Instructions: Review the passage below from “Othering: Cultural Diversity and Symbolic Boundaries.” Afterwards, watch this video and describe the act of othering that one of the speakers relates, which fits (to a tee!) the framework of othering given in the quoted passage and in the article more generally. From there, reflect critically on what the video represents and what it teaches. Do you think organizations like Southern Crossroads, whose organizing director speaks in the video, can change hearts and minds through information campaigns in this era that seems more defined everyday by intransigence and entrenched thinking rather than anything resembling a willingness to engage in detached critical examination?
“Less attention has been given to the possibility that othering is a response that helps people feel respectable when the diversity to which they are exposed makes it difficult to stipulate in more positive ways what respectability is. This possibility would pertain to situations in which well-intentioned people want to get along with others with whom they differ and simply find it easier to target some out-group as exemplifying what not to do than to work out the details of what respectability actually is. For example, a devout African American Baptist and a devout Italian American Roman Catholic who were friends and had mutual friends might find it awkward to talk about their churches’ different doctrines and hierarchies or their different ethnic and racial lineages but easily fall into discussing how terrible it is to have Hispanic immigrants living in America. The point is not that their othering of immigrants is “caused” by the lack of theological agreement but that it allows them to have something in common with each other without having to specify in much detail what that is. The logic is similar to saying that “the enemy of my friend is my enemy” except that it becomes “I consider X my friend because we have a common enemy” (263-64).
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