Living in a culture of Denialism

"The ideals that bind us together are as old as our nation, but so are the forces that pull us apart." -President Bill Clinton (June 14, 1997) Recently, I went to the Student Leadership Summit in McCall with other student leaders of Boise State University. The first half of the weekend was incredibly uplifting. People supported each other on the ropes course, we networked, talked about ways to improve our campus and how we’d try to stay in touch. The second half of the summit was more eye opening and almost sad. We went through a sort of diversity training in which we examined the terms oppression and discrimination. We talked about how they are still in effect with the use of stereotypes and false judgments, giving us a culturally aware filter. Some people responded positively, almost empowered. Others, well, not so much. It never occurred to me that oppression and discrimination weren’t prevalent in United States’ society until I was approached with this situation of false advocacy. It was the perception that things like, age-ism, sexism and racism didn’t exist anymore. As one woman pointed out, "We’re in the 21st century … [oppression] doesn’t exist anymore." One man said, "I believe in the Bill of Rights … all men are created equal." Without realizing it, this man discredited women and opposed their rights as humans in the United States with the use of "all men." I remember being incredibly sad and angry when I spoke up, trying to mask my shaking hands with strong, clear words and experiences of my background with oppression and discrimination. Others and I tried to say, "Hey, this is still happening!" but they wouldn’t hear us. They tuned us out, ignored our pasts and instead of creating a unified opinion of truth and freedom, they denied us our background, our history and the issues that still occur. They made us invisible. They were bound to their belief of disbelief and no one would take them out of their happy world. They used words like "colorblind" to instill a place of unity between the races, thinking that everyone went through the same steps of environmental safety. Obviously, they haven’t gone through motions of oppression or discrimination. Therefore, they can’t exist. I call this perception "denialism" and it is, most likely, going to turn our world backward. A big part of me is where I came from: my ethnicity, my gender and the experiences that came with them. I am a black, white, Native American and heterosexual woman born and raised in a military community. My experiences are vast, but that does not mean I ignore others. If anything, my background is what led me to oppose these practitioners of denialism and write this article in the first place. After the summit, I talked to several students on and off campus about oppression and discrimination. I asked them about their backgrounds and experiences. I listed several questions on my Myspace blog and bulletin board and was amazed by my friends’ responses from both sides of the oppressed and the blind oppressors. When I asked a friend if he felt that discrimination and oppression were present in Boise, Leeland, who is a white American male and former student at Boise State wrote, "If it is, I have not really seen it myself. There may be some frustrations over those living among [us] who can not communicate on our terms." I asked the same question to Claire, a multi-racial American female student of Boise State who wrote, "Yes, you see it when people talk about Mexican farm workers or when Neo Nazi’s show up at an Obama rally." I agree with Claire when she said, "The average Idahoan’s problem is more ignorance than anything." Denialism is serious. If we keep everything the same and ignore the issues, no one gets hurt, when in fact everyone’s hurt.

Jessica Henderson
Opinion Journalist

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