Opinion

JENNIFER CALFAS

EDITOR IN CHIEF

AARICA MARSH

and DEREK WOLFE

EDITORIAL PAGE EDITORS

LEV FACHER

MANAGING EDITOR

420 Maynard St.

Ann Arbor, MI 48109

tothedaily@michigandaily.com

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The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
4 — Friday, April 17, 2015

Claire Bryan, Regan Detwiler, Rabab Jafri, Ben Keller, Payton Luokkala,

Aarica Marsh, Victoria Noble, Michael Paul, Anna Polumbo-Levy,

Allison Raeck, Melissa Scholke, Michael Schramm, Matthew Seligman,

Stephanie Trierweiler, Mary Kate Winn, Jenny Wang, Derek Wolfe

EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS

O

n April 11, New York Times
columnist
David
Brooks

wrote a piece called “The

Moral
Bucket

List.” In it, he
alludes
to
the

unfulfilling
nature of exter-
nal achievement.
In other words,
career
success,

recognition
and

money
have

afforded him little
depth
of
spirit.

The timing of this
piece feels oddly perfect in that, as a
senior embarking upon who knows
what, I find myself incapable of defin-
ing what I want success to mean. Suc-
cess is subjective, but as we know it,
it is defined by environment. And I
can say, having been in a university
environment for four years, that suc-
cess in this environment is defined in
terms of external achievement.

I believe that in order to achieve

personal success, a success defined
by you and only you, you must dis-
tance yourself from preconceptions,
from the notion that to be happy is
to be the best. What I’ll pose now
is a distillation of life advice I’ve
absorbed from friends, family, teach-
ers, books and from myself in times
of needed self-assurance. Hopefully,
what this compilation of both gener-
ic and what I believe to be original
advice will do, is remind you that the
formation of a good and honest self is
what will aid you in your definition
of success. And that success, the kind
that comes from the inside, as Brooks
suggests, is the kind that makes you
happy. Maybe not happy as we know
it, but happy in deeper terms. Happy
to be living. Worthy of our lives.

1) You are not special.
I have to say, I don’t like this

one. I’m sure you have heard it
before and have decided that it
doesn’t apply to you because you
are, in fact, special. Well, that’s
just the point. You are special,
and so am I, and so is your neigh-
bor, and so is your super annoying
classmate. We’re all special in our
own rights, and therefore none of
us are. Our grandparents’ genera-
tion was taught to think that they
were just cogs in a machine, and
we, unlike that generation, have
been taught to think that sunshine
comes out of our asses. In the crud-
est of terms, you have to make the

sunshine spill out of your ass. Spe-
cialness isn’t inherent. Talent can
be, intelligence certainly is, but it
doesn’t make one special. Special
implies that you’re more deserv-
ing, which you aren’t. It’s because
we have opportunity and live in an
insulated bubble that we think of
ourselves as special. But I can say
from the experience I have had vol-
unteering within prisons, a forgot-
ten place, that the people inside are
truly special. They are as special as
my friends, my family — maybe not
to me but to their own families and
to themselves.

2) As flies to wanton boys are

we to th’ gods. They kill us for
their sport.

Thanks to John Rubadeau for

introducing me to this quote and to
William Shakespeare for writing it.
Its meaning — that life happens for
no other reason than that it does —
is something I sit with often. Shitty
things will happen to us in our lives.
Shitty things have happened to us.
But to dwell on those things, to con-
stantly terrorize ourselves over the
whys, is to miss out on time. All we
can do is accept our stories, have our
traumas become parts of our identi-
ties and move on without question-
ing our pasts, rather letting them
shape us in ways we wouldn’t have
necessarily imagined for ourselves.

3) Stop feeling guilt over your

privilege.

This advice is intended for my

peers in the social justice world who
so badly want to be good that they in
fact put themselves and others down
in the process. Privilege is a buzz-
word of the time, but for good reason
— it has prompted severe racial and
social inequalities universally. How-
ever, we have made privilege mean
something bad, when it by definition
means advantage. It’s not that we
should wish to be disadvantaged, but
rather wish advantages for everyone.
We therefore don’t need to feel guilt
about our own situations of privilege,
constantly putting ourselves and oth-
ers down due to our class and race
based situations. Rather, we should
fight for those who don’t have those
same privileges, so that race and
class no longer harbor such extreme
weight. If you are white, you’re
white. If you come from wealth, you
did. You can’t relinquish your past or
your identity because you’re embar-
rassed or guilty. However, you can
work toward a world in which those

identities don’t create unjust barriers
for others.

