Opinion
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
4A — Monday, October 3, 2016
Open letter to the U of M community
THE BLACK LEADERSHIP COUNCIL | OP-ED
T
o the
University
of
Michigan Community:
In light of recent
events, both on and off campus,
we are deeply disturbed by
the hateful and blatant racism
put forth by people who label
themselves the alt-right. It
troubles us that the individuals
of the Black community at
the University of Michigan
targeted
by
these
posters
and flyers are not only being
stereotyped by incorrect data,
but are also being made to feel
unvalued and unwelcomed on
the University campus.
We
acknowledge
the
statements
and
appreciate
the actions made by both the
University and student activists
on campus. We understand the
University has not yet found
the individual or individuals
responsible for this cowardly
act. However, we wish to
bring attention to the fact
that there is an alt-right blog
that has used the University’s
name in its title. Not only does
this blog use phrases such as
“harass,” “viscously attack”
and “humiliate and destroy,”
it also states that there is a
potential Alt-Right Club at the
University.
While freedom of speech
is
important,
all
student
organizations
are
required
to adhere to the University’s
Nondiscrimination
Policy,
which
includes
all
online
media, like blogs. We call
upon the University to fulfill
its obligations stated in the
“Discrimination and Harassment
Policy” and the University’s
“Procedural
Guidelines
for
Handling Discrimination and
Harassment Complaints.” We
request the University enforce
its
commitment
to
prevent
and
eliminate
impermissible
discrimination and harassment
of students by conducting a
formal
investigation
of
the
incident in accordance with
the
Procedural
Guidelines;
eliminating both the potential
Alt-Right University of Michigan
Club and corresponding online
blog; monitoring posting walls,
boards and other University
advertising spaces daily; and
formally condemning the alt-
right as a hate group. While
taking these actions would
help in the short term, it is
imperative to long-term and
sustainable success that all
members of the University
community,
whether
they
are students or staff, act in
a way that is conducive to
realizing the vision for “a
campus environment where
all students, faculty, and staff
feel welcomed and valued. ...”
as outlined in the Diversity,
Equity and Inclusion plan.
In order for this vision to be
realized, our responses must
transcend written statements
and lead to concrete action.
The
issues
and
problems
surrounding campus climate
are too great for a single
group to take on alone. As
University
President
Mark
Schlissel stated during the
Black Student Union meeting
on Sept. 29, it is necessary
that we work together.
While we desire to solve the
issues
surrounding
campus
climate, we recognize that a
solution to such a large problem
will take time. We need time
to heal. We need time to
listen to and receive input
from all members of the Black
community to understand what
they need, not just what we
think they need. Above all, we
need time to not only discuss
how we can work together to
bring about change, but to also
discuss what unity in the Black
community looks like outside
of tragedy and pain.
Though
we
are
leaders
of
various
Black
student
organizations, we do not speak
for the entire Black community;
we speak so the members of the
Black community know that
their individual voices matter,
that their individual lives matter.
The
Black
Leadership
Council at the University of
Michigan.
LAURA SCHINAGLE
Managing Editor
420 Maynard St.
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
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SHOHAM GEVA
Editor in Chief
CLAIRE BRYAN
and REGAN DETWILER
Editorial Page Editors
Unsigned editorials reflect the official position of the Daily’s Editorial Board.
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Carolyn Ayaub
Claire Bryan
Regan Detwiler
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Jason Rowland
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Kevin Sweitzer
Rebecca Tarnopol
Ashley Tjhung
Stephanie Trierweiler
EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS
I
n perhaps one of the most
memorable lines from the
comical
first
presidential
debate, candidate Hillary Clinton
captured all of the qualms I have
with Donald Trump: “Well, Donald,
I know you live in your own reality,
but that is not the facts.”
If you didn’t watch the debate
because
of
time
constraints,
I suggest finding an abridged
version on YouTube and ramping
up the speed to 1.5x (it actually
helps Hillary’s incessant pausing).
A word of advice: Try not to get
frustrated by Trump’s repeated
mansplaining. A PBS article cites
51 interruptions by Donald Trump,
as opposed to 17 interruptions by
Hillary Clinton.
Watching the debate, I tried to
not get distracted by the constant
interruptions, the incessant raising
of voices and the unprofessional
digs. As a junior in the Ford School,
I focused my attention to all
mentions of policy. But something
about the way Donald Trump
speaks occupied my brainpower.
Trump’s speech is so unverifiable
that he has complete liberty to say
whatever he wants.
And that kind of explains his
rhetoric, right? By using words
such as “perhaps,” “probably,”
“private,”
“maybe,”
etc.,
etc.,
Trump is able to say practically
whatever fits the moment without
anyone proving him wrong.
