4A -Thursday, October 16, 2014 The Michigan Daily - michigandailycom 4A -Thursday, October16, 2014 The Michigan Daily - michigandailycom Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan since 1890. 420 Maynard St. Ann Arbor, MI 48109 tothedaily@michigandaily.com MEGAN MCDONALD PETER SHAHIN and DANIEL WANG KATIE BURKE EDITOR IN CHIEF EDITORIAL PAGE EDITORS MANAGING EDITOR Unsigned editorials reflect the official position of the Daily's editorial board. All other signed articles and illustrations represent solely the views of their authors. Is Ebolapopulation control? time. Given the time and guid- ance to work through problems in an environment less constrained by the pressures and the threat of failure imposed by tests, more students, even the ones who didn't believe in themselves at first, might experience success, ultimately giv- ing them self-confidence and skills for future study. In classrooms with a structured curriculum and limited resources, that kind of environment and continual practice isn't always easy to provide. According to Kimball, "even for young kids, school is kind of high pressure." In an environment outside of or after school, that pressure might be limited, allowing more time for mistakes, and more time to work through and find the right answer. As I've noted from the outset, I'm not a STEM major. Unlike some of our politicians and business leaders, I'm not totally convinced that the fact that so many people want to major in non-STEM fields is quite the problem it's been made it out to be. However, the reason why some students might avoid STEM education is a problem. The idea that people that might not pursue something - anything - because of an erroneous belief that that they can't succeed in that area, reinforced by their experiences in school, is something that we've got to change. In addition to current solutions, creating an environment where students believe that they can succeed will invariably create more successes. All things equal, that is something worth pursuing. - Victoria Noble can be reached at vjnoble@umich.edu. 4 uring Fall Break I had a bit more time for leisure activities, so I spent some time browsing social media sites, Face- book, Instagram, etc. While scrolling through Facebook, a friend shared a link to a Yahoo article titled, "Chris Brown Thinks Ebola Is a r FormofPopulationControl." Being a fan of the well-3 known R&B singer wasn't the sole reason for clicking on the article. "Thinks Ebola SIERRA Is a Form of Population BROWN Control" really stuck out and bothered me. I hoped Brown's thoughts were misconstrued, because no one in their right mind could possibly compare the deaths resulting from Ebola to population control. Thus, I began reading the article with the anticipation that its contents wouldn't be as bad as the title made it sound. The article disclosed that Chris Brown shared his thoughts concerning Ebola on Twitter. He apparently tweeted, "I don't know ... But I think this Ebola epidemic is a form of population control. S--t is getting crazy bruh." Wanting this tweet to be somewhat of a bad joke, I typed it into Google and found many other sources restating the claims of the Yahoo article. In a matter of seconds I received about 2,270,000 results referring to Chris Brown'stweet. After offering his thoughts on the Ebola outbreak, many of Brown's 13.7 million Twitter followers disagreed with his judgment. Minutes after his first tweet, Brown tweeted, "Let me shut my black a-- up!" That would probably be best. The comment seemed very unnecessary and slightly ignorant. Was Brown hinting that governments are screwed up enough to target people through an infectious and fatal disease? If so, what proofhad he beengiven?Maybe he tried his luck at saying something intelligent but his comments backfired. Perhapsahe was regretful of his Ebola tweet, and tried to retract it by sending his secondtweetaboutshuttingup. However, the outrage and angry tweets did not cease. @TheMichaelMoran tweeted, "You know what the discussion of the Ebola epidemic needed? More stupid. Here comes Chris Brown." @WarrenHolstein stated, "Chris Brown tweeted that Ebola is 'a form of population control.' He should try it." @MyPresidentPK commented, "Chris Brown's wondering if Ebola is a form of population control Obviously it isn't. DUH. If it was, we would have given it to him first." While some of these tweets may seem a bit harsh, it's not hard to see why his Twitter follow- ers were upset. The Ebola outbreak has caused more than 4,000 deaths, according to the World Health Organization. While it affected multiple countries in West Africa, cases were diagnosed in Spain as well as the United States. Recently, a U.S. patient, Thomas Eric Duncan, died and the nurse treating him, Nina Pham, tested positive for the disease. Thus, the Ebola outbreak is noth- ing short of dangerous and deadly. For this to be the case, it seems highly unnecessary to suggest that these sudden, unfortunate deaths are a form of population control. However, not all of Chris Brown's followers had negative feedback. ABC 7, Los Angeles, released an article sharing tweets from supporters of Brown's Ebola theory. @ MaronzioVance tweeted, "Hate to say it. But I agree with Chris Brown for the first time ever. Ebola is a form of population control. Love it or leave it." Since more than a few people agreed with the popular singer, maybe he's not as crazy as many write him off as. Is it possible that he's just brave enough to say what many people are thinking? EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS Devin Eggert, David Harris, Rachel John, Jacob Karafa, Jordyn Kay, Aarica Marsh, Megan McDonald, Victoria Noble, Allison Raeck, Melissa Scholke, Michael Schramm, Matthew Seligman, Paul Sherman, Linh Vu, Meher Walia, Mary Kate Winn, Daniel Wang, Derek Wolfe ANITHA MENON The unbearable weight of sunlight i - Sierra Brown can be reached at snbrown@umich.edu. If you really want STEM majors.... So let me start by saying that I'm not studying science, technology, engineering or math - otherwise known as the STEM fields. So you might be wonder why, as someone much more interested in history 0 and politics, I am writing anything about math and science. Let me explain. For the past couple of years, there has been a VICTORIA litany of calls for more NOBLE STEM majors to fill the halls of our universities and to eventually innovate enough to propel our economy into the future. There have been economic concerns, notably that "only 5% of U.S. workers are employed in fields related to science and engineering, yet they are respon- sible for more than 50% of our sustained eco- nomic expansion," as business leader Rodney C. Adkins wrote in a 2012 Forbes piece. What is even more worrying from this perspective is that other countries are educating far more of STEM majors than the United States. Ever concerned with the possibility of U.S. decline, politicians at every level have weighed in with a variety of solutions to combat the decline of interest in math and sciences. This election cycle, we will almost certainly hear just as many if not more of these ideas. According to Michigan.gov, Gov. Rick Snyder called for Michigan to become a leader providing opportunities for STEM education. Snyder backed up these words by spending $3 million and allocating another $2 million in the 2015 education budget for FIRST Robotics - a program that tasks student participants with designing, building and financing robots. The robots then duke it out with other teams' robots in competition. It's clear from his commendable actions that our governor is incredibly serious about training more students in the STEM fields. But, as someone who never seriously considered majoring in the math or science fields, I wondered if these programs or any of the others I've heard discussed in the news would've done much to sway my interests growing up. While I'm sure that the new push to inspire an interest in the STEM fields is effective for many people, I know that for me, any intervention would have had to start much younger. In school, I was always better at writing and reading than I was at math and science, even from a young age. While I was never bad at math per se, I was never really good at it either. I grasped other subjects much more quickly and intuitively, even as I struggled with basic computational math, and later, struggled to apply that math to science. I grew to assume that my talents lay elsewhere, and proceed to put much more time and enthusiasm into other subjects. Consequently, by adopting a hesitant attitude toward math at a young age, I probably never learned the building blocks of the subject thoroughly. When it came time to learn things like pre-algebra, I was already somewhat behind on basic concepts, and learning new ones took much more effort for me than it seemed to for many of my peers. I assumed that this just wasn't going to be something I was good at. Simultaneously, I experienced success in other academic areas, and so ruled out a career in engineering or the sciences before I had even taken my first chemistry or algebra classes. Last year, I read an article by Economics Prof. Miles Kimball and Noah Smith, an assistant professor at Stony Brook University, about "the myth of inborn genetic math ability." To these two (rather credible) writers, the misconception that some people just aren't good at math posed a big problem, because, "for high school math, inborn talent is just much less important than hard work, preparation, and self-confidence." Which makes a lot of sense ... but for 12-year-old me, this myth was my reality. Intrigued by the article, I interviewed Prof. Kimball about what he thought might be done to improve students' interest in math (in addition to the suggestions he outlined in another article). He suggested that what we might do is give students more opportunities to do math outside of school, suggesting having "math clubs as ubiquitous as cub scout troops," where students could go to learn and develop their math skills. He added that "the idea of a math club is for kids who especially like math. But I'm thinking of it ... like the Cub scouts." He elaborated by saying, "parents have their kids their kids go to cub scouts ... or Girl scouts ... even if they're not extra interested in camping," implying that math