By Anna Williams
On Sep. 18, I attended the viewing of a political project on campus called “Undivide Us.” This kind of topic makes for great on-campus publicity during election years, so it makes sense that this was presented when it was.
My initial expectation was that this presentation was going to be another attempt at trying to get people from the opposite end of the political spectrum to see eye-to-eye. What I did not expect to see, however, was a genuine display of open, empathetic conversation between so many Americans.
Ben Klutsey, one of the civil initiators within the political project, offered a few words prior to the viewing of the film that stuck with me. He explained that there was no hidden agenda to promote a new method of discourse among Americans, the presentation was simply the documentation of political conversations from differing perspectives.
“The film was really a journey to see how average Americans really feel about political matters,” Klutsey said.
After the film, Klutsey brought us into an intimate moment in his life. He shared that he was silenced from expressing any of his political opinions outside of his family’s home by his father in Ghana. It was only when he moved to the United States to study philosophy in college that he was given the platform to state his inclinations of the political realm around him.
I connected to this personal anecdote because my family also encouraged the withdrawal from political conversations outside the home as a means to not offend opposing perspectives. Writing for this newspaper is where I, for the first time in my life, felt freedom to express my thoughts without constriction.
Although Klutsey and I have been silenced to protect the feelings of others, there are other people in the world that have been silenced due to more extreme reasons. For example, forceful silencing of the political, moderate majority by the polarized minority. The polarized minority, on both ends of the political spectrum, are the ones that receive airtime by media networks. Their extremist views are focused on during national debates and within the content of K-12 schools. This attention on the minority inadvertently silences the majority that believe in more subtle political ideals.
This notion ignited many questions in my mind but most revealing was this: What will it take for the majority to achieve space within political conversations again?”
The answer to my question was in the demonstration I witnessed in the “Undivide Us” film. When people, regardless of demographic differences, come together to share their thoughts on the world around them, connection prevails. Everyone’s opinion becomes simply a personal statement and not an offensive one.
I can only hope that students and staff on U of L’s campus can learn from the Americans that partook in the “Undivide Us” film, and take personal initiative to imitate those conversations this election year. Unity in empathy is more powerful than division in thought.
