I want to talk to you about "the Other." I can only do this properly

Skidmore

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Fri Aug-20-10 06:06 PM
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I want to talk to you about "the Other." I can only do this properly

Edited on Fri Aug-20-10 06:51 PM by Skidmore

through the perspective of my life's story. All through my life, I have been in and out of the role of "the Other." Sometimes being the other has meant that I was not afforded opportunities or suffered shame or degradation and fear. Now, I'm a white woman in my twilight years, for those who don't know me.

As a child, we were dirt poor and marked poverty casts you as "the Other" in a society which fancies itself to be full of wealthy or, at the very least, economically comfortable individuals. I do know what it is to be taunted for wearing dresses to school handed down from a cousin, and to be mocked as the daughter of "your crazy dad." My father suffered from mental illness. Being that "Other" meant enduring the derision of my schoolmates and then going home to endure the fear of what acts of cruelty could arbitrarily come from the hands of the man who contributed to my existence at a time when there were no support systems for families like ours. This combination of poverty and a dysfunctional home removed access to opportunity from us. We had no car and lived 1.5 mi. from town. No money to attend social events at school or to have the newest fashions or item in fad. We did without in painful ways. You will never find me mocking someone who is impoverished.

Education and marriage were my tickets out of that state of Otherness. Having worked very hard to qualify for scholarships, I was able to go to college. My poverty and fundamentalist upbringing left me unprepared for the world I met since I was missing many bits of cultural information in my knowlege fund. I fled in fear after the first year and married an Iranian man when I was 18 and followed him to Iran. There I learned a new variation of Otherness, one that comes with being someone from another nation and religion (I had married into a very conservative Muslim home) at a time when that nation was on the verge of overthowing the monarchy. I learned a new type of fear from the society at large and tried to reconcile it with the normalcy I sought in my marriage. Howver, there I was treated as an outsider by my inlaws, an interloper who had derailed the future of a Seyed. After 10 years, I returned with my children to this nation where I no longer fit it. Isolation from all the technological and cultural change that had occurred in my absence made the country of my birth seem alien and foreign to me. I experienced severe culture shock. It was a painful to me to know that he would not return here because of the way he had been treated in my homeland. I remember him being called a "camel jockey" once. He did not want to come back here.

So, as I entered my 30s struggling with acculturation and learning to be an adult in my own land--a single parent, since he chose to stay there. Recounting my leaving would sound like a novel and I won't go there. Anyway, the marriage would last another 10 years, and we divorced after 20 years in the same contract. My return put me, by necessity, into the world of work as a mom trying to take care of an 11 yr old and a 5 yr old. I was in the Other of a woman in the work place, and taking clerical jobs in a major univesity while I went back to school and working with some of the worst mysogynists I've ever met. And we wonder why women often see themselves as "the Other." In spite of the obstacles these men put in my way, I earned two degrees and went on to be a working professional.

I remarried after a while to a man from the Bahamas and we've been together for almost 17 years. Not all of my inlaws accept me in this marriage either When I visit my brotherinlaw, I'm "the Other" in the neighborhood, sometimes the only white person for blocks around. It took a while for people to accept me and for me to overcome my fears of being rejected again. And, through these years, I've watched him be "the Other" too, supporting and working with him through a very dark period in time in which he was experiencing extreme racial harrassment at his place of employment. We made it through and that battle brought about some very basic institutional change there AND he kept his job and got a promotion he well deserved.

More recently, my Otherness is found in the dual roles of cancer survivor and unemployed older person. I quit applying after a long period of trying because the rejection letters were just too painful.

You see, there are many roles in which we are marginialized as "the Other." Some are blatant and in your face while others just nibble away at your psyche, tearing holes in your soul. The Other is birthed from fear and hatred. The Other is the child of our basest instincts as human beings. It is bad enough when the Other springs fully formed from the brow of the grand self-styled gods of wealth today or from the snarl of age old conflicts. However, it is inexcusable for us to mold Others as strawmen because of our own fears and feelings of being scorned.

I guess after all this long winded biography what I want most to say is that I see this happening a lot on these boards lately. We must work together, for so many of us understand that The Other is ourselves and the commonality of that experience. It took me a long time to understand that there is no shame in being The Other as long as you do something with it. I chose to push forward for a better life for my children and to work to make the world a little better than I found it. I know that no one person can do it alone and that if we don't pull together, it will not happen. We cannot just scream at one another and expect those who feel entitled do more than point at us and mock us. We need to stand up...together, and reclaim the ground we had before the election. I encourage you to find ways in which you all can join in, even when it hurts. In the end, a group of Others can truly become "We, the people."

Thanks for hearing me out.