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Ideology of higher education

T

here’s a difference between 
being 
Black 
and 
being 

mixed.

Even 
when 

you’re 
mixed, 

people see your 
skin as a shade of 
brown, which is 
associated 
with 

being Black. It’s 
nearly impossible 
to make a distinc-
tion that you’re 
part white, and 
there’s 
nothing 

wrong with that. 
But even when 
people do know you’re mixed, the 
Black half can trump the white one 
in how often it is mentioned and used 
to explain stereotypes.

Barack Obama wasn’t the first 

Black president. He was the first 
mixed president. Yes, he was the 
first president of African-Ameri-
can descent (his father was from 
Kenya), but his mother is a white 
woman. He has had to deal with 
blatant racism all of his life.

As for me, I am fortunate to not 

have dealt with the systematic rac-
ism that many Black and mixed 
people have faced in the past and 
face in the present. I haven’t been 
kept out of places because of my 
race and haven’t faced hate speech 
or lived in fear every day like some 
have and still do. But the subtle rac-
ism and racist jokes that have been 
directed toward me have made me 
realize that my racial identity has 
been defined by others in terms of 
my Black half or my “Blackness.”

One of my nicknames in high 

school was “Two Percent.” It didn’t 
have to do with my preference for 
2-percent milk, but for the percent-
age of Black I seemed to act like. I’ve 
been told that I’m not Black enough 
and that I “talk white,” and I’ve been 
called both degrading and meant-to-
be-endearing — yet in-poor-taste — 
versions of the n-word.

The weird part of it is that, 

depending on the situation, I either 
went along with it, shrugged it off 
or got visibly angry.

I went along with “Two Percent,” 

just taking it as a joke. But it made me 
ponder what that really meant. What 

does being Black mean? I think in 
that sense, my speech, politeness and 
intelligence were taken into account. 
Those who called me “Two Percent,” 
albeit not maliciously, referenced 
being Black as uneducated, impolite 
and less sophisticated.

And what does “not being Black 

enough” mean? Yes, I know I’m only 
halfway there as far as ancestry, but 
not every Black person has to act the 
same. In times when “not being Black 
enough” was said, Black was used as 
a stand-in for words like thug, crimi-
nal or rebel. I was not that, and a 
majority of Black people aren’t. With 
media perception and stereotypes, 
Black people are often viewed in that 
light and discriminated against by 
way of racist projections.

When I was told I talked white, it 

was implied that Black people have 
a less sophisticated vocabulary with 
a vernacular that is similar to that 
of the slave, Jim, in Mark Twain’s 
“The Adventures of Huckleberry 
Finn.” How a person speaks should 
not be analyzed in relation to his or 
her race. Speech, like other aspects of 
the individual, cannot be used as an 
overarching comparison to a race or 
any other identity as a whole.

It’s similar to how everyone 

doesn’t respond the same way to 
different types of humor. Yes, my 
friends, I know you think this Black 
joke is funny. I myself have made 
some in my past. But for now, it rubs 
me the wrong way, and I’d rather 
you not say it. Don’t say, “Oh, it’s just 
words” or “Sticks and stones may 
break my bones, but words will never 
hurt me.”

Drake, who is mixed like me, 

describes in a few bars some of what 
it can be like to have your personal-

ity compared to that of a stereotypi-
cal Black person in another’s eyes in 
his song, “You & The 6.”

“I used to get teased for being 

Black

And now I’m here and I’m not 

Black enough

‘Cause I’m not acting tough
Or making stories up ‘bout where 

I’m actually from.”

Someone who is white and Black 

(and in Drake’s case, Jewish) is both 
discriminated against for his or her 
perceived Blackness and for also not 
being what he or she was expected 
to be like as a Black person. People 
who are mixed are not only criti-
cized for acting Black and for being 
mixed, but also for not acting Black 
or not acting mixed.

My racial identity has always been 

something confusing to me. I am 
Black. I am white. Neither race is 
monolithic or has certain values or 
rules to abide by. Each person is an 
individual, following the direction of 
how our parents, other people impor-
tant to our lives and society raised us. 
A friend asked me last summer what 
the differences between my two cul-
tures of white and Black are like. I 
couldn’t pin down an answer because 
I can’t pin down my culture. There 
are certain things I take from each 
of my parents — some fit stereotypes 
and some do not.

It’s not that I am ashamed to be 

seen as just Black because of my 
skin color. Like I said, it’s hard to 
tell unless I mention that I have a 
Black father and a white mother. 
It’s just that categorizing me as 
Black doesn’t take into account a 
whole other part of me.

This kind of covert racism may be 

what Black people face every day. But 
I don’t know for sure because I’m not 
just Black. I can’t speak for what the 
Black experience may be like from 
my individual perspective because 
I’m not a Black man.

It’s like the Old El Paso commer-

cial in which a little girl is given the 
decision of hard or soft taco shells 
after her family is arguing over which 
one is better to use for the meal. I’m 
Black. I’m white. Why not both?

Chris Crowder can be reached 

at ccrowd@umich.edu.

Not Black, but mixed

ZAK 
WITUS 

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A

re you happy with your college educa-
tion? Do you feel you’re paying a fair 
price for it?