4) Be alone.
Don’t jump into relationships just

because. Don’t constantly seek out
company because you don’t want to
sit with your own thoughts. Those
thoughts will be the ones that make
you understand what you need from
a partner or a friend. If you don’t
know yourself before being with
someone, you’ll never know your-
self. And settling right now is no
option at all. It’s like the Michigan
winter causing you to appreciate the
summer so much more. Being alone,
at least for some time, will make you
appreciate the benefits of real love,
like a beautiful, perfect summer that
needs waiting for.

5) Don’t define yourself or

anyone else by the worst thing
you’ve ever done or the worst
thing about you.

Recently, when discussing incar-

ceration with a group of thoughtful,
kind people, one woman said about
incarcerated people: “Why are they
defined by the worst thing they’ve
ever done? We aren’t.” It was reve-
latory. I have been working with
incarcerated populations for over
two years, and I hadn’t been able
to articulate that thought so suc-
cinctly. It’s revelatory because no
one should be defined by the worst
thing they’ve done, and this is
because we don’t measure ourselves
by that same standard. We naturally
define ourselves by our best quali-
ties. But to define others by their
worst qualities, sometimes a natural
inclination, is to make the playing
field uneven. You can’t judge some-
one by their worst qualities and by
the worst things they’ve ever done
while judging yourself by your best
qualities and the best things you’ve
ever done. Instead, we should define
ourselves and everyone around us
by our goodness.

I hope that one of these points

speaks to just one of you, even if just
for a moment. These abstract, life-
style choices won’t make you a living
or find you a passion. But perhaps if
you follow one of these guidelines,
intended to quiet the self, you’ll
start to understand what you define
as success. And that will give you
peace, I believe. As it goes, I’m still
waiting for it, but it’s coming.

— Abby Taskier can be reached

at ataskier@umich.edu.

Advice on defining your own
success and quieting the self

ABBY
TASKIER

“Would you still want to travel to that coun-

try if you could not take your camera with you?”

— a question of appropriation, Nayyirah

Waheed

You have seen the images and heard the

stories. You may have liked these posts or
posted a few statuses of your own. Unbe-
knownst to you, you’re supporting a dehu-
manizing production — the exploitation of
human narratives, the perpetuation of suf-
fering, the continuation of neo-colonialism —
the white-savior industrial complex.

I entered a community that was not my

own without invitation. I “helped” myself to
the people — bought more kente cloth than
my bag could hold, ate more jollof than I
could actually stomach and cried for every
child I deemed neglected, impoverished or
underprivileged. I was the unconscious and
yet unconscionable oppressor; ignorant to the
way I imposed my beliefs on the community I
desired to help. I had honest intentions, truly,
but I didn’t fully understand the history of
humanitarian aid and development like I do
now. I am now beginning to see the correla-
tion and resulting parallels between histori-
cal Western aid programs in the Global South
and my own summer trip.

The staging of voluntourism images is

reminiscent of colonial photography. Melanie
Tanielian, a human rights scholar, discussed
the dangers of colonial images and their
attempt to convey “the scope of humanitar-
ian activity on the ground.” She argued that
human aid has turned abstract bodies into
a nameless source and only particular indi-
viduals have the privilege of being named.
The same framework is present in images
uploaded by volunteers. How many uploaded
photos include the names of all photo partici-
pants? Think of the children who go nameless
— leaving only their eyes to speak. Why must
they continue to go unacknowledged? Just
as Tanielian demonstrated colonial photog-
raphy was no more than a way to “show the
scope of humanitarian activity, provide facts
and figures, and fulfill the body count,” the
voluntourism pictures are harmful, demoral-
izing and full of misplaced sympathies.

There’s a great and urgent need for mil-

lennials to understand the perpetuation
of damaging and dangerous depictions of
“African life.” Playing the savior destroys
the agency and autonomy of those you are

attempting to help. Carrie Kahn’s NPR
article, “As Voluntourism Explodes, Who Is
It Helping Most?” presents an alternative
perspective. She mentions, “More and more
Americans are no longer taking a few weeks
off to suntan and sightsee abroad. Instead
they’re working in orphanages, building
schools and teaching English.”

