I am writing to discuss the current debate surrounding otherness. The story of childhood has rarely been well told because of the notion of otherness. I feel like the question of otherness is important to discuss for there is a need to address this question in the context of an approach to children. What is otherness? well, otherness is the state of being different or lacking essential characteristics possessed by a group; an individual that is labeled as “the other” is different or does not fit in. Otherness is not only healthy for children it is essential to what children are; it is all the things that shape us, the cultural differences, our identity, our race. The idea of otherness is about the way children differ from adults. This might be regarding agencies such as religious, education and society whose accounts of what children are and what they should be. Both autobiographical text “Born A Crime” by Trevor Noah and “Homecoming King” by Hassan Minhaj explore the multidimensional in which children are othered by exploring the impact of racial differences and cultural differences. Although both of these texts are different but the experiences of othering is similar “Born A Crime” is an autobiographical comedy book written by the South African comedian Trevor Noah born in 1984 to a black Xhosa mother and swiss immigrant father who recounts his childhood story during the apartheid and post-apartheid in South Africa as he faced racism, identity, and belonging. The second autobiographical text I would like to examine is “ Homecoming King” a stand-up comedy film written by Hassan Minhaj the son of Indian-Muslim immigrant parents who described his earliest memories of being the brown kid in a predominantly white suburb as he tried to deal with racism and heartbreak that comes with immigration. In this paper, I seek to explore the descriptions of otherness that were featured in both texts “Born A Crime” by Trevor Noah and “Homecoming King” by Hassan Minhaj due to racial differences and lastly I will examine the way children and youth challenge adults ideas of otherness in “Homecoming King” Children engage in otherness as they encounter in racial differences, identity in their community and at school. I will be using six criticals reading to express my interest in the position of how they are being othered.
Firstly, I would like to explore the descriptions of otherness played in both of these autobiographical texts; Trevor Noah “ Born A Crime” Hassan Minhaj “ Homecoming King” as they encountered due to their racial differences. In opening this up I am trying to put people on their guard about this question. We all have experienced otherness, at least for most of us the discomfort of being someplace or with people where we did not feel that we belong. “Born A Crime” is the story of Trevor Noah a nine-year-old light-skinned, Mixed race child born during the apartheid in South Africa where it was illegal for people to have intercourse or interact with individuals from different racial classifications, so Noah is, in fact, the evidence of his criminal activity. The race is a key term in the “Born A Crime” memoir because it is a constant source of tension and confusion for Noah. He fully belongs neither in the black nor the whites communities and he constantly made feel different from others such as his family members and peers because of his mixed heritage. What we need to know is othering, as well as racial self-hatred, begin in the family, so Noah was never fully accepted by his family members because they see him as different from them. Noah’s grandmother speaks this quote when she explains why she is uncomfortable hitting him even though she disciplined her other black kids “I'm scared I'm going to break him. I don't want to kill a white person” (Frances Noah p52). As stated in Key Concepts in Childhood Studies “it is the family that provides a social and categorical umbrella under which for so many purposes, children are subsumed” (Allison & Adrian James p54) Families should play a part in the upbringing of a child to ensure their needs and responsibility are being met.
