{"id":218,"date":"2017-12-20T10:57:06","date_gmt":"2017-12-20T15:57:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nlg.org\/nlg-review\/?post_type=article&p=218"},"modified":"2018-01-04T18:58:43","modified_gmt":"2018-01-04T23:58:43","slug":"on-denial","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/www.nlg.org\/nlg-review\/article\/on-denial\/","title":{"rendered":"On Denial"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Natsu Taylor Saito<\/strong><\/p>\n

Natsu Taylor Saito is a renowned human rights attorney, scholar, and professor. But, she tells us, \u201cthis definitely does not reflect the views of my employer. I was supposed to write a nice academic essay. But only a rant came out.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Climate change. Global warming.
\nA big chunk of Antarctica just fell off.
\nThe seas are rising. Palau is sinking.
\nCan the ICJ fix it?<\/p>\n

Great case study for my students.
\nEver heard of Palau? Did you know it was a U.S. colony?
\nBut I digress.<\/p>\n

While we weren\u2019t looking the clowns came in. The scary kind.
\nGo to sleep one night, joking about them.
\nWake up the next day and they\u2019re in charge.
\nAll oil pipelines are hereby approved
\nThe EPA is run by a guy who wants to disappear it.
\nThe Park Service can\u2019t tweet.
\nThe USDA can\u2019t tell us what\u2019s in our food.
\nAnd ExxonMobil\u2019s CEO is in charge of world peace.<\/p>\n

Climate change is a hoax, the clowns tell us.
\nThe Chinese invented it to steal our jobs. Or maybe our
\nhair spray.<\/p>\n

Do people really believe this? Maybe so.
\nApparently one in four Americans doesn\u2019t know the earth
\nrevolves around the sun.
\nWhat have<\/em> they been teaching our kids?
\nBut that\u2019s another story.<\/p>\n

What is to be done?
\nMarch for Science. March for Truth. March, march, march.
\nThose marchers are mad.
\nThey want to know why so many people deny the facts.
\nDon\u2019t those deniers know that science brought us progress?
\nMade us rich?
\nThat we need it to fix everything we screwed up?<\/p>\n

Wait. Is this that science that brought us nuclear power?
\nDrones? Roundup?
\nTold us to drink the water in Flint?
\nPut beads in skulls to figure out who\u2019s smartest?
\nSterilized us for our own good?
\nPut our ancestors\u2019 bones in their museums?
\nThis is getting a little messy.<\/p>\n

Maybe they\u2019re talking about the science that\u2019s so proud of
\nitself for figuring out
\nThat there really were ages of fire and ice.
\nThat animals do talk to each other.
\nThat without bees, nothing is going to grow.
\nOne day science might even tell us we\u2019re all related.<\/p>\n

But in the meantime, what about those people who believe all
\nthose other<\/em> stories?
\nThat we can keep digging up dead stuff and burn it and
\nstill breathe the air.
\nThat we can keep bombing other people\u2019s countries and
\nnot have enemies.
\nThat locking up babies makes life safer.
\nThat Black and Brown and Red and Yellow people
\nare scary. And stealing their jobs, their schools,
\ntheir<\/em> country.
\nWho taught them this?<\/p>\n

Maybe we do have to get back to that what-did-you-learn-in-
\nschool-today story.
\nLet me guess.
\nChristopher Columbus discovered America. And it was a good thing.
\nPretty sure everyone\u2019s taught that.<\/p>\n

They say origin stories tell us who we are.
\nWhere we come from. Where we are going.<\/p>\n

So, who was this guy, anyway?
\nCrist\u00f3bal Colon, they called him. Crystal Ball the
\nColonizer.
\nItalian? Spanish? Portuguese? A converso<\/em>?
\nNo one really seems to know.
\nBut that\u2019s ok. Definitely a White guy.
\n(Heard a Black guy had to show him the way, but why mess up a good story?)<\/p>\n

