I heard a group of speakers discussing the racial, socio-economic situation in Baltimore and across the country on the Diane Rehm show.  One speaker spoke of “othering”  in reference to how we treat people who live in the ghetto.

Stephen Jay Gould coined that term to describe how we separate ourselves from others – making them less than, alien, disgusting.  We do it with animals.  We do it with women.  We do it with blacks, Muslims, and anyone that makes us uncomfortable because they do not fit into our particular, narrow, socio-political compartment.  Because they are NOT US.  Because they have a vagina or a tail.

What I wanted the speaker to do was connect the dots.  Women have been othered for millenia. Slavery was abolished in this country before laws of coverture that subsume women’s rights and regard her as property.  Why is no one remembering that?  Why is no one seeing that as part of the whole cloth of oppression, othering and fear of what is different (has a vagina, is black, is Jewish, loves someone of the same sex).

I watched Amy Schumer’s brilliant sketch 12 Angry Men sketch on Inside Amy Schumer.  In it, she walks a very delicate line between an ugly, acidic portrayal of sexism, and the excruciating othering of one’s own body and gender.  Heteronormativity, the heart of the case currently before the supreme court, is another, sickeningly pervasive way of othering.

The fissure created by events in Ferguson, North Carolina and Baltimore is an opportunity to look at things from a bigger perspective.  A chance to fly very high so that we can see the landscape of oppression in the broadest way possible.  Will we do that?  Will there be a conversation?  Only if WE talk, and keep talking and start feeling.