Take, for example, the moment
when Clinton pointed out the
architect in the audience who was
stiffed by Trump after designing a
clubhouse. Trump’s only response
was, “Maybe he didn’t do a good
job and I was unsatisfied with his
work.” See that? It’s not that Donald
Trump admits he was unsatisfied
and didn’t pay the man, it’s that
there’s a possibility he maybe wasn’t
satisfied. In other words, he shifts
the accountability from himself to
no one. And that’s a dangerous trait
for a presidential nominee.
Another example of Trump-
talk occurs when he’s asked about
birtherism and healing the racial
divide. “I think I’ve developed very,
very good relationships over the
last little while with the African-
American community,” he said. “I
think you can see that.” The content
of this quote perfectly captures
Donald Trump’s dismal engagement
with African-American voters and
communities “over the last little
while.” But let’s look at his style of
delivery of these so-called facts: “I
think I’ve developed,” “I think you
can see that.” Once again, we hear
Trump abstractly state a pseudo-
fact. It’s not that he’s saying, “I have
developed X and Y relationships,
as a matter of fact.” Rather, he’s
playing with minds of voters with
his unverifiable Trump-talk.
But why does this matter? I argue
that speech and rhetoric forecast
the nation we will live in for the
next four or more years. So we,
the American electorate, must ask
ourselves: What kind of nation do
we want to live in?
Do we want to live in fear for
the next four years, forced to hide
behind walls, scared of foreign
ideas and enemies? Do we want to
monopolize on freedom, liberty
and equality while erecting borders
and barriers? Or would we rather
break down walls, lend a helping
hand to our neighbors and work
together toward a brighter, more
tolerant future? Until we stop
pointing fingers at the “Others,” and
realize that we are the Others, we
will continue to divide ourselves. A
wall works both ways, and so does
divisive rhetoric.
Let’s work as a nation to turn our
pointed fingers into extended hands
to help those around us. Secretary
Clinton put it best in her Democratic
National Convention speech when
she said, “No one gets through life
alone. We have to look out for each
other and lift each other up.”
With
job-searching
in
full
swing, I look to the future with one
particular goal in mind. My goal is
to establish and strengthen empathy
in governments at home and abroad.
Empathy, once nourished and grown
in the hearts of people, has the power
to mitigate conflict, cast away hate
and establish love. Empathy gives us
the ability to see ourselves in the eyes
of our opponents and realize that
we’re all not so different. We stand on
a common ground, albeit sometimes
opposite sides of that ground. But we
learn to walk from birth so we can
meet in the middle and compromise
with our fellow humans. Empathy
helps us, as President Obama said at
the DNC, conduct a “contest of ideas
that pushes our country forward.”
In fact, empathy is at the heart of
democracy.
Now, empathy doesn’t call on
people to hold hands, dance around
the proverbial campfire and sing
“Kumbaya.” Empathy helps us
communicate our concerns in a
productive manner so that the
women and men we electcan find
solutions. How can we expect our
communities to stay safe, and our
friends and families to be content in
a supposed Union, if we can’t hear
each other out long enough to come
to a compromise?
To quote The Rolling Stones,
“You can’t always get what you
want. But if you try sometimes, well
you just might find, you get what
you need.”
So what do we need, America?
Well, as I examine the two
nominees, I conclude that they’re
not running for the same position.
No, in fact we have two offices up
for grabs. While Secretary Clinton
is running for the traditional office
of the president of the United
States of America, I believe Donald
Trump has his eyes set on a new
position: president of the Divided
States of America.
I call upon my fellow Americans
to work toward union, not division.
Exercise your right to vote and vote
with empathy in mind. Remember,
we are the Others. Come Nov.
8, I’ll be voting with my Muslim
community’s slogan in mind: Love
for All, Hatred for None.
For a complete list of 24 student
organization signees and additional
references, visit michigandaily.com.
CLARISSA
DONELLY-
DEROVEN
I
’ve always had a morbid
curiosity with stalking dead
strangers on the internet.
The first dead stranger I remember
stalking was Anna
Svidersky.
Svidersky
was
a
17-year-old
girl
who
lived
in
Vancouver,
Wash.,
and
was
originally
from a small town in
Russia. She worked
at a McDonald’s and
was stabbed to death
at work less than a
week before her 18th
birthday by a random
schizophrenic
man
who
was
also
a
convicted sex offender.
