Scholars have used the idea for decades. Edward Said's 1978 book Orientalism showed how Western writing cast Middle Eastern and Asian peoples as exotic and backward, which helped justify colonial rule. Legal scholar john a. powell made othering and belonging a central framework at UC Berkeley, where the Othering & Belonging Institute took that name in 2019.
US law has othered groups many times. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 barred Chinese laborers by treating them as unassimilable. During World War II, about 120,000 people of Japanese descent, most of them US citizens, were incarcerated as potential enemies. After September 11, 2001, Muslim Americans faced surveillance programs based on religion.
Othering works through language as well as law. Words like "illegals," "invasion" or "thugs" frame people as threats rather than neighbors. The opposite goal, belonging, means full membership: being able to shape the institutions that affect your life.