“T

hat’s incredible. I 
wish I could be there 
alongside him right 

now,” I thought as I 
clicked the like button 
on the article detailing 
University of Michigan 
student Dana Greene’s 
protest 
against 

racism on the Diag. 
I 
closed 
Facebook 

and continued typing 
away at the paper due 
in class the next day, 
sitting 
comfortably 

on my bed. My paper 
had a long way to go; 
protests would have to wait. 

Looking back at this moment, 

my excuse didn’t hold up. I could 
have stopped by the Diag multiple 
times that day, but I didn’t. And 
besides, was a grade really more 
important than demonstrating 
against the racism students of 
color face all too frequently on 
this campus? I consider myself an 
ally in the fight against racism, but 
what is allyship without action?

I’m far from the first white ally 

who’s given into complacency. 
White people have been telling 
Black people to wait for a more 
convenient time for their rights 
as long as the movement for Black 
rights has existed. In 1963, Martin 
Luther King Jr. lamented not 
about the “Ku Klux Klanner, but 
the white moderate, who is more 
devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; 
who prefers a negative peace 
which is the absence of tension 
to a positive peace which is the 
presence of justice.”

The white moderate is Thomas 

Jefferson 
“paternalistically 

(believing) he can set the timetable 
for another man’s freedom,” as 
King wrote referring to when 
Jefferson called slavery a “moral 
depravity” but continued to profit 
from forced labor. The white 
moderate is President Eisenhower 
publicly condemning racism, but 
showing hesitation to enforce 
Brown v. Board of Education 
because 
“you 
cannot 
change 

people’s hearts merely by laws.” 
The white moderate is 96 percent 
of white Americans disapproving 
of the Ku Klux Klan but only 35 
percent expressing support for 
Black Lives Matter, a group known 
for large and disruptive protests 
against police brutality. A number 
of staunch conservatives have 

condemned the group as violent 
and hateful.

National divisions over Black 

activists’ 
protests 

of 
police 
brutality 

exemplify how white 
moderates can impede 
racial 
progress. 
In 

2014, Black activists 
organized large street 
demonstrations 
in 

Ferguson, 
Mo., 
to 

protest 
the 
police 

shooting of Michael 
Brown. A New York 
Times poll indicated 
67 percent of whites 

believed the protesters’ actions 
went too far.

I’m going to assume most 

of these white respondents 
believe 
police 
brutality 
is 

harmful 
and 
Black 
people 

have a right to demonstrate 
against it. So is it the perceived 
violence of Black Lives Matter 
that taints white public opinion 
of protests? The fact that up 
to 43 percent of white people 
believe NFL players should be 
fired for taking a knee — an 
inarguably 
peaceful 
protest 

— during the national anthem 
suggests not. No matter the 
form, some white people will 
always 
express 
disapproval 

when Black people publicly 
demand just treatment.

If 
white 
people 
are 
to 

effectively combat racism, we 
must shift our understanding of 
white supremacy from long white 
hoods to the day-to-day behaviors 
of ourselves and those close to 
us. White supremacy is not an 
abstract concept, far removed 
from daily action. It is nurtured in 
the everyday actions and inactions 
of white people. When a hiring 
manager skips past a resume 
with a “funny name,” when a jury 
indicts a Black youth for a crime a 
white teenager would never have 
been charged with, when a family 
stays silent during an uncle’s rant 
against “those people,” racism 
flourishes.

These 
subtle 
yet 
insidious 

behaviors act as tacit endorsements 
of systematic racism, whether 
intentional or not. Even the most 
well-meaning allies can fall into 
the trap of staying silent in the 
face of racism because they want 
to avoid conflict or discomfort. 
Racism is uncomfortable; white 

privilege is the ability to ignore 
that discomfort because it doesn’t 
affect you. 

Dismantling racism requires 

embracing discomfort. It requires 
calling out racist comments from 
friends and family. It requires 
joining protests and listening to 
the grievances of people of color. 
It requires being active and being 
present.

To 
defeat 
racism, 
white 

people must raise their voices 
against racism as often as people 
of color do. White people built 
and 
benefit 
from 
systematic 

racism. Therefore, the system 
cannot be dismantled without 
us. We can’t stand silently on the 
sidelines in situations of injustice 
while people of color protest 
discrimination. We must show 
up and support Black voices when 
they bring attention to police 
brutality, 
mass 
incarceration, 

voter suppression or any of the 
other symptoms of racism. As the 
NFL police brutality protests and 
Dr. King’s writings show, people 
will attempt to delegitimize Black 
activists no matter how peaceful 
or small their protests. These 
voices must be counteracted with 
cries of affirmation and support 
from white allies.