I found out about Svidersky’s
murder during the summer of
2008 when I was 12 and had made
a habit out of watching sad videos
on YouTube, specifically videos
set to Avril Lavigne background
music — I was very moody. I
watched as many slideshows of
Svidersky set to pop-emo music
as I could find. After that, I
scoured her MySpace page and
consumed unhealthy amounts of
news stories about her murder.
I don’t know why I still know
so much about Anna Svidersky.
It’s really weird, and it actually
makes me feel sort of gross. But
what’s even more unsettling is that
I still do things like this: I have an
informal list of dead people I don’t
know whose Facebooks I go to
when I’ve run out of live people to
stalk. Looking at dead strangers’
Facebook pages feels like a kind
of pseudo-coping: I use others’
tragedies in order to simulate my
own sadness. But I don’t actually
know the people, so I don’t actually
care. It’s like poverty porn, only
it’s others’-pain-and-suffering-in-
order-to-give-myself-an-artificial-
and-controlled-emotional-
response-and-also-assuage-my-
distasteful-curiosity porn.
This strange (and potentially
offensive) habit of mine probably
has
something
to
do
with
the
strangeness
of
internet
immortality. But it likely has more
to do with me as a person and with
my socialization in a culture that’s
incredibly
uncomfortable
with
non-ironic emotional expression.
Emotional expressions make
me feel awkward: crying in front
of people, grieving, expressing
gratitude,
admiring
beauty,
admitting love, etc. Sometimes
when I’m about to cry in public,
in order to avoid it or to deflect
attention
away
from
myself I say — ironically,
of course — that I’ve built
a reputation for myself
as someone who doesn’t
outwardly express her
emotions.
Emotional
expressions make me
uncomfortable because I
have a hard time “doing”
my emotions in a way
that feels honest. Usually
it feels like an “Am I
actually
feeling
this?
Or am I just doing this
because we have a greeting card
industry and I watch a lot of TV and
when everyone else performs this
emotion it always looks like this?”
sort of way.
I’m thinking about all this
because last Friday my really good
friend had a stroke, and I’m having
a hard time “processing.” Among
other things, this friend and I
have oddly built our relationship
around this distaste for emotional
expression. Neither of us are
“huggers,” and usually instead of
saying that someone hurt or upset us
we say they’re “being a fuckhead.”
We have an almost pathological
aversion to sentiment, and I don’t
think that makes us unique. In fact,
I think an aversion to sentiment is
actually a uniting factor for people
our age in this specific cultural
moment, and I think meme culture
best exemplifies this.
Memes are about heavy stuff:
racism, sexism, breaking up with
partners, feeling like you’re wasting
your
life,
being
overworked,
underpaid and exhausted, etc.
These are serious things that we
have serious feelings about. But
memes are also ironic. There’s no
such thing as a serious meme — I
mean there is, but it’s ironic about
the fact that it’s serious. Memes take
our emotions about heavy things,
which at times can feel debilitating
and all-encompassing and even
embarrassing, and pairs them with
a silly photo in order to make us
laugh about our pain, in order to
make the emotion digestible.
The use of irony as a coping
mechanism is nothing new, and
it’s
nothing
that’s
necessarily
problematic. I like irony a lot of the
time, but I worry that our use of
irony has become too layered, that
it’s become a totality: And by that
I mean that we literally can’t say
anything serious anymore. (Also,
I’m not the first person to worry
about this. Check out David Foster
Wallace’s essay E Unibus Pluram:
Television and U.S. Fiction.)
When people say serious things,
they (we) worry about sounding
cliché. This is a hard thing to worry
about because it’s mostly true:
Almost everything that isn’t ironic
can sound cliché. We have too many
behavioral referents, too many
cultural examples of people acting
out this emotion and this situation
for us to feel like we actually
decided how we wanted to have
and feel and show this emotion.
So it feels phony and dishonest to
say anything serious, even if you
mean it, because you’re unable to
articulate if you really feel this way
and want to do this thing to express
this emotion, or if you’re just doing
it because that’s how you’ve seen it
done before and how you feel like
you’re supposed to do it.
It’s a crisis of authenticity. It’s
an alienation from the self where
we don’t see ourselves as human
individuals with agency, but rather
subjects within an ideology that
says feelings and sentiment are
lame, and there’s no way to not be
cliché except by being ironic. We see
no other way out, so we oblige.
Consuming
dead
strangers’
Facebook pages doesn’t require me
to have serious emotions; in fact,
I can list it off as an ironic activity
I do when I’m asked about that
sort of thing. But I think I use it as
a way to prove to myself that I can
do emotional expression, that I can
privately, genuinely feel a thing and
that it’s not all just a performance.
