It's easy to turn "them" into "other". America was founded on this - a nation built on the backs of slaves and immigrants, fighting the Europeans, scratching an existence out against the Native peoples across the country, including Mexicans and so called "Indians". Fighting wars across the world in massive, almost mythic, displays of might. We Americans are often comfortable saying, "War against 'the other' is in our blood."
But it's not. In fact, most of America's sons and daughters were born on foreign shores at some point down the line. The Native Americans migrated here tens of thousands of years ago over ancient land bridges. If we discount them, then we have the English, French and Spanish crossing the Atlantic in order to conquer various territories. And if we discount them, we still saw the Irish, the Poles, the Germans, the Italians, the Scandinavians, and the Dutch, to name a handful of light skinned travelers, who left their holy soils for the free world. And what about the Africans; forced from their lands in order to fulfill a lifetime of servitude? Would you call America the "free world" while it was forcing others into slavery? All of the aforementioned peoples were "outsiders" compared to any given inhabitants.
We are all "others". We are all outsiders, the rabble, the unwanted dregs of some European ghetto. At one time, America opened its arms to all of the huddled masses pouring from the rest of the world - remember that lousy old Statue of Liberty gifted to us by those awful French as a gesture of hope and friendship? Our greatest minds, our strongest shoulders, our best fighters, our spirit and essence, was built off the backs of "others".
And yet America rips at her seams as black men are gunned down in her streets because there is a systemic problem with racially motivated violence. Latinos, especially South Americans, Mexicans and Cubans, want badly to come into America and we turn them back by the thousands. People of Middle-Eastern heritage, as well as actual Indians, have committed a double crime of being colored AND eastern.
This country has a real stinking goddamn problem with "them" and "the other". Lady Liberty weeps as her children fall to murdering all of those "others" who want so badly to belong. We ought to be ashamed of ourselves. When will we eschew this dichotomy?
So before you spew hatred against a black man protesting the violence he faces daily in the streets, or before you shun a Latino who desperately wants his family to have a better life in our country, or before you start spouting anti-Muslim garbage to anyone who looks Middle-Eastern (and just as likely isn't), just remember, your family were once guests in this country. Your ancestors raised your family to thrive here, even in the face of seemingly impossible odds. Knock off the shit and accept these "others" into your communities. They are what makes America great.