I’m not saying a white person 

has to attend every single Black 
Lives Matter protest to effectively 
combat racism. Activism is often 
a day-to-day, small-scale effort. 
One small step allies can take is 
speaking up when we hear racist 
language. It’s easiest to be racist in 
white-only spaces where no faces 
of color exist to remind someone 
of the consequences of their hate. 
Considering that according to a 
2013 survey, 75 percent of whites 
in the United States don’t have a 
single friend of color, these spaces 
are all too common. Therefore, 
white allies must hold our friends 
and families accountable. 

We must call out those around 

us who abuse the “N-word” 
or slip on the cloak of casual 
racism when they feel safe in 
their whiteness. It’s on us to 
dismantle racism’s safe spaces. 
As Desmond Tutu once said, “If 
you are neutral in situations of 
injustice, you have chosen the 
side of the oppressor.”

I 

hate sports.

I have absolutely no interest 

in any team, franchise, game 

or athlete.

My 
lack 
of 

care 
immediately 

disqualifies 
me 

from 95 percent of 
all 
conversations 

occurring 
within 

reach of a bottle of 
Budweiser, as men 
are horrified at my 
utter neglect over 
the statistics of the 
most recent game of 
the home concussions versus 
the away concussions.

Yet, though I don’t care for 

sports, I do care for politics.

And I don’t just care — I 

know politics like a Vegas 
bookie knows sports.

So when the two worlds 

collided last week due to our 
commander-in-tweet pandering 
to his base condemning the 
protests in the NFL, the political 
world I follow brought forth 
ample historical evidence about 
how protests have been utilized in 
the past within American sports. 
More specifically, these sports 
have become a righteous platform 
for marginalized Black athletes to 
voice their objections to a country 
that preaches equality. 

Several 
pieces 
written 

these 
past 
few 
weeks 

conveyed 
these 
ideas, 
and 

NPR’s Domenico Montanaro 
wrote a particularly excellent 
article that demonstrated the 
“complicated history of black 
athletes protesting in sports.”

In 
the 
Olympic 
Games, 

Black 
athletes 
have 
won 

countless medals for a country 
that divides, segregates and 
marginalizes 
them. 
From 

Jesse Owens in Nazi Germany 
to John Carlos and Tommie 
Smith in Mexico City, Black 
athletes have competed and 
succeeded 
for 
the 
United 

States despite the blatantly 
racist institutions that exist in 
the homeland.

And in 1968, when 

Smith 
and 
Carlos 

donned black gloves 
and raised their fists 
in 
a 
Black 
Power 

salute throughout the 
entirety of the national 
anthem, they did so to 
a United States caught 
in the grips of racial 
and social chaos.

As 
Montanaro 

wrote, 
“1968 
was 

another inflection point year in 
American political and social 
history. Violence was spilling 
out in the civil rights and 
integration movement. Cities 
had been burned from rioting 
the year before. Martin Luther 
King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy 
had been assassinated.”

And 
that 
was 
how 
they 

could respond: capturing white 
America’s attention.

That was how they could 

utilize the success of their 
athleticism 
to 
move 
the 

indifferent and tepid white 
American population into an 
uncomfortable 
conversation 

on race.

Yet, naturally, the two athletes 

faced an overwhelming amount 
of criticism and condemnation for 
such an act. They were stripped of 
their gold medals and condemned 
for their disrespect to our country.

Or take Muhammad Ali and 

his refusal to be drafted into a war 
he and millions of others morally 
objected to (and rightly so). His 
defiance to the draft landed him 
a sentence of five years in prison, 
yet he was unwavering about 
being sent to fight and kill the 
Vietnamese: “And shoot them for 
what? They never called me n-----, 
they never lynched me, they didn’t 
put no dogs on me, they didn’t rob 
me of my nationality, rape and kill 
my mother and father. … Shoot 

them for what? How can I shoot 
them poor people? Just take me 
to jail.” The Supreme Court later 
overturned Ali’s conviction, and 
he never served time.

