Maybe It’S High Time We Opened Our Eyes

A week or so ago I was in Nampa for the Miss Idaho USA and Miss Idaho Teen USA Pageants.

These pageants are a big deal. The winners of each will represent our state in the nationally televised network broadcasts of the Miss USA and Miss Teen USA Pageants.

So when a teenager from Bonners Ferry, Shari Short, was crowned Miss Idaho Teen USA and three of the top five in the Miss Idaho USA Pageant were young women from our neck of the woods (Jaime Johnson of Post Falls, Camille Anderson of Harrison and Rebekah Rouw of St. Maries), I was tickled.

Following the pageant, people mingled in the hotel lobby with the contestants and their families. I was visiting with the overwhelmed and excited new Miss Idaho Teen USA when a fellow in his 60s, nicely dressed and grandfatherly, walked up and congratulated her. He asked where she was from, and she proudly told him, Bonners Ferry.

Then we all stood stunned when he snidely commented, “Oh, I know where that is. It’s in the part of the state that’s been turned over to the Aryan Nations.” I looked at the face of a teenager turn from glowing with excitement to embarrassment.

There was dead silence throughout the lobby as I heard myself telling this man that his comments were inappropriate and inaccurate. I told him with passion that the handful of hateful and deranged people who lived in North Idaho certainly did not define us, and I resented a fellow Idahoan being so completely uninformed and insensitive.

I think I threw in something about maybe he should take a tour of the state he lived in before he put his ignorance on display so publicly in the future.

On the drive home my 23-year-old daughter, Sarah, and I talked about the incident. While she had been taken aback by my vehement reaction, she was proud of my speaking out. Comparing me to that great fictional orator Julia Sugarbaker of “Designing Women” was flattering, but I still was trying to figure out what caused me to react that way.

I think it was because we’re used to those misconceptions and blanket statements from people who live elsewhere. It was a real jolt to be made so utterly aware that this perception of our part of the state exists, even within our state.

Maybe we need to get angry. If we are guilty of anything, it’s of not taking these Aryan followers seriously for too long. It’s been an easy error to make since we don’t see them, not at the grocery stores or walking down the street or sitting in the bleachers watching a high school football game. Their numbers seem so few and the followers so transient. How easy it’s been to dismiss them as the lunatic fringe which every community must endure in some form.

These people walk among us here every day, and we don’t see them. We resent the reputation we have of nurturing the racist philosophy, knowing that it’s untrue and undeserved. We wring our hands and talk about it. We teach our children that that way of life and thinking is wrong and dangerous.

We blame the media for unfairly portraying this community as a haven for hate. We go on about our business and concentrate on all that’s good and decent and right about Idaho. We go on living. Maybe we need to let anger and indignation open our eyes.

Attorney General Al Lance is the guest of honor at an Idaho “homecoming” this weekend. Lance recently was elected national commander for the 2.6 million-member American Legion, the first Idahoan to ever hold that office.

His banquet will feature our own Chuck Lempesis as emcee and Gov. Dirk Kempthorne as the keynote speaker. Veterans here and all across the country will be well-served by Commander Lance.

On Sept. 30, guests at Cavanaughs Templin’sResort in Post Falls were treated to a pretty spectacular fireworks display over the Spokane River. Motorists on the Spokane Street bridge stopped to gawk at the practice display for the hotel’s New Year’s Eve 2000 celebration. Let the countdown begin.