Commentary On Outcast United By Warren St. John

Outcast United is written by Warren St. John, he was a journalist for the New York Times and has received many awards for excellence in writing. Outcast United is the story of a refugee soccer team and about a woman who is a great coach. The book focuses on the life of the refugees, and the struggle they went through to get settled in Clarkston, Georgia. It also talks about how they were forced to hold guns and fight for their village and its people. Some kids suffered some illness and psychological conditions. It also talks about the coach, Luma’s life and the struggles she went through to help those Refugees. Warren St. John mentions Steven Vertovec’s advice on how to cope with super-diversity, immigration, and minorities.
The story of outcast

He noted "those top-down efforts to impose contact and understanding between various groups were likely to fail; connecting was something that individuals would have to accomplish organically and on their own. At the same time, he wrote, it was important to remember that a sense of belonging was not a zero-sum game."(St. John 185). He says to follow his three steps in coping diversity. The first step is de-categorize, which means consider in which category they belong to, job, kids and any crime or not. The second step is re-categorize, whereby "individuals recast themselves not in terms of their differences, but in terms of what they have in common. That Liberian refugee and a white southerner might seem to have little in common if categorized according to race and place of origin, but they might share the same gender, religion, and their identity"(St. John's 185). The final step, he calls is mutual differentiation, “an acknowledgment of interdependence that takes into account various group identities. The idea is not that everyone needs to be the same, but the members of different groups respect members of other groups.”(St. John's

When they joined the school, the white people decided to transfer their kids to a different school. Clarkstown people started escaping from the super-diversity instead of coping and finding a solution to get along. What's makes it difficult for them to find a solution is racism instead of living and embracing the change. Even the police officers harassed the refugees for example "police stopped Chime who was driving his car claiming that he was over speeding yet he wasn't." Officers abused their powers to harass the minorities. In the small town of Clarkston, there were some people who supported the refugees and there were some who disliked them. Some of the town people were even afraid to talk to the refugees, assuming they were dangerous and bad people. Due to all of these reasons it made very difficult for the people of Clarkston to find a way to get along. The other thing that made difficult to get along was the language barriers. Even the agencies, which were supposed to help the refugees