concepts are, or should be, something that everyone be encouraged to explore. To me, creating a space for children to work on concepts they have (or haven't) struggled with consistently enough to create progress seems like something that might really help students who don't believe in their own ability to learn math and science. Working on difficult concepts in a low- pressure environment, students might feel more free to make mistakes and try new things. I can certainly attest to the fact that everyone approaches math and science dif- ferently - I was forever the student looking at problems differently than my teachers expected or would've liked. I now recognize that as an asset, but it felt like a failure at the When I wasyounger,mymother's resonating mantra was, "Stay out of the sun." She'd sometimes scold me for playing outside too long when she'd come home from work and comment on how dark my face had gotten. She would scrub both of our skin with a homemade concoction of chickpea flour, turmeric and olive oil that was supposed to lighten our complexions. "You were the fairest baby in the Maharashtra hospital, Anu. All the nurses told you were such a pretty baby. Now? Kanna, you look like a beggar child."Shewould sayKanna, in Tamil - my first language - for "my eyes," with more love than I can - even now - know. My mother is one of the most intelligent people I know. Growing up in South India, she always made the highest grades in her classes and is so gifted at math that she became the only female calculus professor at a top college there. She and my father met at a bus stop and have what relatives would call, clucking their tongues, a love marriage. This ista term that seems redundant to me, but is shrouded in scandal, indicating that their marriage is not arranged and not sanctioned by their families. My mother is several shades darker than my father, a stigma that has followed her across an ocean to America. In India, fair is beautiful; dark is irrelevant. Miss India, year after year, looks more white than Indian. The most recent Miss America, Nina Davuluri, is too "dusky" to ever win an Indian beauty pageant. My mother loved that her daugh- ter was relatively light-skinned for a South Indian. At Indian parties, I felt gaudy in the layers of bright silk and chiffon she'd dressed me in and overdone under the founda- tion and powder that she'd caked onto my skin. "You're glowing," she would whisper, squeezing my hand. "You're beautiful." I can't quite describe the way I felt when she called me beautiful. I always went to the bathroom to look in the mir- ror whenever she did, to touch my face, and to try to see what exact- ly had elicited her compliment. I couldn't stop smiling all night. We visited India over my winter break in seventh grade. My dark- skinned cousins would look at me in awe, teasing me and saying that I should act in Bollywood movies. A stranger on the street once asked me if he could touch the underside of my arm. It was so fair. In America, I'd never even gotten a second glance. I wasn't allowed to walk down the streets of Chenna without my uncle or dad because - as I'd overheard my mother telling my aunt one day - the men looked at me as though they were in a mitai kada - a candy store. Even with the distress in her voice, I could still hear an unmistakable hint of pride. During the summer, if I spent my time safely indoors, reading or studying, I could maintain a light, high-yellow complexion and my mother's approval. My life grew counter to the arc of the sun. Where it was, I was not. Sunnydays became a burden: even one hour outside could significantly darken my complexion. I hated playing sports, going to the park, and, especially, going to the beach because I would feel sick the whole time I was there, worrying about how dark I was undoubtedly getting. Around this time, my mother showed me a strange product called Fair and Lovely. You can only find it on the dusty shelves of Indian grocery stores. The label displayed a dark- skinned model, looking sadly into the distance and becoming progressively happier as her skin became progressively paler, thanks to this "miracle cream." These were, after all, the rules: dark = unhappy; light = happy. The first time I put the cream on my face, my skin felt synthetic, cold, and it stung delicately. I started using it religiously, believing completely that I was in need of a miracle. When I started high school, my skin naturally became a couple shades darker, much to everyone's dismay. I remember that in ninth grade I won first place at a local debate tournament. The trophy was a framed candid photo of me delivering our team's champion- ship-winning speech under harsh fluorescent lighting. The dollar- store frame somehow felt heavy in my clenched hands: the words "First Place Speaker, Okemos Debate Clas- sic" were printed at the base of the photo in white Arial font. But all I could do was stare at my image, my features nearly imperceptible against my dark face. Had I really gotten so dark this summer? I've forgotten everything else about that day. All I remember is that I'd slipped the picture into my backpack and waited until I was home to