What is “Othering”?

“Othering” is the mistreatment of one group of people by another. It’s used to create favoured groups who have an advantage over others. Stories (and myths) are created to encourage fear and distrust of a certain group and to justify fearing, hating, excluding and dehumanising them.

All over the world, every day humans beings try to find differences between themselves and others and then use these differences to justify attacking other people or other groups.

Sometimes, the process of treating a group of people badly becomes systemic (part of a system or culture). Systemic “othering” is used to justify prejudice, and as an excuse to treat certain groups of people unfairly.

Common reasons given to excuse othering include, religion, sex, race, gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic status (class), nationality, disability, sexual orientation, and skin tone.

“Othering” is a broad term but it clearly describes situations which we can all understand on an individual level … and yet also points to situations in which resources and power are used by communities or governments to discriminate against other groups.