Diversity Symposium

So today I went to the brown bag lunch dialogue for the Diversity Symposium. For our small group discussion, our topic focused on a certain Congressman calling Native American reservations "wards" of the U.S. government. Right off the bat, I was stumped. I felt like I had absolutely nothing to contribute to the conversation because I knew absolutely nothing about the relationship between the government and Native American reservations. That was until we started talking about the fact that most of us are ignorant about these issues, irrespective of whether we were from the Midwest or not. It appalled me that even those who had spent their entire lives in South Dakota knew as little about this subject as I did. What I really took away from this experience was the discussion about how there are different worlds when surrounded by different crowds. One example is the notion of locker room chat. People are more prone to say things that would publicly be inappropriate when in a setting with “friends.”Sometimes these dialogues are not even what a person actually thinks, but there is this pressure to conform and to do, say, or believe what everyone else does, says, and believes. Personally, I’ve been in situations similar to this. I once hung out with my boyfriend’s friends and I really wanted them to like me. They are in the cross country team and I wanted to seem like I was interested in running and things they liked even though I hate running. We were staying in Okoboji and when it got late, they had an idea to go for a run to the lake and go for a night swim. Never in a million years would I have done this if I was alone or even with my own friends. But I felt the need to conform and do reckless things to prove to them that I was cool. The same thing happens all the time to others; except, sometimes it can be about degrading comments and views. This topic was very similar to my discussion for Voices of Discovery. I am actually very grateful for having attended the symposium because I think that these discussions, if anything, at least increase awareness for the abysmal behavior that is going on around us.