the Other

Having grown up predominantly in a single race society the effects of racial dichotomy and stigma were a rather alien concept. Even though socially discrimination was a part of everyday life racial and sexual preference issues were not something that I experienced to often. However there was religious prejudice and there was a massive stigma born out of class differences. My grandmother was a constructionist for the most part. Having lived through the horrors of partition and been a part of the religion induced carnage and hate she had a deep rooted hatred for Muslims and the actual religion of Islam. In her ideology meaning was prescribed by her creating the identity. Therefore Islam was a religion of hatred and violence and that picture would not change for anything.
My mother contrary to my grandmother believed in giving everybody a fair chance irrespective of religion. She was more of an essentialist who used her interpretations of instances and people to form her opinions. Born a whole generation later she escaped the scarring experiences that my grandmother had been subjected to, this I believe helped her to shape her concepts differently. That I believe is rather valid point, the stance that people take on issues is directly proportional to the social interactions they have accumulated over time. Therefore it would be unfair to judge people as being prejudiced since the social premise that led them to reach their personal conclusions are not similar to yours or mine. What would we have become had the same forces that mould my grandmother touched me and my mother? I don’t know.
Prejudice and dichotomy are created from fear. Interactions with the parts of society that cause this fear often time helps to remove the pre-assumptions, the clichés and the generalizations that become synonymous with prejudice. A good example in the American society is of California and Indiana. Due to California’s rather diverse and multicultural population there is a far lower rate of racial misunderstanding and hate , as compared to Indiana which even though has small pockets of cosmopolitan groups , on the whole remains very mono-racial ( I use this term to talk of their similar Caucasian heritage). Thus there is a lot more of dichotomy, prejudice, existence of stereotypes and mass generalizations. Exposing Indiana’s rather rural Christian community to the concept of gay marriage can prove disastrous since most of them have never had positive and intimate relationships with homosexuals. Hence their stigma arises from their fear of the unknown, which makes them label an individual and identify him primarily by his sexual orientation. This usage of a single aspect of a person to classify him leads to a rather linear and for the most part very partial understanding of society.
The creation of dichotomy creates sense of plurality and collective viewing of a community. Since it is impossible to classify or group two individuals into one category, it also destroys the uniqueness of people. A person can have many labels and then he can choose to discard any he wants. However socially in American society some labels are given an eternal sustaining life. They hang on long after the individual has stopped practicing.
The presence of the “us” and the “other” is an example of trying to find security and a desire to stay within the confines of the knowledge and the awareness that has been passed on generation after generation. Classifying people who aren’t like us into one massless category creates this sense of surety and clear lines. This creates in the psyche a feeling of being in control since there isn’t anything else to know. We are with our own kind and any body who is not us is them. This subjugates humanity to a rather unrealistic and forced model of existence where diversity is an ignored form. I am reminded of the movie “The Matrix” at this instant. Morpheus when explaining to Neo the concept of the “agent” tells him , “if you are not one of us, you are one of them”. In this context agents are computer programs that can slip into any person who is still plugged in the matrix. Thus any person who is still plugged in the matrix is an agent. Therefore Morpheus creates a black and a white making the whole human population that is plugged in under one similar attribute. Their individuality is destroyed and over looked. That is the idea of the “other”.