Good ol' Otherness!

First off I just want to say that I love bell hooks and all her work. I think she’s a fantastic scholar and feminist. Now that I have that out of the way, there was something I wanted to bring up in hook’s article. She mentions how the Other is ignored and invisible and that they don’t have a public space to really demonstrate their culture. What I took out of that is that the Other is being silenced and that when the dominant culture demonstrates some type of interests in the Other, they may feel a sense of “finally we are being acknowledged, its is our chance to shine...to speak...to have a voice!” only to be disappointed because the dominant culture skews or rather does a poor job doing justice to the Other’s representation. Stereotypes are placed and honestly, they do more harm to the Other rather than the dominant group. To me, I see it as a mechanism to silence difference and Otherness. It’s a never ending cycle that will mostly leave the Other disappointed and frustrated.

One last thing I want to mention is the activity we did in class and how what if we were to list the stereotypes of our fellow peers, how differently would the answers be? It made me think of something that I learned in a Psychology course freshman year. Now while, we may like to say “I’m not judgemental,” in reality we all are. Within seconds, we all make judgements about people we see every day, it’s human instinct. Now it’s our personal choice if we want to act on that judgment or just keep it to ourselves. Now if one does decide to acknowledge that judgement, one must acknowledge and check their privilege before looking ignorant.