Hello!

My Motivation

During my sophomore year at university, I encountered the topic of othering for the first time when reading Endangered/Endangering: Schematic. Racism and White Paranoia by Judith Butler. The article enlightened me to the implicit role that schemas have in judging bodies based on race. I credit it for raising my white consciousness, and the seed was planted in my mind that perhaps I could create something that does for a more general audience what that article did for me. 

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I believe in the value of addressing social issues at the intersection of social science and the humanities. Education is the most powerful tool we have to raise white consciousness. The arts are a tool to bridge the gap between academics and the public to communicate scholarship on racial othering and theory in a digestible and engaging manner. I also believe that approaching this issue from the angle of schema formation and formal and informal rules provides an opportunity to raise white consciousness via curiosity and self-reflection rather than defensiveness. I find othering to be a valuable framework to understand injustice and inequality both for its transferability and explanatory properties. I also appreciate its intrinsic ability to examine social issues on multiple levels. 

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The creation of this project has necessitated a consistent identification and interrogation of my personal biases, which I know will be a never-ending process; my schemas of race reflect the structurally racist society in which I live. However, it is a process that I am privileged to engage in as I support people of color in their anti-racist efforts and continue to educate other white people on our shared responsibilities and opportunities to create more belonging within our communities.