The Fightback July 2025 Part III: The Shame of Otherness

‘Shame is like a prison.

But a prison that you deserve to be in because something is wrong with you’

Brene Brown

‘I remember sitting in a class as a child aged around 7, being read a book.  Unlike the other children though, this regular event brought up difficult feelings for me.  The reason why was that the book was called ‘Little Black Sambo.’  The story of a black child, like me, written by a white European woman, the story felt wrong to me.  It left me feeling ashamed of my black skin.  Even at the age of 7.’

We are formed by shame from our earliest days as the other.  Moulded by a sense of shame that we are not good enough because we are the wrong skin colour in white Eurocentric spaces, because we are women in patriarchal societies, because we are LGBTQ in heteronormative circles, or because we happen to be neurodiverse in neurotypical societies.  Shame makes us perform, mask, code switch, or repress that which makes us the other, which marks us out as an outsider and different within societies which struggle to accommodate that which challenges its own supremacy.

This month’s blog takes a brief, but important look at shame.  Building on the ideas of historical erasure, which I presented in the first blog of this series, it is important to recognise just how fascist societies force the other into feeling a sense of shame about their very existence.  Their position as being less than being the first rung upon that downward shame constructed spiral staircase into the depths of inauthenticity and despair. 

‘Shame is a soul eating emotion’

C. G. Jung

‘My parents sent me to private school because they didn’t want me to grow up like the children back in Trinidad.  They wanted me to grow up to be English (not even necessarily British).  They wanted me to wear the right clothes, speak the right way, act in a way, which was English.  They sent me to that school because in some ways they were ashamed of their own cultural background.  They were willing to reject it for a mirage of a better life for their son.’

There is shame in even existing. This is a strange phrase I know, but when in a space where supremacy reigns, to simply exist as the other, as counter to that which believes itself to be supreme, one has to embrace a sense of shame for that existence.  So we avoid any sense of shame.  We tell our children they are not good enough as they are.  We buy into the messaging that for them to be accepted they have to give up who they were.  Their past, their heritage, their connection to the ancestors.  They have to put to one side the aspects of being which made them, of which they should now be ashamed.    

In a world where supremacy reigns, to be oneself, to be authentically the other, is not allowed.  So we find the ways and means of being which allow us to still exist in such spaces, whilst performing our worth within such societal spaces.  Code switching.  Such pain.  Performance.  Such distress.  Masking.  Such inauthenticity.  We find and we adapt to the world which moulds us to be not just other but less than.

Conversely, there are always stories of how these adaptations sit on our shoulders.  I remember telling friends of colour about my experiences of visiting Zambia, and which they resonated with based on their travels around the continent of Africa, where they felt they were able to breathe whilst they were there.  We talked about how when we were there we were able to stand tall, to feel full, to be fully ourselves.  Experiences versus those when they flew back into Heathrow, Manchester or Birmingham Airports, where we instinctively (or unconsciously) knew to dip our shoulders, to avoid eye contact, to speak more softly, all so as not to draw too much attention to oneself.  All whilst walking alongside often Europeans who know not what the other has to endure as they rush, sometimes sober sometimes not, through an airport feeling that reversed sense of comfort from being ‘home.’

‘Shame dies when stories are told in safe places’

Ann Voskamp

‘The absence of blackness on my course meant I was too ashamed to bring it up whilst I trained to be a psychotherapist.  The messages I received from peers that I was not up to their standard were regular and even occurred post qualifying.  The hate of those who believed they were superior delivering shames stiff backhand against my black cheek as the other.’

It is Hubris, that cousin to narcissism, drives supremacy in these instances (Trumbull, 2010).  In doing so, what it also has to do is to reject its own connection to shame, and therefore that which completed its humanity.  Humanness.  Our humanness, that thing which we all crave.  To be seen as human, and therefore worthy.  To be seen as human and therefore have the right to live.  When the hubris of those who think they are most important is involved though, that is what is most often stripped away from us.  Our humanity.  Our humanness. 

Yet, shame is not just that which is forced upon us by social constructions of identity which mould us, be they driven by culture, religion, class or some other part of the system.  Shame is also that which stops us from committing the most horrendous acts against the other, be they singular or multiple.  Shame of being found out, of being seen, of being discovered, these things are important when avoiding the hubris of Icarus and his flight too near the sun.

Yet, in a fascist world, that shame is forced outwards onto an other made other by a society which doesn’t want to acknowledge the diversity of its genders, races, sexualities, abilities, the humanness of the other.  The other less than.  It is created and projected upon.  It wears the shame of fascism like an ill-fitting cloak of thorns and then acts into said cloak as if willing to wear it.

To fight back, one therefore has to remove their cloak of shame and remember our own humanity.  We need to take back the right to self-identify as all things, but particularly as human beings.  Then we have to recall and fight past that shame of standing by and doing nothing whilst so many others fight for their rights, their voice, their lives. 

The shame of an inaction discovered, being the truest shame of them all. 

‘The way out of shame is to own it, and go on being your best,

showing up rather than hiding because of it.

Don’t let shame own you and keep you small’

Debra Campbell

References

Trumbull, D. (2010). Hubris: A Primal Danger. Psychiatry: Interpersonal & Biological Processes, 73(4), 341–351. https://doi.org/10.1521/psyc.2010.73.4.341