The 'others' in our communities

As I discussed last week, I grew up in the Southside of Minneapolis, Minnesota. Minneapolis is a diverse city, but as is often the case, people with shared identities live in certain areas with their community. This is both an effect of self-selection, as well as property expenses dividing socioeconomic groups- and the legacy of redlining in the city. 

 I grew up on the border of the Powderhorn and Phillips neighborhoods in Minneapolis. My neighborhood is made up of primarily middle and working-class households. There are a large number of immigrants and first and second generation immigrants from South and Central America, as well as Eastern Africa, specifically Somali. Minneapolis actually has one of the highest populations of people of Somali descent outside of Eastern Africa, and the highest population of Somali-Americans in the US is in the Southside of Minneapolis. 

 Often when people immigrate to a new country they face the issue of ‘othering’, and they are treated as outsiders. In many ways Minneapolis has thriving immigrant communities and as a sanctuary city, many services are accessible to people of diverse identities: any sort of informational pamphlet in Minneapolis is in English, Spanish, Somali, and Hmong. But there are still many inequalities in the city. I think that one of the ways that othering manifests itself is through the remnants of segregation and self-segregation. Self-segregation can feed into a cycle of othering: when people experience the aftermath of othering and feel out of place in a certain environment, they tend to stick with those with a shared identity to themselves. I don’t think that in the face of othering, self-segregation is necessarily a bad thing. I think as humans, we want to fit in and be around people we feel similar to and safe with. But the issue is what causes self-segregation, which are often cases of discrimination and othering. 

 Despite growing up in a racially, ethnically, and socioeconomically diverse neighborhood, my schooling was initially not a reflection of my community. From age three through eight grade I went to a small private Montessori school in a different part of the city. This area, as well as the school, was majority white and wealthy. My sister and I attended the school because our grandparents had founded it a few decades before, but we did so with a lot of financial aid. Ironic, I know. We fit in in many ways, being white at a PWI- which is a certain level of privilege, but we were also just not at all in the same place financially as our classmates. I recognize how fortunate I was- and my privilege- to have attended a school like this.

My small, private Montessori school

After graduating from eight grade, I moved to my neighborhood high school, South High. The majority of students at South are Black (in comparison to other racial groups), and over 50% of students come from low-income households. In addition, about 20-25% of students are Somali-American (this is based on a statement from the Valedictorian speech of my sister’s graduating class, in which the speaker said that the class was ¼ Somali). 

My large, public high school

 South, quite simply, changed my worldview. Despite the school reflecting my community, I had been fairly sheltered up until this point. I went from feeling underprivileged to feeling incredibly overprivileged. When I started my freshman year of high school, I only knew my sister- a senior at the time. I had a preconceived idea about what South would be like: a slightly sketchy school with sub-par academics. And although honestly these things are true, I found myself in a sort of reflexive loop. I had these ideas about the school and the students, so I found them to be true- I noticed the fights, the remnants of gang activity, the ‘bad’ teachers. Here is where the reflexive loop and the process of othering overlapped for me: I went in with the perception that I was unlike my classmates, so I found differences between us. 

 But then I started making friends. Somalia is an almost entirely Muslim country, so many of my classmates were Muslim. It became normal to me that every Friday many of the Muslim students would leave class to pray; teachers would have work time instead of class on any Islamic holidays; during Ramadan, lunch periods and sports would be adjusted for those fasting. Systems within the school were adjusted to be inclusive for not just Somali students, but for students with other cultural backgrounds as well. 

 It was almost as if while facing being othered, many of my Somali-American classmates created their own community. I remember my group for physical science in 9th grade was myself and three first-generation Somali-American girls, who were Black, Muslim, hijabis. Despite them likely being considered ‘others’ by many people in Minneapolis, at this point in time, I could be considered the other. But both at South and at my previous school, was I really the ‘other’? Or did I just feel- as many young people often do- like I didn’t fit in? Though I know that technically ‘othering’ is directed at any one person or group of people, I feel that there are other factors at play. In a country built up from colonization, slavery, and racial segregation- I find it probable that historically marginalized communities are more likely to be inherently othered by our society. 

 This may sound cliché, but I think that to prevent othering- which I think in many ways can be a response ingrained in each of us- is to get to know the ‘others’ by acknowledging divides without enabling them, as well as to think critically about the history of systems that have divided us.

Image Citations: 

Image of South High School from https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fm.cgstock.com%2F370&psig=AOvVaw2TURYdwRQBA9U0txx12eEb&ust=1664994722602000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CAwQjRxqFwoTCLjavPeax_oCFQAAAAAdAAAAABAb 

Image of Lake Country School from https://3.files.edl.io/253c/22/06/28/192442-7b79e4db-98f6-41ea-9515-10fe02ce3430.JPG