' When you exclude a child, you are essentially saying they're not good enough for society. A lot of my peers who have been excluded ended up in prison or dead.

What did exclusivity ever have to offer but a distorted, unrealistic view of the world? People who stuck only to their own kind were scared people

But when they have realized that it [society] rejects them forever, they themselves assume the ostracism of which they are victims so as not to leave the initiative to their oppressors

The keynote of minority prejudice is this: They are loathed because they are feared.

The children of the prophets of the Lord,
Prince, priest, and people, spurned by zealot hate.
Hounded from sea to sea, from state to state,
The West refused them, and the East abhorred.
No anchorage the known world could afford.

For a wild child born into a rigid community, the usual outcome is to experience the ignominy of being shunned. Shunning treats the victim as if she does not exist. It withdraws spiritual concern, love, and other psychic necessities from that person. The idea is to force her to conform, or else kill her spirituality and/or to drive her from the village to languish and die in the outback

Last year we stepped onto an elevator.
We politely asked the white lady behind us
If she could please take the next lift
To continue social distancing.
Her face flared up like a cross in the night.
Are you kidding me? she yelled,
Like we'd just declared
Elevators for us only
Or Yous must enter from the back
Or No yous or dogs allowed
Or We have the right to refuse
Humanity to anyone

Why it's so perturbing for privileged groups to follow
restrictions of place & personhood.
Doing so means for once wearing the chains their power
has shackled on the rest of us.

It is to surrender the one difference that kept them separate & thus superior.

Meanwhile, for generations we've stayed home, [segre] gated, kept out of parks, kept out of playgrounds, kept out of pools, kept out of public spaces, kept out of outside spaces, kept out of outer space, kept out of movie theaters, kept out of malls, kept out of restrooms, kept out of restaurants, kept out of taxis, kept out of buses, kept out of beaches, kept out of ballot boxes, kept out of office, kept out of the army, kept out of the hospitals, kept out of hotels, kept out of clubs, kept out of jobs, kept out of schools, kept out of sports, kept out of streets, kept out of water, kept out of land, kept out of kept in kept from kept behind kept below kept down kept without life.

Some were asked to walk a fraction / of our exclusion for a year & it almost destroyed all they thought they were. Yet here we are. Still walking, still kept.

My brothers and sisters all hated me 'cause I was an only child.

When the feminist movement started in the 60s and 70s, lesbians were often excluded, because we were told that we would make the movement less palatable. I have been excluded myself, so how could I do that to someone else?

We were outcasts, roughly expressionist painters not acceptable to most dealers and collectors.(A reference to the TEN group of painters).

Shunning by family, cliques, or governments is an active form of harassment, and is consistently detrimental to all parties, even as it becomes normalized and status quo. Our friend, family member, co-worker, fellow HIV-negative, fellow citizen, or co-religionist may suffer from mental illness manifesting as Supremacy or Trauma. Consequently, they may be calling Abuse as an apparatus to absolve themselves of responsibility that they do not have the support to face. Our complicity with ignoring their suffering and our complicity with falsely placing the blame on the other party is not only not loyalty, it hurts them. It makes them worse. This is the opposite of friendship. The denial is dishonest and it prolongs the torture. It sucks. And it’s shallow, and desperately needs to be dismantled.

They seemed, like himself, to be living in a world which did not want them.

When we exclude part of the community, we deny ourselves the participation and contribution of those left out. We allow the possibility of conflict in some future time, neither scenario we can afford. Everyone, irrespective of ethnicity, has a contribution to make no matter how humble or small.

When we leave out people on the grounds of ethnicity we limit our options. As such, we become poorer because we are not making optimum use of our human resources, thereby depriving us of the returns and full benefit of our capabilities.