She cites an estimated 1.6 million volunteer

tourists are spending about $2 billion dollars
on this new traveling trend. For recent gradu-
ates, the voluntourism industry is great for
establishing a foundation in aid organiza-
tions and obtaining relevant work experience
to add to graduate applications and resumes.
However, servicing a community has to go
further than temporary fixes and shallow
promises. Ask yourself, is a five-day, 10-day
or 14-day trip creating self-sustaining mod-
els of development that can be implemented
in multiple settings? Furthermore, consider
the space you occupy and the power you have
within your assigned tasks. For example,
when you impose your language on a non-
native speaker or train locals to adminis-
ter medical treatment in a way influenced
by Western-centric ideals, you’re being an
aggressor. You are inflating your self-worth
while simultaneously conflating many of the
complex problems faced by African nations
into one singular, problematic image. This
behavior must stop.

To those who fail to see the voluntourism

industry’s dangerous connection to neo-colo-
nialism, I offer you this: I was once someone
who didn’t understand the politics of speech,
imagery and power in this setting. I was
naïve — looking to do good, not exactly know-
ing how. Yet, I now adhere to the old saying,
“Leave something better than you found it.”
Ron Krabill, author of “American Sentimen-
talism and the Production of Global Citizens”,
clarifies that, “The White Savior Industrial
Complex is not about justice. It is about hav-
ing a big emotional experience that validates
privilege.” Use your privilege to inform oth-
ers of all the joys of Africa, a beautiful con-
tinent of 54 diverse nations, each with a rich
history and culture. Tell your friends of the
scenery, weather, music and food. Educate
them on culture, community and the kind-
ness of strangers. But please, in all that you
do, leave your camera at home.

Jayla Johnson is an LSA senior.

JAYLA JOHNSON | VIEWPOINT

Africa isn’t a spectator sport

SAM MYERS | VIEWPOINT

Michael Brown. Eric Garner. Now Walter

Scott. With yet another instance in which a
white police officer has killed an unarmed
Black man, and amid growing concerns about
racial tensions between citizens and police and
the Department of Justice’s report that found
the Ferguson Police Department to be guilty
of sustaining systemic racism, it is safe to say
that we have reached a crisis in our country.
Simply put, on average, we have overwhelm-
ingly white police departments in charge of
protecting communities of color. But they don’t
seem to be doing much protecting.

As an undergraduate here, I took courses in

American history and Black studies primar-
ily. My thesis was on the 1967 Detroit “riot.”
I put quotation marks around “riot,” because
my research concluded that the civil unrest
and violence in 1967 transpired because of
police agitation and abuse, and longstand-
ing racial divides and hostility between the
95 percent white department and the more
than 50 percent Black citizenry. This is a view
shared by many in the fields of Black studies
and American (especially Detroit) history. In
fact, Illinois Gov. Otto Kerner and the other
10 members of the investigative commission,
whom President Lyndon Johnson charged
with understanding the bloody conflict in
Detroit, initially forwarded this view in 1967.
The racial divide in Detroit, between the
white police officers with guns and the Black
citizens generally without them, was potent
enough to cause a conflict that resulted in tens
of deaths and millions of dollars in damage.

The police department in Ferguson is dis-

proportionately white. According to The New
York Times, the police department in North
Charleston is 80 percent white while the
population there is 47 percent Black. Histori-
cally speaking, it is not all that surprising that
there are instances of extreme violence in
these places. The fact that this has continued,
more than 50 years after the Kerner Commis-
sion pointed out this problem, is incredibly
difficult to stomach.

What are we to do? First, it is probably

best to have this discussion and to point
out the consistencies in these police-caused
conflicts. Hopefully, that can bring about an
effort to construct police departments that

more accurately reflect the constituencies
that they’re intended to protect. Police need
to be familiar with and respectful of their
communities — not afraid, like Eric Garner’s
killers admitted to being. There must be more
of an emphasis on community policing. But
second, and because that first movement will
take a long time to implement (assuming peo-
ple are on board), it is important that we learn
to assess, criticize and hold accountable our
police departments.

Evident in the endless acquittals and not-

guilty verdicts in Garner and Brown’s cases
— don’t forget that George Zimmerman was
found not guilty — the police simply have too
much power with too little oversight. And
really, who can hold the police accountable?
I’ve had interactions with police, and during
them all I’ve felt totally powerless and at the
mercy of someone who clearly felt superior
and like he had total authority over me. I can
only imagine what it must be like to be a Black
man interacting with a white police officer.
Not only do the police assume authority and
superiority over Black people — especially
men — but they assume legal use of lethal
force with impunity. Walter Scott’s case, for
which the police officer is charged with mur-
der, is an exception for now — we shall see
what verdict comes — but there is too much
evidence on the other hand.