tiptoe to my room and shove it into the back of my closet, so I wouldn't have to show my mother. I'd learned young, this awful habit of putting up a facade, of preempting hurt. I lived in the shadow of my appearance. Only when I left for Michigan did the facade begin to crack. The first time a white boy told me he thought the color of my tanned skin was "hot as fuck," I was the drunkest I've ever been. I ran to the bathroom to throw up but ended up sitting there, staring at the floor in a daze. I'd made straight 'As' throughout my life, I was eloquent, and I had friends who loved me. Yet a stranger who had just wanted to get into my pants had the power to do something I couldn't: make me feel beautiful in my skin. A friend pushed her way into the bathroom and freaked out when she saw the tears on my face, demanding I tell her what the hell had happened. I tried to articulate (but ended up slurring) that it was September and how much I hated the way my skin looked in the fall and whatFair and Lovely was and why I sometimes used it. She held my hair back and responded softly, "Now that's some racist shit." Even through the Crystal Palace haze, her words had stung. I'd never thought of it as racism. I was 18 at the time, a self-proclaimed humanist, and damn proud of how open-minded I'd grown to be. I was certainly no racist. Well, except for a tendency to think dark skin was ugly. It was slow, the transition. It would take friends who would, in March, put their arms around my shoulders and say, "You need some sun, girl! We're getting pasty!" It would take friends who would throw tubes of lightening cream from my makeup bag into the trash and ask, "The hell is wrong with you, Anitha? This shit is gonna give you cancer." It would take friends who would drag me to the lake and tell me I looked hot that day and teach me how to kayak and make me forget about howI looked altogether. Only recently did I finally find the courage to say no to my mother when she told me not to spend too much time in the sun. I was just leaving our house to play tennis with a friend, and she was wash- ing dishes at the sink. I don't know how I'd expected her to react. Did I expect her to scream? She'd just stopped and hesitated. She cocked her head at me, looking into my eyes as though she were looking at me for the first time and responded, "No?" I stared back, unblinking, 'Amma, I just want to play tennis right now, OK? That's all I want to worry about right now - is that OK?" A heavy look overcame her face, and a remorseful apology began to form in my throat. But I just kept staring at her. She dropped her gaze and said, plainly, "OK, Kanna. Be safe." And she wentback to scrubbing the dish- es, as though nothing had changed. When I was younger, I felt endlessly victimized by my mother's domineering expectations. But these days, each time I see her, she looks less domineering and more human, more tired. Last August, we went to the mall and she wanted to stop by the Clinique counter to pick up some foundation. She picked up a shade of foundation the color of sand, of a Bollywood starlet, but not of herself, and began to apply it. The classically white salesgirl, likely with the best intentions, practically pulled the bottle from my mother's hands, "Ma'am, your skin is much too dark for that shade of foundation. Why don't you try something a little more natural?" She replaced it with another one, the color of what I might describe as milk chocolate. But I could tell from the pain in my mother's eyes that she wouldn't have described it that way. To her, the color was heavy, one weighted by a culture and a bias she'd never been able to leave behind in India. I knew that shewas too self-conscious of her English and of her race to tell the salesgirl to fuck off, that she would buy the foundation, and that it would sit, forever unopened, in some drawer in our house. I immediately took the bottle from my mother and shoved it back to the salesgirl, telling her to have a nice day. After, I took my mother to the food court, and we shared a jalapeno soft pretzel - spicy, our favorite. I told her, somewhat sheepishly, that I thought she was beautiful, with or without any dumb foundation. She looked startled. I guess that was, for some reason, the first time I'd called her "beautiful." She told me so frequently; how had it taken me so long to say it back? We were both, I suppose, victims of a world that we had allowed to define us. "Thank you." She touched my hand, "I always wonder how I ended up with a daughter as wonderful as you." I think (all the time) about the things I'll someday teach my own daughter. She will know about grammar and kindness and about being patient and being passionate. She will know what it's like to break hearts and to have her heart broken. She will know when to hold her tongue and when to hold her own. I'll take her to the beach, and she will know how to swim and how to snorkel and canoe and raft. And maybe we will just sit in the sand and watch the water for hours and know what it's like to feel indomitable and infinite. But she will never, ever know the unbearable weight of sunlight. Anitha Menon is an Engineering senior.