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Thursday, July 27, 2017
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com MICHIGAN IN COLOR
Immigant
Sangreet
By SAMIHA MATIN
Michigan in Color Contributor
The taxi driver asks where I’m from
I reply Bangladesh
And he finds comfort in it somehow.
He doesn’t say my English is good
Or why am I here?
in a curious tone
that fringes on people’s privacy. I am a little thankful.
He tells me he’s from Nigeria. He asks whether I like the Michigan cold.
I say, I do, I’ve gotten used to it. Like I’ve gotten used to
feeling my accent twist and shift
diving into a word-drenched river
of cleansing and good fortune.
He tells me his brother lives in California, always hoping he’d come.
But he hates the blinding desert heat
reminding of home, Abuja
rooted in melancholic pulchritude –
the motherlands we hate, escaped and love beyond compare.
We start to reminisce about the corruption and politicians
our cataclysmic survivals in sailing humor
And we feel proud and then tragic
When we acknowledge
The nostalgic lonely
nobody expects us to be
and he says
things might have been better
if he hadn’t uprooted
then he shrugs
no, it wouldn’t have been
there’s an inkling of promise here
and he’d be home in some years
the pendulum always intrigued me. initially, it was
nothing more than a small metal ball that we
swung from one end to another. we measured the
time it took to travel back to where it started, the
pendulum reaching the highest height at the first
push. equipped with so much force to defy gravity.
it soared fearlessly against air drag, curving a
trajectory to touch the sun.
after the first travel, the pendulum never came
back home. it could no longer reach its amplitude.
it started to lose its voluntarism. its sense of pur
pose and direction. its velocity was taken away. the
pendulum stayed in a state of stasis in the
equilibrium. weightless. stationary. forceless.
MiC
Spotlight:
Managing
Editors
By JASON ROWLAND and ASHLEY
TJHUNG
Michigan in Color Managing
Editors
In the MiC Spotlight series, our
editors and contributors reflect on
the reasons they joined MiC and their
hopes for their work and the section.
The stories we tell are so impor-
tant because they bridge people from
completely
different
backgrounds
and interests. In a few words, I joined
Michigan in Color for the chance to
mold a space for the stories of our
campus’s most marginalized voices.
Hopefully, MiC will lead to more
understanding on our campus, but
the first step in fostering tolerance is
simply having our stories be told.
As for me, I’m a second-year stu-
dent
majoring
in
organizational
studies. For the past few years, I’ve
been heavily active with nonprofits
in the predominantly low-income,
and majority-minority, city of Nor-
ristown, Penn. From these experi-
ences, I’ve learned that minimum
wage is more than just a point on a
graph, prejudice and its effects exist
outside of history books, and unequal
access to opportunity can lock
the most loving families in a
vicious cycle of poverty. Addi-
tionally, I realize that these
issues of debt, poverty and
discrimination are not just
local ones. These are prob-
lems that affect every corner
of the world, and, as such,
these are issues that are not
going away anytime soon.
While as a student I can’t
single-handedly fix the prob-
lems outlined above, I can do
my part to relay the lessons
I’ve learned from my experi-
ences — as well as help craft a
section for others to share their
own. Hopefully, readers from
similar backgrounds can relate
to these stories, while people
who are radically different
can still use our testimonies to
educate themselves about situ-
ations of institutional inequal-
ity. However, at the very least,
I’m excited to give a voice to the
people who have historically
been silenced.
-Jason Rowland
One year ago, when I first
began my journey at MiC, I
wrote about being excited to
facilitate a space for people
of color to share their expe-
riences and to provide sup-
port for those brave enough
to share their stories. While
these are still major reasons
why I returned to MiC as a
co-managing editor, I can’t
help but think about how
much this section has grown,
and the huge potential still
here. Thanks to the amazing
dedication and hard work of
previous editors before me,
MiC has grown from a single
column to a true section at the
Daily while also continuing to
be solely produced by people
of color. For me, returning to
MiC is to pay homage to Toni
Wang,
Demario
Longmire,
Alyssa Brandon, Sabrina Bili-
moria and all the past editors
who worked to create such a
unique space for PoC on this
campus.
As the University of Michi-
gan celebrates its bicentennial,
it is important to reflect on the
history of racial relations here,
the strides which have been
made, and the work that still
needs to be done. MiC is a tes-
tament to the strength of the
PoC who fought for the right
to attend this university, and
those who continue to fight for
the right to belong and be sup-
ported. MiC exists for many
reasons, above all to provide
support to oppressed voices,
but as the section evolves it’s
evident we have also become
a check on those who wish to
silence us. We, as a community
of contributors, readers and
editors, are a powerful force.
The University is turning
200, and we will not let them
exclude us from the narrative.
MiC is loud and only get-
ting louder.
-Ashley Tjhung