The distinction between “us” and “them” occurs within our earliest historical evidence, on ancient Sumerian and Akkadian tablets, just as it exists in the language and culture of peoples all over the world. Such distinctions are charged, sometimes with attraction, perhaps more often with repulsion—or both at once. The ancient Egyptian word for Egyptian simply means “human”; the Greek word for non-Greeks, “barbarian,” mimics the guttural gibberish of those who do not speak Greek—since they speak unintelligibly, the Greeks call them barbaroi