But when an actual sad thing
happens in my life, I don’t know
what to do with all my feelings. I
get stuck in a cycle of wondering
if I actually feel this way or if I’m
just performing my sadness this
way because this is what it looks
like when other people do it. So I
don’t cry and I try to avoid talking
about the fragility of human life.
I say stupid things about meme
culture and stalk dead strangers on
Facebook. I get stuck in irony.
My problem with emotional expression
CLARISSA DONELLY-DEROVEN | COLUMN
Clarissa Donnelly-DeRoven can be
reached at cedon@umich.edu.
Divided states of America
IBRAHIM IJAZ | OP-ED
Ibrahim Ijaz is a public policy junior.
A
s someone who firmly
believes in the value of
aid work and service
to others, and providing I
spent last summer working at
a Buddhist nunnery where I
performed intensive community-
based
inquiry
to
create
comprehensive
examples
of
good communication with local
people as a means of improving
the conduct of foreign aid
groups, I have a few important
words to share in response to
one of my classmate’s critical
remarks on the matter.
My classmate described her
thoughts about “two realms of
protecting human rights” like
this: On one hand, you have
the people who are tending to
the injuries that the system
inflicts
on
disadvantaged
groups. On the other, you
have the real heroes that are
actively working to dismantle
the roots of oppression and
suffering inlaid in the system.
She continued saying if we
want to end injustice, we must
go straight to the root; all other
ventures only serve to detract
from this overall goal, and play
a major role in perpetuating
human suffering.
But what I think is even more
“harmful” than attending to the
damage inflicted by systematic
abuse is attempting to fragment
the solidarity of social justice
workers by asserting that one
category of social justice work
is fundamentally more valuable
than another. The point is not
to victimize aid workers for
“ignoring the roots of suffering,”
nor is it to create a moral chasm
between two groups that are
fighting for the same purpose,
the same humanity.
Systematic
change
is,
of
course, our main priority on the
path to ending human suffering
in all shapes and forms. I do not
refute this fact. I dream of a
world in which the systematic
factors that cause voices to
cry out for help are destroyed
so there are no reasons to cry
out for help in the first place.
Unfortunately, it will be a
long and arduous process to
arrive at a political, economic
and legal infrastructure that
flawlessly eradicates all of the
internal factors that fuel this
endless stream of injustices
against humanity. Let alone a
system that functions within all
worldly borders.
My
point:
We
must
all
cooperate on a united front.
We need the whole range of
social justice workers to drive
the movement forward. As we
actively work to disassemble
the overarching structures that
are the root causes of suffering,
we must simultaneously serve
and pay active attention to
the victims of these structural
abuses. What’s more, we must
ensure this aid is lasting and
effective. We cannot simply
ignore the human suffering of
today in the name of completely
eradicating human suffering in
the future.
Instead
of
victimizing
aid
workers
and
charity
organizations
for
providing
pseudo-aid, we should focus on
improving the framework of the
humanitarian aid sector so its
overall impact is quantifiably
beneficial. Most importantly, we
must scrap the aged method of
self-directed, imperialistic-style
foreign-aid projects and instead
dive deep into perspectives of
the actual victims of systematic
injustice. The problem is not
humanitarian
aid
by
itself,
but rather the rampant lack
of diligence that plagues this
sector.
A significant example of this
is what has been occurring in
the Democratic Republic of
the Congo. For more than a
century, the country has been
overwhelmed
by
regional
conflict and a deadly struggle for
its vast mineral resources. The
hunger for Congo’s abundant
natural resources has been a
chief driver of brutalities and
conflict throughout the country’s
history. In eastern Congo today,
these mineral resources are
funding several armed groups,
and these groups use mass gang
rape as a methodical tactic to
control local populations, thus
securing control of mines and
trading routes.
Dr.
Denis
Mukwege,
a
renowned
gynecological
surgeon in Congo who has helped
perform more than 30,000 free
operations for women who have
experienced gang rape and
sexual violence, and Michael
Ramsdell,
a
filmmaker
and
devoted advocate of ending the
conflict mineral crisis in Congo,
encompass
exactly
what
it
means to cooperate on a united
front
against
gross
human
rights violations.
Mukwege
and
Ramsdell
have formed a publicly visible
coalition, one that unites the
treatment
of
abuse
victims
and the gradual dismantling of
the contemporary structures
that inflicted these injuries.
This coalition furthers their
common goal infinitely more
than
working
against
each
other could ever achieve. This
coalition attends to suffering in
the present and the future.
Seeking what connects us
HANNA DOUGHERTY | OP-ED
Hanna Dougherty is an LSA junior.
michigandaily.com
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