I’ve 
graduated 
with 

degrees 
in 
both 
the 

humanities (Arts & Ideas 
in the Humanities) and 
the 
sciences 
(cognitive 

science) and I, for one, feel 
majorly ripped off.

Don’t get me wrong: I 

loved many of my courses, 
especially the ones in the 
Residential College with 
Cindy Sowers and all my 
great English classes. But 
reflecting on my experience 
— the work I did, the work my teachers and fel-
low students did, the other services provided by 
the University, etc. — I don’t see how one justi-
fies the outrageous cost of tuition. How can the 
University and the state, understanding the 
immense societal benefits of education, limit 
people’s access to it and enslave them with huge 
debt if they seek it? Upon reflection, I see that if 
we want to reform higher education so it serves 
us best as a state and society, then we must start 
by examining and reforming the ways many of us 
are currently thinking about higher education.

In our day-to-day lives, we 

students tend not to experi-
ence studying as real work; 
that is, not like the work we 
do when we serve tables at a 
restaurant, or shelve books in 
a library. Even though every-
one involved in higher educa-
tion would agree (if explicitly 
asked) that education is real 
work, we behave as if it’s not.

The ideology of higher 

education today functions 
primarily 
through 
our 

actions, not our thinking about our actions. 
We act as if reading books, listening to lec-
turers and participating in classroom discus-
sions are luxuries (non-essentials) that we 
buy for ourselves, like seeing a movie or stay-
ing at a hotel. We pay $100,000-plus for these 
academic activities. And yet, when we think 
about it, many of us don’t recognize student 
life as truly worth personally paying exorbi-
tant amounts of money.

Even though much of the real work of 

learning is collaborative, and hence neces-
sarily communal, economically speaking, 
we behave as if it’s individualistic — as if we 
were buying a really expensive service for 
ourselves instead of working for the benefit 
of the community. We’ve been conditioned to 
experience studying as fundamentally differ-
ent from other kinds of work — both physi-
cal and intellectual — and thus we’ve become 
psychologically alienated from our labor.

Other workers receive compensation in 

exchange for their work. It’s presumed that the 
products they make or the services they provide 
aren’t for themselves, but for others. And so we 
think the formula of exchange makes sense.

The only way we wouldn’t apply this same 

formula to higher education is if we conceived 
of higher ed as a service we receive, or else 
as work we do mostly for selfish benefit. But 
the services of our university — specifically 
the teaching faculty — demand we recipro-

cate their work with our own. Unfortunately, 
education can’t be so easily commodified, and 
so it doesn’t work well for our predominantly 
commercial economy.

I think those of us involved in higher educa-

tion would do well to revisit some of the essays 
written by some of the early advocates of 
public education. For example, Jean-Jacques 
Rousseau, an early European advocate of pub-
lic childhood education, argued based on the 
principle that higher education ought serve 
the common good. Since in Rousseau’s phi-
losophy, the socialist-democratic state enacted 
the will of the people, he thought the state, and 
not the individual family, ought be in charge of 
the children’s education. As Rousseau saw it, 
“Families dissolve but the State remains.”

Rousseau argued this in the face of a bour-

geois society that generally preferred to edu-
cate its children privately, for the benefit of 
their individual families. Ironically, one argu-
ing for public higher education today faces a 
similar dilemma. Today, the country’s upper 
class sends its children to college primarily 
for private familial benefits (ensuring a high 
socioeconomic position for the family mov-
ing forward, etc.). Consequently, people of the 
lower classes also conceive of higher education 
in this bourgeois, egotistic way. By mistaking 

the ruling class’s selfish use 
of higher education as the 
only use of higher education, 
we prevent ourselves from 
conceiving of higher educa-
tion in all its great pro-social 
(ahem, socialist) potential 
— that is, higher education 
as serving not just the indi-
vidual student but also his/
her community, city, state, 
society — the common good.

When you’re uneducated 

(i.e., ignorant), you’re often 

a liability to those around you (much like the 
GOP’s denial of climate change makes them a 
hazard to the rest of the planet —literally). But, 
when you’re educated, you’re not only not a 
liability, you’re also positively helpful. It dou-
bly benefits those forced to interact with you 
for you to know things, like how to form an 
intelligent opinion about something, or that 
our country was founded on slave labor, and so 
on. Really, if higher education is for all, then all 
ought to be sponsoring you — the individual — 
and your individual education as a way of say-
ing: “Thank you for learning things! Keep up 
the good work! We appreciate you!”

The working class, if it were to understand 

itself as such, would realize that the work of 
studying is basically the same as the other work 
it does, and thus it would not tolerate paying to 
do the work of higher education. We should rec-
ognize how our current ideology of education 
enables us to pay such exuberant amounts of 
money for work that we really do for one anoth-
er. If we’re unwilling to revolt against our eco-
nomic system in general — as perhaps we ought 
to — then we might instead reasonably demand 
free intellectual training prior to entering into 
wage slavery (i.e. professional life). It seems 
that should be among our minimum demands 
from our own government.

