Entering the University
LSA freshman Brian Hicks 

moved around a lot growing up 
with his father in the military. 
From Virginia to Panama to 
Germany, he has little recollection 
of encounters with racism, if 
there were any at all, early on in 
life. His first experience with it 
was when his family moved to a 
majority-white suburb in Iowa.

“I was in ninth or 10th grade 

and I was riding my bicycle from 
my friend’s house; it was like, eight 
at night,” Hicks said. “That’s why 
my mom is super overprotective, 
because you really have to be 
when you’re Black and you live in 
the area we live in. This car with 
three white dudes pulled up, they 
lowered their window, and they 
screamed the ‘n-word’ at me.”

Other 
students 
expressed 

experiences with teachers or 
friends making microaggressions 
or 
tensions 
with 
neighbors 

toward their families. And still, 
others reported practically no 
experiences with racism, due to 
growing up in predominantly 
Black 
neighborhoods. 
LSA 

sophomore Carlena Toombs grew 
up in Detroit and Southfield.

“I wouldn’t say I experienced 

racism,” Toombs said. “I was 
always around my people. In 
Detroit, I was surrounded by 
Black people most of the time. In 
Southfield, even though it was a 
suburban area, my community 
was predominantly Black.”

LSA junior Kayla McKinney 

also grew up in Southfield and 
said when race was discussed, it 
was more about celebrating her 
Black culture.

“Race wasn’t really talked 

about,” McKinney said. “We 
talked about in a sense of 

celebrating our history and our 
culture, but not in a sense that 
there was any negative thing to 
worry about.”

For these students especially 

and coming from places with 
large Black communities entering 
the University, with only 4.96 
percent of the student body being 
Black, can be a shock. McKinney 
said 
entering 
the 
University 

freshman year, there’s always 
some sort of incident making 
Black students feel isolated.

“What’s funny is that as a Black 

person freshman year, something 
lets you know, ‘oh this campus 
is racist,’” McKinney said. “Me 
in particular, my instance was 
we had this UMich 2019 chat. It 
was filled with a whole bunch of 
people and then one day someone 
just kicked out all the Black 
people.”

LSA freshman Dylan Gilbert 

experienced this shock even 
though she comes from Ann 
Arbor, which is often perceived 
as more liberal and welcoming. 
Gilbert wrote an article detailing 
racism she experienced as soon 
as she entered the University. At 
her first football game, she and 
her friends asked a group of white 
students to pet their dog, only to 
be met with a gesture to Gilbert 
and the response, “If I can pet 
yours.” Gilbert said she did not 
experience this type of racism 
growing up in Ann Arbor.

Having to constantly consider 

race on campus can be exhausting, 
LSA senior Damaris Doss said. 
She expressed the relief that 
comes with being back with her 
own community in Detroit.

“Race is talked about a lot 

here,” Doss said. “And when I’m 
back home, it’s not talked about 
in the same manner that it is 
here. It’s something I don’t have 
to think about all the time. When 
I’m on campus, I’m constantly 

thinking about what other people 
are thinking of me, I’m afraid if I 
don’t do a reading that people are 
going to question if I’m smart. I 
remember just being back home 
in Detroit just sitting on a bus, 
or walking down the street, and 
I feel so relieved after an entire 
semester of being under that 
pressure.”

In 
Classrooms 
and 

Conversation

“Being one of the only Black 

students in the classroom has 
happened to me probably every 
semester,” Doss said.

This was an experience shared 

by all of the Black students 
interviewed. 
LSA 
sophomore 

Pascal Casimier said when this 
happens with him, he feels 
more comfortable when it is 
not addressed. He doesn’t want 
people to ask him to speak 
on behalf of the whole Black 
community.

“I feel like in my experience, 

a lot of the time it’s better to 
not bring up the elephant in the 
room,” Casimier said. “In groups 
I’m a part of when I’m often the 
only Black person there, when 
they acknowledge the fact that 
I’m the only Black person, that’s 
when I feel on the outside of a 
group.”

But, even if their Blackness 

wasn’t explicitly addressed, many 
students felt the effect of their 
race on teachers’ and students’ 
interactions with them. Gilbert 
reported one of her teachers 
continuously 
standing 
behind 

her and touching her hair during 
class. Toombs said a GSI once 
refused to answer her question in 
office hours, though he answered 
every white person whose hand 
was 
raised. 
LSA 
sophomore 

Sydni Warner said she was once 
rejected by students when she 
asked to join their group project.

“We were supposed to do a 

group work, and I asked to join 
a group and they just straight up 
told me no,” Warner said. “Didn’t 
give me a reason, didn’t give me 
any type of explanation.”

Toombs 
attributes 
this 

avoidance of Black students to 
fear.

