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Amanda Wright
Professor Briggs
English 1050
June 30, 2015
Othering
If our society had to come up with a perfect word to describe the way we have treated the
people who happen to be different from us, that term would be othering. It is as if we are
subconsciously treating people that are different from ourselves as if they are just that; others.
They are not us or we they are the others. To me, its a very derogatory way of saying the
ones we dont want to talk to because they are different. It is such an impersonal way of
referring to a person or group of people that it perfectly sums up the way we as humans have
been conditioned to treat others and how we continue to treat others of a different race or
nationality than ourselves. This act of treating people who are different from us with
discrimination has always been an issue. Although it is still currently happening in America, it
has gotten better in a lot of ways.
Discrimination and hate has gone on for hundreds of years in America, especially
apparent in the time of slavery in America. African Americans were sold as slaves, separated
from their families, desecrated and segregated from their society simply because of the color of
their skin. For many years black citizens were treated disrespectfully and unfairly. The way they
were treated was unfair and cruel. I believe that we have come a long way from that time and as
Douglass emphasized, we have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the future.
(464) I believe what he meant was that we shouldnt focus on the past to dwell on it. We should
focus on the past in order to see a better future and help us create a new tomorrow. We still have
lots of time to make a change in this country and Frederick Douglass knew this. He started off

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his speech by saying, I am glad, fellow citizens, that your nation is so young. He continues his
point by saying, Three score years and ten is the allotted time for individual men; but nations
number their years by thousands. According to this fact, you are, even now, only in the beginning
of your national career, still lingering in the period of childhood. I repeat, I am glad this is so.
(461) He was happy that America was still young because he knew that because the country was
young, this meant that we still had time to make a chance. America wasnt doomed to be a
hateful, racist country. We had time to change our viewpoints on people of color and time to
change how America felt about slavery and therefore there was hope for an end to slavery. He
knew that this wasnt the end and he was right; America did change in a lot of ways.
Slavery was abolished in America and black citizens were given the right to vote, hold
office, own land, and segregation was done away with. These are just a few examples of the
many ways that America has evolved from being a widely racist country to a more accepting
place for a people of all races. We have changed as a country so much that we now have an
African American president. We have come a long way in America in terms of accepting others
of different races but this does not mean that othering ceases to exist in America and we are
free from discrimination and hate toward minority groups.
We study history to get a better idea about where we came from and to make sure we
dont make the same mistakes again. There is still racism going on in the United States as many
cased of police related violence has been dominating the news. The media has been focusing on
the fact that police officers seem to be using their power to act out against people of color, which
is seen as an act of racism. As Diana George and John Trimbur say, history is the collective
memory of a culture which seeks to come to terms with its past, to represent where it stands in
the present, and to imagine its future possibilities and directions. (430) .We need to remember to

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com to terms with the past and recognize that what has happened in the past is still prevalent in
the present. We are still experiencing racism all around us and only we can make a change.
Obama expressed his hope for change in his speech when he said, but what we know- what we
have seen- is that American can change. That is the true genius of this nation. What we have
already achieved gives us hope- the audacity to hope- for what we can and must achieve
tomorrow. (481).
Change is happening in America and I believe that this is largely due to the influence
society has on the new generations as well as the effect it has on parents raising their children to
be progressive people with new ideas and new ways of thinking. Margaret Mead explains that
educators disagree that parents want change for their children, she explains that, educators
exclaim impatiently over the paradox that Americans believe in change, believe in progress and
yet do their best- or so it seems- to retard their children, to bind them to parental ways, to
inoculate them against the new ways to which they give lip service. However, she continues to
argue that, If the parents were really behaving as the impatient educators claim they are, really
strangling and hobbling their childrens attempts to embrace the changing fashions in manners or
morals, we would not have the rapid social change which is so characteristic of our modern life.
(97). This is apparent in the way this culture has changed and how much more we are accepting
of other races than we used to be. Change is happening in America and has been happening
progressively for many years. The change is slow, but it is still progress and at least it is
happening.

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Rhetorical Analysis- How to Tame a Wild Tongue

The piece I chose is written by Gloria Anzaldua, a woman who self proclaimed
straddled the tejas-Mexican border, and others, all my life. She speaks both English and a
variety of dialects of Spanish and thus writes in a style that is very specific to her culture. In her
writing she goes back and forth between English and Spanish and in doing so, creates a deeply
intriguing aspect that helps her make her point.
Anzaldua mentions throughout the piece that there is so much discrimination not only in
America but also in her own sub-cultures she identifies with in the Mexican heritage. There is
this stigma about speaking in Spanish that I found profoundly shocking to discover was such a
big deal amongst Latina people. A class mate, Wendy Gilley in week twos discussion, described
a little boy she knew who spoke both English and Spanish who was, very fluent in both
languages, but only used English at school and, unfortunately, seemed embarrassed about also
using Spanish. It seems that this is a common thing among Spanish speaking people in America.
I loved the way that Anzaldua chose to write her article. She was very organized in her
writing; making sure to have many sections that had sort of a title to what she was about to get
into in the paragraphs that followed. She did this, I believe, because the way she was writing
(with many variations of English/ Spanish and going quickly back and forth between the two)
would understandably make it hard to read and comprehend what she was trying to say. By
organizing it in a clean and precise way, she made it easier for her audience to understand what
she was saying. In a lot of what she says in Spanish, she said the exact same thing in English.
Part of me believes she was doing this for people she knew would be reading the article that she
knew spoke English and Spanish so she could cover her bases, but I also think she was doing it
for those who did not speak Spanish so she could teach them and give them sort of a lesson. I

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believe in doing so appealed to the emotion of the audience because if she simply started
spouting things off in Spanish assuming everyone could understand it, she would get nowhere
with her audience- or she would appeal to only a small audience. By branching out and teaching
the Spanish to her audience, she draws the attention and gets people interested in what she has to
say.
The way she used poems and quotes to appeal to the audience was very powerful. She
also used some examples in Spanish that she would then translate into English for the audience.
One example I enjoyed she quotes, Dime con quien andas y te dire quien eres. (Tell me who
your friends are and Ill tell you who you are.)- Mexican saying. She uses these elements to
make the point that she is often silenced by the voice of white Americans or English speaking
Americans and made to feel like she is less than because she speaks Spanish. She has been taught
to believe that speaking Spanish is a lower form of communication and that it is a dirty language.
She went into detail about her upbringing, her family, her friends, her experiences that
really humanized her and made her relatable in a way that you did not know was possible with
someone of a completely different race than you and who speaks a different language. But the
way that she elaborated about specific details of her life made you really feel something about
the way she felt and it created empathy in the reader. She got her point across and by appealing
to emotions; she was successful in roping in her reader.

Works Cited

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Anzaldua, Gloria, "How to Tame a Wild Tongue 526.

Douglass, Frederick. What to the Slave is the Fourth of July? 461-464.
George, Diana, and John Trimbur. 430.
Mead, Margaret. We are All Third Generation. 97.
Obama, Barak. A More Perfect Union. 481.