And people continually and unequivocally

come to the defense of police departments in
this country, as if they, the ones with guns,
are the people in danger, and not the people,
overwhelmingly Black, who are shot and
killed daily it now seems. Police do take great
risks in their jobs, but it increasingly seems
that they are not more at risk than people.
There are no police for the police, only we,
the people. If we do not speak up against
police misdeeds — which are often criminal
misdeeds — and wrest some of the power that
they hold, then instances like these will con-
tinue. If they continue, it will not only be a
blemish in the history of the United States,
but it will be a piece of evidence in the argu-
ment that our great nation is descending into
the likes of a police state.

Sam Myers is an LSA senior.

Don’t be afraid to criticize the police

I

lost my last good pair of head-
phones the other day.

I don’t really know where

they went. At one
point they were
in my ears, and
then in my pocket
along
with
my

phone and then
at a later moment
in neither place. I
might have kicked
them under my
bed accidentally.
Maybe left them
somewhere on a table in the Law
Library. If you’re currently reading
this while listening to music through
some black Klipsch earbuds, then
they are mine and you should prob-
ably give them back to me.

I didn’t even notice I had lost

them until I stepped outside to walk
to class, went to go plug the invis-
ible headphones into my phone in
my sleepless stupor and then real-
ized that my hands were grasping
at nothing and I should probably
go to bed before three in the morn-
ing. I had another pair lying around
somewhere, but they went through
the wash sometime in the past and
I wasn’t really in the mood to listen
to music playing into only my left
ear. So I embarked on the journey
to class without anything in my
ears, and immediately noticed the
unnerving silence.

I’ve grown up with portable music

players as a normal part of my life. The
iPod was released when I was in ele-

mentary school, and I still remember
standing at my safety guard post at
the street corner before school listen-
ing in awe on my friend’s new iPod to
the entire album of Songs About Jane
as my friend endlessly showed off how
cool this thing called the click wheel
was. Ever since then, whenever there
was some time to be spent traveling
between two places, or really any time
spent not directly talking to someone
else, the space was filled with some
unnatural soundtrack.

Walking outside without the nor-

mal buffer of headphones is imme-
diately unusual. The sounds are
different. The entire scene feels dif-
ferent. There’s nothing between me
and the outside world, no playlist to
absorb myself into during the trek. I
watch squirrels scamper around and
up and down trees as a means to dis-
tract myself, becoming not so differ-
ent from the squirrels themselves.

I get a few blocks before my

phone vibrates; someone else has
announced they’re running for presi-
dent. So I pull up the news story
and walk with my head down while
crossing a few streets because this is
Ann Arbor and as a pedestrian I am
untouchable. And at this moment,
any type of diversion from the quiet
walk is better than being forced to
actually acknowledge the silence.

Silence can be uncomfortable.

Because on that walk to class with-
out headphones, there is nothing left
to do but to think. To think of mean-
ingless things like what sandwich
I’ll order at Jimmy John’s when I get

sidetracked on my walk to class. Of
slightly more important things like
the exam I have later that night I’m
not sure if I had enough time to study
for. Of the looming prospects of pre-
paring for whatever life after gradu-
ation might look like. The 15-minute
walk usually accompanied by explo-
rations of the New Releases section
of Spotify was quickly replaced with
more introspective explorations.

The Digital Age, or whatever cli-

ché term is being used to describe it,
brings with it the consequence that
such moments are rare. The math stu-
dent in me likens it to statistical noise,
the random variations that get in the
way of what is trying to be measured.
Such is the noise that we have thrown
into our world, in media and in other
forms, which prevents us from the
moments we just get to think. Some-
thing else had to get in the way of the
usual routine, that being losing my
headphones, just to find this out.

I never ended up getting a new

pair of headphones. I never needed
to. I learned to enjoy the moments,
the walks, the only time in days not
filled with studying and meetings
and occasionally sleep. The space
in my pocket once used for head-
phones replaced with a rosary, lyrics
replaced with time of serenity, any-
thing to enjoy the fleeting moments
of calmness in the life of a college
student. The silence that was once
unsettling is no longer so.

— David Harris can be reached

at daharr@umich.edu.

Silence

DAVID
HARRIS

Love giving your perspective to others? Want to complement your summer

internship with something that’s actually cool? Apply to be a summer opinion

columnist! For more information, e-mail Melissa Scholke at melikaye@umich.edu.