Roy Blount Jr., who when i googled him, seems better known for his humor than serious aritcles, did a serious article on Us vs. Them-- the generic cross cultural difficulties that exist in all groups.. but i couldn't find it.. (its from back before 1998--)
in any case, human are social, cultural animals.. and we naturally from into groups.. family is one, peer; (work, school, coffe klatch), teams, towns, counties, countries, language, what ever! most of know the Sherlock Holmes story The Red Headed League and the idea of an organization based on hair color is not total strange.. not to us, or to the characters in the story.
once we become a group, we begin to define ourselves.. and what makes our groups special -- ane how we are different (and unstated, but often believed, superiour to those outside our group.) those inside the group use special jargon, or code words, that helps seperate the wheat from the chaff-- YART comes to mind. and then most groups give their group a name that implies goodness and power-- no matter what they are really doing..
which lead the Nazi's to hold the belief, they were "purifying the german race" not begin racist and commiting genocide. -it almost impossible for us today to share their belief.-- even those who would rewrite history don't claim genocide is wrong, they just claim the nazi's never did it.
all term to define outsider are at least somewhat perjorative. if nothing else, they define someone as "them" and not as "Us". and since we in the Us group have already defined ourselves as slightly superiour, them, must be, inferiour.
i have avoided using a word that was made up-- to define the Us of regular contributers to the AWAD talk group.. because it is a classical example of a word used to define a group-- and its obscure origins serve to make sure that it can be used to seperate Us (long time regulars) from them.(new comers)
i see it as a racist and ugly a word, as ugly as many other words i will not use.
some here have objected to common, vulgar words, like shit-- and all the ilk of words defined as 4 letter words. i don't. but i share a strong aversion to words that serve to define anyone as "them". words to define the "Them"s of the world are worse than vulgar. they are deliberately hurtful.
PS. YART stand for "yet another rehashed topic" and is occationally used here at AWAD.
