"They will burn sulfur instead of holy incense. They will sing and dance around her coffin, pulling at their hair and flesh. They will slay a rooster and spread his blood on their dead sister" (p. 139).

This quote calls to mind a dangerous ideology. It's all throughout the text that we read, and the society in which we live. With phrases such as "we" or "us" or "our", it's easy to feel comfortable, safe, understood, and a part of.  It almost goes without saying that statements of "they" and "them" seem to threaten this sacred construct of "us" that we identify with. However, misunderstanding and fear of ‘them’ can lead to rumors and exaggerations that are at best humiliating and crippling, and at worst fatal. 

Perhaps the magnitude of what I’m saying is lost without examples to support it. One very dramatic case of the monstrous “them’’ is in Donald Trump’s 2015 presidential announcement speech. “They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.” ‘They’ are Mexicans, ‘We’ are Americans. They threaten us, ergo they must be stopped. With this mentality, it isn't surprising that ‘we’ put ‘them’ in cages, even if ‘they’ are infants.

There are many examples of this mentality in literature as well, one of my favorites is found in “The Crucible”. When young girls wind up in trouble for dancing in the woods, Abigail constructs a ‘them’ to save herself. In this case ‘they’ are witches/vehicles of Satan, who must be tried and executed. 

We are all guilty of this mindset, it is ingrained in every prejudice we hold. Even when reading ''Bless me, Ultima". Many quotes throughout the book shame witchcraft, but Ultima is 'guilty' of many of the practices condemned in the book.
All things considered, there is a thin line between building communities and building walls, and it is difficult to do one without the other. I suppose all we can do to combat this parasitic concept is to remember that we are all simultaneously us and them depending on the light we are viewed in.