And now, within the NFL, acts 

of protest face an overwhelming 
amount 
of 
chauvinistic 

condemnation due to the near-
satirical amount of patriotism 
displayed at our football games 
(we fly military aircraft over our 
stadiums). The vilification of 
these protesters comes from the 
ignorant and unsympathetic who 
lack the understanding that what 
these athletes are protesting has 
nothing to do with a piece of cloth.

Athletic success is an extremely 

effective platform for protest. 
I have often looked at sports 
as something nearly free from 
political 
discourse, 
which 
I 

thought justified my lack of 
interest. But I forget I come 
from a position of privilege and 
ignorance, living my comfortable 
life unaware of Black athletes’ 
effective protests in the past. 
These athletes were offered an 
audience politicians could only 
dream of. They were revered 
and idolized for athletic ability, 
granting them the eyes and ears 
of millions.

Perhaps 
our 
president 
is 

calculating, and utilizing his 
outrage over this issue to mask the 
other glaring problems plaguing 
his administration. (Hey, Jared, 
cute email server, and, Tom Price, 
nice government jet you got there.)

Or maybe, just maybe, he’s an 

impulsive old racist who panders 
to a base that worships a piece of 
cloth while disregarding the very 
intangible rights it represents.

I may hate sports, but I now 

realize 
it’s 
another 
platform 

that can be used to address the 
problems that continue to infect 
our country.

I

t’s just past sundown and, 
after failing to make it over 
to Trader Joe’s on East 

Stadium 
Boulevard 

for the past two and 
a 
half 
weeks, 
I’m 

overwhelmed by the 
snacking possibilities 
awaiting me in my 
parents’ pantry. Upon 
any given arrival to my 
childhood home, the 
first stop is always the 
kitchen. Today is no 
exception. My phone 
buzzes as I’m halfway 
through my third breakfast biscuit. 
My relatives want to know whether 
I’m fasting today. 

If it weren’t for that text, I 

would’ve completely forgotten it 
was Yom Kippur.

Yom Kippur, or The Day of 

Atonement, is the holiest day of the 
year in Judaism. Following Rosh 
Hashanah by 10 days, the holiday 
is typically observed through 
participation in intensive prayer 
and sundown-to-sundown fasting. 
It is said that, after Yom Kippur, 
God has officially solidified his 
inscriptions in the Book of Life. 
According 
to 
Judaism, 
these 

inscriptions dictate who will or 
will not stick around for another 
earthly year. So yeah, the premise 
of Yom Kippur seems pretty high 
stakes: Repent or bust.

I 
say 
this 
light-heartedly 

because I have a relatively weak 
relationship with religion. This 
wasn’t always the case. I remember 
lying in bed as a child, praying 
to a compartmentalized image 
of God — a man in the sky with a 
nightcap and grizzly white beard. 
Sometime around age 16, my 
mental picture of an all-powerful 
Albus Dumbledore lookalike no 
longer made sense to me. I stopped 
practicing religion and have only 
recently started to re-evaluate this 
decision. There seemed to be ways 
to connect with religion on a more 
individualized basis than I had 
formerly acknowledged through a 
narrow and standardized Judeo-
Christian lens.

Though the apathetic high-

school-atheist phase does not grace 
the life of every American teenager, 
it seems a growing theme among the 
country’s Judeo-Christian youth. 
Teenage years are characterized 
by 
an 
increased 
desire 
for 

autonomy, a rebellious sensation 
likely limited by strict loyalty to 

Mom and Dad’s religious roots. 
Preservation of religious routine 
proves itself especially difficult 

on a largely secular 
college campus, where 
quantitative 
grade 

point 
averages 
and 

median exam scores 
feel exponentially more 
urgent than the pursuit 
of a spiritual outlet. 

As a former member 

of that demographic 
of 
apathetic 
and 

nonreligious 
youth, 

I’ll speak to my own 

experience: There were other 
things I wanted to do on Friday 
nights besides attend Shabbat 
services at the synagogue. It was as 
simple as that. I didn’t see the place 
for a system of belief in a busier 
life schedule, so I abandoned it 
altogether.

A 
return 
to 
religion 
can 

follow 
any 
combination 
of 

transformational life events — 
the death of a loved one, a bout 
of intense depression, a period 
of 
extreme 
turbulence 
and 

uncertainty. In many cases, the 
search for a new belief system may 
not be as much of a return as it is a 
reconstruction.

