not considered to be the overall societal norm, I
would be upset if I were made to feel like my language were inferior to
that of someone else.
More recently, in 2008, current president Barack Obama
expressed his views on the treatment of minorities in a speech he gave
during the 2008 Presidential Election primaries. The speech is titled A
More Perfect Union, which is undoubtedly a nod to his hopes that one
day racial tensions between Americans of different colors and ethnic
background will be a thing of the past. He states, in one of my favorite
passages from his speech:

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In the white community, the path to a more perfect union
means acknowledging that what ails the African-American
community does not just exist in the minds of black people;
that the legacy of discrimination - and current incidents of
discrimination, while less overt than in the past are real
and must be addressed. Not just with words, but with
deeds - by investing in our schools and our communities;
by enforcing our civil rights laws and ensuring fairness in
our criminal justice system; by providing this generation
with ladders of opportunity that were unavailable for
previous generations (481).
Its clear to me that President Obama truly understands the complexity
of this issue. He knows that overcoming the ongoing problem of
discrimination is a process that will take years. It will also require that
everyone on both sides acknowledge this problem.
However, even as we progress, we still encounter setbacks. As
an example of current issue involving othering, in many states, new
stricter voter identification laws required that a voter posses valid
photo ID before being allowed at the polls. This is all despite the fact
that close to 11% of American citizens dont have valid photo ID
because, due to poverty or unfortunate circumstances, they lack the
proper documentation to obtain one (ACLU). This means up to 35
million American-born citizens will be denied their right to vote (the

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14th, 15th and 19th amendments guarantee the right to vote based on
citizenship, race and gender, respectively).
It is important to remember that a great portion of the majority
in this country came from somewhere outside of the United States.
They mostly came from another place in the world where they
themselves were considered the other. English Puritans fled their
homes for fear of religious persecution in the early part of the 17th
century. After this, many Quakers sought refuge in America for similar
reasons. Later on, a famine in Ireland led over a million Irish citizens to
sell their belongings to buy passage across the Atlantic Ocean. They
left a country where they were not considered the other, but when
they landed in America at Ellis Island, they were seen as outsiders.
Author and professor Mary Gordon, remarking on how her Irish, Italian
and Lithuanian ancestors must have felt when arriving at Ellis Island,
said, The minute I set foot upon the island I could feel all that it stood
for: insecurity, obedience, anxiety, dehumanization, the terrified and
careful deference of the displaced (432).
We are all others, in some way, to someone else. We are all in
a minority population in some aspect of our lives. We do ourselves a
great disservice by failing to acknowledge that our differences are
what unite us as a country.

Works Cited
"United States Immigration Station (USIS) Angel Island Conservancy."
Angel Island Conservancy RSS. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Feb. 2015.
"Chinese Exclusion Act (1882)." Our Documents. National Archives and
Records Administration. Web. 11 Feb. 2015.
Douglass, Frederick. "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?" Reading
Culture: Contexts for Critical Reading and Writing. Diana George
and John Trimbur. 8th ed. New York: Longman, 2012. 460-475.
Print.
Gordon, Mary. "More Than Just a Shrine: Paying Homage to the Ghosts
of Ellis Island." Reading Culture: Contexts for Critical Reading
and Writing. Diana George and John Trimbur. 8th ed. New York:
Longman, 2012. 430-435. Print.
Jordan, June. "Nobody Mean More to Me Than You and the Future Life of
Willie Jordan." Reading Culture: Contexts for Critical Reading and
Writing. Diana George and John Trimbur. 8th ed. New York:
Longman, 2012. 157-167. Print.

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Obama, Barack. "A More Perfect Union." Reading Culture: Contexts for
Critical Reading and Writing. Diana George and John Trimbur. 8th
ed. New York: Longman, 2012. 476-484. Print.
Seidman, Steven. "Defilement and Disgust: Theorizing the
Other." American Journal of Cultural Sociology 1.1 (2013): 325. AJCS. Web. 10 Feb. 2015.