Dehumanizing The Other

The history of "whiteness" in america is a long one, many children of color who grew up in the united states believe it to be cut and dry. I don't even remember being aware of the existence of other races outside of my own and the other (white people) until sometime during kindergarten. I learned in high school however that eugenics, language and cultural customs labeled many people we define as white today as other. Immigrants coming from eastern Europe were often ostracized and made to live in abominable housing situations in the city before eventually being treated as white people under the law. This allowance gave them opportunities to do things that other races simply couldn't because of how they looked. I feel that these types of rules concerning otherness have transferred onto religion when it comes to identifying the other.
We simply use different markers now. We see a headscarf, hear someones accent when they speak, we hear them talk about themselves, many times in attempts to humanize and/or assimilate themselves and these markers are all that we see. We become less trusting, less rational, less empathetic because we have been sent messages about people that we haven't taken the time to understand ourselves. We often believe in our own complexities with a fervor, we make excuses for ourselves, for people we know. We never want to believe that what we know could be bad. We dehumanize people by refusing to be realistic about the situations they are in and believing that if it were us, we would be different.
When it comes to refugees and taking in people we know little about as the general public, I don't think that is a burden they should have to carry. I don't believe the religion of any said refugee makes them any more prone to terrorism, because I don't think any said refugee's priorities would be on terrorism. I think it would be hard enough to be in america as a Muslim but being a refugee, who may have an accent or limited english, I'd imagine that would be terrifying in itself so I can only imagine what they would be facing to want to come here. I feel that in order to humanize the other we have to take responsibility for the damage we have done to how we and everyone around us sees them as people. We other people, separate their differences from our definitions of humanity without being as ambitions to correct ourselves when we are wrong.