My 
religious 
base 
from 

childhood makes the return to a 
set of beliefs highly accessible to 
me. Accompanied by this desired 
return is the knowledge that I need 
to entirely recalibrate this base 
in organized religion by way of 
my own discretion. The said base 
holds many valuable teachings, 
and it is my current project to 
decide which of those teachings 
I find particularly applicable and 
worthwhile.

Reconstruction of faith can 

adopt 
many 
different 
forms. 

Maybe it’s a strong adherence to 
the communal aspect of religion, 
the attendance of services and 
prayer 
circles 
alongside 
like-

minded folk. Maybe it’s a learning 
process, the research of religious 
philosophies and subsequent use 
of that information to navigate 
the physical world in a sensible 
manner. I mean, talk about a 
rich text — religious scriptures 
and philosophies are endlessly 
fascinating to read with a more 
critical modern eye. Maybe it’s 
silent and completely personal, 
the revived yet revalued utterance 
of prayers retained from youth, 
a communication with a newly 

assessed concept of divine force.

In addition to emphasizing 

the metaphysical aspects of an 
otherwise tactile daily routine, 
religious adherence of some variety 
has proven itself widely beneficial 
in relation to mental health and 
wellness. 
Comparatively 
low-

stress levels have been recorded 
in 
religious 
or 
semi-religious 

individuals, as well as a stronger 
sense of purpose and meaning. 
Though this could be rooted to 
the existential notion of place in a 
higher order, the participatory and 
social aspects of religion appear 
the most strongly correlated to 
these statistics.

The participatory aspect of 

religion has specifically occupied 
my attention as I’ve started to 
tentatively consider belief a part 
of my life again. Participation in 
traditional practices gives me this 
feeling of meaningful contribution 
to a heritage that has undoubtedly 
shaped me in ways I may not fully 
realize. Determining whether to 
preserve particular traditions on 
an individual basis has become, for 
me, a helpful way to navigate the 
otherwise passive acquisition of a 
Jewish heritage.

Though I don’t foresee a 

strictly 
regimented 
religious 

practice in my near future, I hope 
to continue that participation 
in 
smaller 
acknowledgments 

of belief. I proceeded to fast on 
Yom Kippur after receiving my 
family’s post-sundown reminder 
with 
a 
mouthful 
of 
biscuit 

crumbs, and the cup of coffee I 
had on that Saturday morning 
didn’t technically align with the 
holiday’s 
fasting 
expectations 

either. I broke the rules a little bit, 
and that’s OK.

For the first time in years, 

I took part in a tradition that 
made me feel like a contributing 
member to the preservation 
of a deeply rooted religious 
philosophy. I took into account 
my own expectations for myself 
on this day instead of focusing 
solely on the standardized rules 
that I’d worked so hard to reject 
as a teenager. An otherwise 
mundane Saturday adopted a 
new meaning, drawn from an old 
religious base and shaped into 
something currently applicable 
and consciously chosen.

Opinion
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
4 — Thursday, October 5, 2017

REBECCA LERNER

Managing Editor

420 Maynard St. 

Ann Arbor, MI 48109

 tothedaily@michigandaily.com

Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan since 1890.

EMMA KINERY

Editor in Chief

ANNA POLUMBO-LEVY 

and REBECCA TARNOPOL 

Editorial Page Editors

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.

EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS

On health and belief

JOSIE TOLIN | COLUMN

White people, racism is our fight

TOM AIELLO | COLUMN

I hate sports

MICHAEL MORDARKSI | COLUMN

Carolyn Ayaub
Megan Burns

Samantha Goldstein

Caitlin Heenan
Jeremy Kaplan

Sarah Khan

Anurima Kumar

Max Lubell

Lucas Maiman

Alexis Megdanoff
Madeline Nowicki
Anna Polumbo-Levy 

Jason Rowland

Anu Roy-Chaudhury

Ali Safawi

Sarah Salman
Kevin Sweitzer

Rebecca Tarnopol

Stephanie Trierweiler

Ashley Zhang

Josie Tolin can be reached at 

jostolin@umich.edu.

Tom Aiello can be reached at 

thomaiel@umich.edu.

FRANNIE MILLER | CONTACT FRANNIE AT FRMILLER@UMICH.EDU

Michael Mordarski can be reached 

at mmordars@umich.edu.

TOM

AIELLO

JOSIE
TOLIN

MICHAEL 

MORDARSKI