And there\u2019s America, just waiting to be discovered.
\nIt was already America, the most powerful country
\non the planet.
\nRipe for the picking.
\nIt wasn\u2019t Turtle Island, home to hundreds of nations. Nope.
\nNo one was here. Well, almost no one.
\nWe have the Pilgrims and John Wayne to take care of that.
\nAnd those diseases no one is responsible for.
\nThose Indians, they just disappeared.
\nBut don\u2019t worry, we honor them every day.
\nThe Redskins. The Braves. Squaw Peak.<\/p>\n

In any case, if you discover something, you get to keep it, right?
\nIn law school we teach it this way:
\nOn the discovery of this immense continent<\/em> . . . blah,
\nblah . . . the character and religion of its inhabitants <\/em>
\nafforded an apology for considering them as people <\/em>
\nover whom the superior genius of Europe might <\/em>
\nclaim an ascendency. <\/em>1<\/p>\n

Blah, blah, and to keep the Europeans from killing
\neach other, they decided that discovery gave title . . .
\nwhich title might be consummated by possession. 2
\nThat John Marshall had a way with words.
\nBut it\u2019s the same story.<\/p>\n

Columbus discovered America.
\nThe land of the free. Or was it the brave?
\nThose colonizers worked hard.
\nTheir science and industry brought riches, power,
\nProgress.
\nStolen lands and enslaved labor? Those were just
\npassing phases.
\nUnfortunate, no doubt. Sort of like collateral damage.
\nBut worth it.<\/p>\n

You who are now so outraged about the denial of truth:
\nDid you contest this origin story? Do you?
\nIt surrounds us, smothers us, every day.
\n\u201cBut don\u2019t you think things are getting better?\u201d
\nHere comes that Progress again.
\nNo, actually, I don\u2019t.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t replace us,\u201d those blond boys proclaim from their
\ntorchlit parade.
\n\u201cBlood and Soil!\u201d Heard that somewhere before.
\nClearly these guys have drunk the Koolaid.
\nBut who\u2019s been making it and passing it out, all these
\nyears?
\nWhy wouldn\u2019t they think that Columbus discovered
\nAmerica, for them<\/em>?
\nTheir<\/em> blood. Their<\/em> soil.<\/p>\n

When the Tainos don\u2019t matter, or the Pequots, or Sand
\nCreek, or Wounded Knee, or Standing Rock, or Puerto
\nRico, why would anyone care about Palau, just another
\nlittle colony sinking below the waves?<\/p>\n

If we can pretend that we\u2019re not on illegally occupied lands,
\nbenefitting daily from slave labor of one kind or another,
\nlocking up or killing those who are inconvenient, why
\ncan\u2019t we pretend the oceans aren\u2019t rising?<\/p>\n

Which truths are ok to deny, and which ones are we supposed
\nto be mad about?
\nIt\u2019s hard for me to see the cutline.
\nExcept maybe that it\u2019s your kids now.<\/p>\n

My father told me to never trust a liberal.
\nBut then he had a chip on his shoulder.
\nSomething about being a kid in an internment camp.
\nAnd the resounding silence of the liberals.
\nBut that\u2019s another story.
\n___________________________
\nNOTES
\n1. Excerpted from Johnson v. M\u2019Intosh<\/em>, 21 U.S. 543, 572-73 (1823).
\n2. Id.<\/em><\/p>\n

Image: Hurricane Irma over the Virgin Islands at peak intensity on September 6, 2017 as the second most intense Atlantic hurricane on record in terms of sustained winds.\u00a0 (Photo: NASA.gov<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Natsu Taylor Saito Natsu Taylor Saito is a renowned human rights attorney, scholar, and professor. But, she tells us, \u201cthis definitely does not reflect the views of my employer. I was supposed to write a nice academic essay. But only a rant came out.\u201d Climate change. Global warming. A big chunk of Antarctica just […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":258,"menu_order":80,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_blocks_custom_css":"","_kad_blocks_head_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_body_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_footer_custom_js":"","footnotes":"","_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"issuem_issue":[90],"class_list":["post-218","article","type-article","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","issuem_issue-nlg-review-vol-74-no-2-summer-2017","post","post-with-thumbnail","post-with-thumbnail-large"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t