Zak Witus can be reached at 

zakwitus@umich.edu.

W

ednesday night, CNN 
hosted a town hall for 
Democratic 
presiden-

tial 
candidates 

Bernie 
Sanders 

and Hillary Clin-
ton. At this point, 
I’ve 
watched 

both Sanders and 
Clinton speak so 
many times — 
both on TV and 
in person — that 
I pretty much 
have their stump 
speeches memo-
rized. Here’s a 
radical idea: We’re going to create 
an economy that works for all of us, 
not just for the millionaires and bil-
lionaires.

That said, there were a couple 

of moments last Wednesday that I 
found truly compelling, and both 
were related to faith. To no end, the 
Republican candidates boast about 
their religious beliefs, but on the 
Democratic side, we’ve only seen 
glimpses into how faith affects the 
candidates’ motivations and values.

That changed Wednesday. In one 

form or another, both Sanders and 
Clinton were asked about their reli-
gion and spirituality. And based on 
what I heard, their answers should 
end the conversation that religious 
observance and belief in God are 
necessary to be a leader of this 
country. In fact, as a Jew who wres-
tles with the existence of a higher 
power, I find their views on religion 
inspiring and necessary.

Anderson Cooper, the modera-

tor of the town hall, asked, “What 
do you say to a voter out there who 
sees faith as a guiding principle in 
their lives and wants it to be a guid-
ing principle for this country?”

Sanders went first.
“It’s a guiding principle in my 

life,” he responded. “Absolutely it 
is. You know, everybody practices 
religion in a different way. To me, I 

would not be here tonight, I would 
not be running for president of 
the United States, if I did not have 
very strong religious and spiritual 
feelings. I believe that as a human 
being, the pain that one person feels 
… if we have children who are hun-
gry in America, if we have elderly 
people who can’t afford their pre-
scription drugs, you know what, 
that impacts you, that impacts me.

“And I worry very much about 

a society where some people spiri-
tually say, ‘That doesn’t matter to 
me, I got it. I don’t care about other 
people.’ So my spirituality is that 
we are all in this together.”

If you didn’t catch it, there was 

no mention of God or Jesus or 
scripture. And this isn’t to say there 
is anything wrong with discuss-
ing those things (Clinton did), but 
whether you agree with Sanders’ 
views or not, is there anything we 
should want more than a president 
who strongly values the commu-
nity and its power? Isn’t that what 
America should be about?

I found that Clinton’s religious 

views resonated with me, too. 
Toward the end of answering a 
question from a rabbi about how 
she finds the ego to run for presi-
dent and have humility, she spoke 
of gratitude.

“Everybody knows I have lived a 

very public life for the last 25 or so 
years, and so, I’ve had to be in pub-
lic dealing with some very difficult 
issues — personal issues, political, 
public issues,” she said. “And I read a 
treatment of the prodigal son parable 
by the Jesuit Henri Nouwen, who I 
think is a magnificent writer of spiri-
tual and theological concerns. And 
I read that parable, and there was a 
line in it that became just a lifeline 
for me. And it basically is practice the 
discipline of gratitude.

“So regardless of how hard the 

days are, how difficult the decisions 
are, be grateful. Be grateful for being 
a human being, being part of the 

universe. Be grateful for your limita-
tions. Know that you have to reach 
out to have more people be with you, 
to support you, to advise you. Listen 
to your critics. Answer the questions. 
But at the end, be grateful. Practice 
the discipline of gratitude and that 
has helped me enormously.”

This answer is incredibly impor-

tant because, again, it did not 
invoke God. Yes, Clinton has been 
open about her belief in God in the 
past, but it’s telling that when she 
was talking about what her “life-
line” is, she chose to talk about the 
very human act of practicing grati-
tude — not prayer or other religious 
acts. I find that commendable.

I thought maybe I was preach-

ing to the choir on this issue (pun 
intended). But according a recent 
Pew survey, 51 percent of Ameri-
cans would be less likely to support 
a candidate who is an atheist. For 
context, that is a greater percentage 
than people less likely to support a 
candidate who has used marijuana, 
or is Muslim, or is gay or lesbian, or 
has had an extramarital affair. This 
may be an obvious thing to say, but 
as far as we’ve come in regard to 
LGBTQ rights, women’s rights, civil 
rights, there is still a large amount 
of religious (or nonreligious) intol-
erance in this country. To be fair, 
that 51 percent number is 12-per-
cent less than it was in 2007. But I 
still don’t get why a definite belief 
in God should be mandatory to 
receive someone’s vote.

Gratitude, humility and commit-

ment to community: These are the 
values that should be of importance 
when picking our next president, at 
least in my opinion.

It shouldn’t matter whether Sand-

ers or Clinton believe in God or not, 
because it shouldn’t matter how 
they’ve arrived at those values.

What matters is they have them.

Derek Wolfe can be reached 

at dewolfe@umich.edu.

Bernie, Hillary and spirituality 

DEREK 
WOLFE

CHRIS
CROWDER

Really, if higher 

education is for all, 
then all ought to be 

sponsoring you. 

Categorizing me as 
Black doesn’t take 

into account a whole 

other part of me.