In comparison to “Homecoming King” which is a stand-up comedy written by Hassan Minhaj who opens up by retelling his parents' migration from Aligarh, a small town in India. As the show’s titles, Minhaj recounts how in his senior year of high school, he defied his parents' strict rules to sneak out of the house and tried to attend the high-school prom with his crush Bethany Reed. What I notice from both autobiographical texts is the processes of othering in a specific group are based on race both Noah and Hassan were affected by the discrimination but uses humor to make it more accessible. At such a young age, being discriminated against might expose their innocence for they are too dependent upon society to be protected. As stated in Children And Young People's Cultural Worlds “unprivileged children threats to childhood innocence” (Bragg p12). For Hassan, as he faced otherness, he only wanted to fit in with his white privilege classmate that he called “A bunch of Ryan Lochte's”. As the child of Muslim immigrants, Hassan described the death threats and vandalism his family experienced immediately after 9/11 in regards to his race. The main theme of the show is Hassan's long journey toward forgiveness after experiencing racism from his high school classmate and her family, he stated that people would say they love you and be afraid of you at the same time. For Noah, the way he reinforced otherness is by speaking multiple languages for language is used as a major way for groups to classify who belongs and who is considered as outsiders, and so this allows him to easily fit in with different groups who might otherwise not be accepting of him this ability gives a degree of freedom and flexibility which not many South Africans possess. In the book Childhood In A Global Perspective Karen wells stated that “school is not always successful in producing in children the kinds of attitude to authority that it might want to encourage” (p139). What I mean by that is that Noah and Hassan are faced with discrimination at schools a place where they should find comfort and peace to be their own selves. Both Noah and Hassan navigate serious subjects while still being funny some parts of their experiences are raw, sad and helpless.
In the next section, I will discuss the idea of otherness is about the way children differ from adults. Because of the way society considers children as natural and vulnerable, the violence that they, and all, are exposed to is more visible. As I have stated above and elsewhere, my pursuit of the idea of the otherness of children is not to say that there is a simple, unbridgeable gap between adulthood and childhood but What we need to know is that children are people as adults are, in terms of basic social, physiological psychological functions, yet at the same time these formations are set in these very different affective processes of body. Hassan guides the audience through his fraught childhood relationship with his father, a strict figure who took him to Home Depot for his sixth birthday. The theme of father-son conflict serves as a moral core of the show. Hassan used “the unconditional love” to describe his father's inexpressive emotions as a way to portray immigrant parents and their attempt to shape children as “little Kobes” it is a way to show how second-generation kids often face extreme pressure to parents sacrifices. Hassan jokes about his father’s emotional distance. He talks about the pressure of being the child of demanding parents while at the same time struggling to fit in. Throughout this experience shows us the different types of cultural power that adults have over children is by taking away their freedom, as Minhaj explains in his stand up comedy how his father’s expectations constantly clashed with the easy freedom around him. A slight demonstration is when he projects a film of a young kid calmly winning the National Spelling Bee alongside footage of his impassive parents in the audience, Minhaj seeks to explain how that pressure “conditional love” flashes over the kid’s unsmiling folks. Another fear he is faced with is dating outside your race as he shared very personal stories about interracial teen love. There is this fear in the brown community to date outside your culture, dating a white person is a kind of exile. The otherness he faced around his family is not being able to fit and to be understood, as children we need our voices to be heard. His father could not put himself in his shoes to truly understand where he was coming from as mentioned in Understanding childhood ''that adults find it difficult to imagine a child’s world at all ”(Kehily p218). This is a form of otherness we have all been that other once for the child is familiar to us and yet still strange to his or her parents. As stated in the book Global Childhood: Issues and Debates “children are conceived of as category proto-adults and what happens during the early life stage is proposed as having ongoing effects into adulthood” (Cregan & Cuthbert p9). As parents, we need to take into consideration that every decision we took might have an effect on the child into adulthood.
To conclude, the concept of otherness is a complex one, it is hard to pinpoint exactly what it means. The question of who the “other” is might seem pointless because in some ways we are all “others” to someone and everyone else is “other” to us. The other is continually changing we need something that to some degree that is different from ourselves to actually constitute a self. Both “Born A Crime” by Trevor Noah and “ Homecoming King” by Hassan Minhaj engage in otherness by dealing with serious issues such as racial differences in their community and at school, and the way the Hassan “Homecoming King” challenge adults ideas by being othered. Both of these autobiographical texts used humor to make their stories more accessible to the audience. We are all shaped by the experiences of our childhood, and these hold us to an extent at least through the rest of our lives and so, therefore, we need to be open to children's worlds in order to make a better one for them by not trying to steal their joy and their burden.