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Have you ever thought you made up a word only to discover it already existed?
I recently watched someone pose an interesting question to a small audience, “Are you afraid of the other or afraid of being the other?”
The word “otherism” popped into my head and I smiled at my cleverness. What a great word I had created to describe the social disease causing fear and/or hatred of those not like us.
Sadly, I was not as clever as I thought. After some research I discovered this is a legitimate word and I wanted to know more. I climbed down the rabbit hole of internet research. Much like “Alice In Wonderland,” I found a world of interesting ideas and magical thinking that has the potential to open our hearts and minds and return us to our childlike innocence.
I found that my newly discovered word is defined as the “exclusion of a person based on their perceived diversions from an acceptable norm.”
I immediately wanted to know what outside influences created this separation of us and them. I knew we weren’t born with this filter, so how did we catch this disease and what were the symptoms?
Otherism is not about whether you like or dislike someone. It comes from a conscious or many times unconscious fear that the others are somehow a threat to us or our way of life.
This disease has many variations and is exposed in the form of fear and/or hatred of:
>> Other religions
>> Other cultures
>> Other genders
>> Ageism
>> Other sexuality
>> Other food preferences
>> Other economic classes
>> Other political preferences
This is not a disease that is brought on by personal contact but is usually contracted through the influence of all forms of media and political information.
Other causes can come in the form of a lack of education, personal bias, entitlement, economic instability, and social influences. It is rarely required that one actually “knows” or is exposed to the person they are othering.
There are a range of symptoms and a person can exhibit all—a few or sometimes only one of them.
Here is a checklist if you are concerned or someone you know might be “infected”:
>> Giving positive qualities to people who are like you and negative qualities to people who are different from you
>> Believing that people who are different from you or your social group are a threat to you or your way of life
>> Feeling distrustful with people of a social group even though you don’t know anyone from that group
>> Refusing to interact with people because they are different from you
>> Thinking that people outside your social group are not as intelligent, skilled, or as special as you and your group
>> Thinking of people only in terms of their relationship with specific social groups without giving any thought to them as individuals
There are things we can do to fight this disease and keep it from spreading:
1. See people as individuals with unique histories and experiences.
2. Challenge your own beliefs that others should be like you.
3. Spend time with people who are different from you.
4. Use language that offers inclusivity.
5. Remember that people can belong and identify with multiple groups.
6. Speak up against actions that cast people as outsiders.
The end to this awful disease will come when we all realize that the cure of Otherism is not that we should all be the same but instead create a world of belonging as we embrace the uniqueness in all of us.
“I knew who I was this morning, but I’ve changed a few times since then.” ~ Alice In Wonderland
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