ABSTRACT
8 9How do we move more people, younger generations in particular, to see all humans as brothers and sisters, with common experiences and hopes, ever more dependent on each other in times of globalization via technology, commerce, climate change, and overpopulation? We write and teach with this question as a central guide. We see the betweener experience, the moments in which we find ourselves labeled as dehumanized Others based on flat exclusionary stereotypes, as a common ground where we can all meet in ever kinder and more cooperative, inclusive ways. We think that the recognition of oneself in the excluded Other has been central in the successful inclusionary movements and moments in history. We think that autoethnographies exploring identity, interactions, existence, and possibilities in the spaces between Us and Them can help current and future generations imagine an ever expanding circle of Us when, over time, there will be no more Them, at least not in dehumanizing, exclusionary ways. As James Baldwin stated decades ago “We’ve got to be as clear-headed about human beings as possible, because we are still each other’s only hope” (Mead & Baldwin, 1972, p. 45). We have been on earth long enough to recognize that our tribal tendencies may never be tamed, permanently erased, or even temporarily exiled. But we also see, in our personal lives, in our classrooms, in the responses to our writing, and in the humanist thinkers who came before us, on whose shoulders we stand, the transforming possibilities for hope and greater justice, in tireless search for the common humanity that diminishes the spaces between Us and Them, between inclusion and exclusion, between kindness and hatred, between joy and pain, between liberation and oppression, between cooperation and greed, between compassion and indifference.
