Chapter
We and They
Discover how societies throughout history have defined membership based on ideas about human similarities and differences, such as race, religion, and nation.
Subject
- Civics & Citizenship
- Social Studies
Grade
6–12Language
English — USPublished
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About this Chapter
Who are “we”? Who are “they”?
The answers to these questions can have profound consequences, because they define who belongs and who does not. This chapter explores the human tendency to create “in” groups and “out” groups and the consequences of that behavior.
Essential Questions
- Why do humans separate themselves into groups? When is this behavior harmless, and when does it become a problem?
- How have societies distinguished between who can be a member and who must remain an outsider, and why have those distinctions mattered?
What Do We Do with a Difference?
A poem by James Berry invites us to question the ways we as individuals and societies react to difference.
Universe of Obligation
Reflect on how individuals, communities, and nations decide who has rights that are worthy of respect and protection with this introduction to the concept of the "universe of obligation."
Understanding Strangers
Journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski traces back to the earliest family-tribes and discusses how human beings either cooperate or divide with “the other."
First Encounters in the Americas
Consider what interactions between the first Spanish explorers and Indigenous Peoples demonstrate about encountering the unfamiliar.
We and They in Colonial America
Learn how race and racism evolved within North America’s first European settlements with the stories of two African Americans who secured freedom in colonial Virginia.
Inventing Black and White
Learn how Bacon’s Rebellion became a turning point for the way the laws of colonial Virginia distinguished people of different races.
Who Is Human?
Consider the conflict in eighteenth-century US and France between the Enlightenment ideal of equality and the existence of deep social inequalities like slavery.
The Science of Race
Read about the seventeenth- and eighteenth- century scientists who tried to prove that humankind is divided into separate and unequal races.
We the People in the United States
Learn how the US Constitution’s promise of equal protection under the law has been questioned throughout US history in debates over issues such as women's right to vote and birthright citizenship.
Religion, Loyalty, and Belonging
Read statements by George Washington and Napoleon Bonaparte about religious freedom and the membership of Jews in eighteenth-century France and the United States.
Breeding Society’s "Fittest"
Learn how people in the late nineteenth-century used race science, social Darwinism, and eugenics to justify their ideas about membership.
Creating the German Nation
Read about the confluence of nationalism, race science, and German-unification efforts in mid-eighteenth-century German society.
Anti-Judaism before the Enlightenment
Deepen your understanding of the history of antisemitism with this overview of the persecution, violence, and restrictions Jews throughout Europe faced during the Middle Ages.
From Religious Prejudice to Antisemitism
Learn about the restricted rights and membership of Jews in newly unified Germany, and antisemitism's pervasiveness across Europe during this period.
"Expansion Was Everything"
Read about nineteenth-century Imperialism, the Congress of Berlin, and W. E. B. Du Bois’ analysis of the profound consequences of Europe's colonization of Africa.
Analysis & Reflection
Enhance your students’ understanding of our readings on "we" and "they" with these follow-up questions and prompts.
- Reread What Do We Do with a Difference?. What responses to differences between people occur in the history presented in this chapter? What were the consequences of those responses?
- Scholar George Fredrickson writes that racism has two components: difference and power. He explains:
It originates from a mindset that regards “them” as different from “us” in ways that are permanent and unbridgeable. This sense of difference provides a motive or rationale for using our power advantage to treat the . . . Other in ways that we would regard as cruel or unjust if applied to members of our own group. 1
How is Fredrickson’s definition of racism reflected in the history of slavery in North America? How is it reflected in the histories of antisemitism and imperialism? - What is antisemitism? In what sense is antisemitism a form of religious prejudice? In what sense is it a form of racism?
- What have you learned about the forces that shape a nation’s universe of obligation? What have you learned about the forces that shape an individual’s universe of obligation?
- This chapter introduced many different ideas about the evolution of the concept of race. What echoes of these ideas do you recognize in our world today?
- Why do humans so often divide themselves into “we” and “they”? When does it become a problem? What historical examples from this chapter help you answer this question? What examples from the world today help you answer it?
- 1George M. Fredrickson, Racism: A Short History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002), 9.
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