“What I notice, and a lot of my 

friends notice is people avoid us 
more so than approaching us,” 
Toombs said. “Like do you want 
to pick me to be your partner in 
class. Or if you look uneasy when 
I’m walking past you. I notice 
people tend to be more afraid of 
us, and the only time they really 
have anything to say is when 
they’re under an influence or 
they’re with their friends.”

Other times, though, Hicks 

observed how comfortable people 
are approaching him and talking 
to him about his experiences and 
being Black.

“People have come up to me 

and if they have some story that 
has to do with Black people, they 
feel like it’s cool to come up to me 
and tell me about how it is being 
Black,” Hicks said.

Another assumption people feel 

comfortable making is that Black 
students are at the University as 
athletes. Warner said when she 
lived in South Quad Residence 
Hall last year, she was constantly 
asked if she was an athlete. The 
anonymous LSA sophomore said 
he was at BTB Burrito recently 
when a white woman asked him 
if he played on the football team. 
Toombs observed Black athletes 
are respected by white people in 
a way that does not translate to 
other Black students.

“It’s funny, white people will 

treat Black people like they’re 
nothing unless the Black person 
is on a sports team,” Toombs said. 
“Regular Black man or woman, 
your opinion doesn’t matter, if 
you sit down in class, I won’t sit 

next to you, I don’t want to be 
your partner. Any Black athlete, 
they’re honestly kissing ass.”

In general, these students said 

they are made to feel they don’t 
belong at the University, or they 
didn’t earn their acceptances 
through 
their 
own 
efforts 

or 
intelligence. 
Warner 
said 

people have told her she was 
only accepted to the University 
because of affirmative action — 
something the University does 
not use. Hicks said he still is 
met with surprise when he tells 
people he attends the University.

“When I got into U-M, anytime 

someone found out in my high 
school that I knew was a bigot, 
they would act all surprised,” 
Hicks said. “To this day, people 
are like ‘Oh you go to Michigan?’ 
because I’m a Black man, that’s 
something I’ve had to deal with.”

At Parties
Gilbert 
attended 
fraternity 

parties earlier this year, just 
trying to relax and have fun 
with her friends. But she found 
fraternity members and other 
white male partygoers reacted 
to her presence with hateful, 
racist behaviors. She said males 
would mimic animal noises in 
her direction, pull her hair while 
dancing with her or lock eyes with 
her while shouting the “n-word” 
in songs. In her article, she wrote 
about a student asking to dance 
with her. When she declined, he 
responded, “Fine, I don’t like n---
ers anyway.”

“I feel white men are at this 

weird point of fetishizing me but 
also hating me, and that comes 
out a lot at frat parties,” Gilbert 
said. “Which is why I don’t go to 
white frat parties anymore. It’s 
either 
them 
hypersexualizing 

me or being blatantly aggressive 
toward me, or both.”

Other 
students 
described 

similar behavior, if at times less 

extreme. Warner said she feels 
male students avoid her at parties 
and has noticed white fraternity 
brothers trying to hook her up 
with the only other Black people 
in the room. At other times, 
though, she found herself being 
fetishized with comments like, 
“I’ve never hooked up with a 
Black girl before.”

Fraternities 
already 
have 

a history of being involved 
with high numbers of sexual 
misconduct cases, one of the 
reasons for their shutdown last 
semester, and the fetishizing of 
Black women make this issue 
even more prevalent for them. 
LSA junior Joy Boakye expressed 
the difficulties associated with 
being a Black woman.

“Identifying as a Black woman 

is honestly its own double-edged 
sword, because the experiences 
of Black men are very different, 
and the experiences of non-
Black women are very different,” 
Boakye said. “It’s a thing of being 
fetishized and hypersexualized, 
but also, statistically, receiving 
the least romantic interest of 
all racial groups for women. 
It’s really just a shit show, to be 
honest, being a black woman.”

Though 
Black 
women 
especially 

are targeted at fraternity parties, 
all Black student interviewees 
reported feeling unwelcome. The 
anonymous LSA sophomore said 
during his freshman year, he 
and his friends tried to get into a 
fraternity party but were told to 
wait off to the side. After waiting 
over an hour while others entered 
the party, they left. McKinney 
said she was told by older Black 
students not to attend white 
fraternity parties for this reason. 

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
News
Tuesday, April 10, 2018 — 3

Muruako said.

Muruako got involved with 

PILOT through the Big House 
Program, which helps selected 
prospective 
students 
from 

underrepresented backgrounds 
navigate 
the 
University’s 

undergraduate 
application 

process.

“We 
hope 
they 
get 

more 
comfortable 
having 

conversations regarding social 
justice so that they’re able to 
bridge the gap within their 
communities because Detroit is a 
very segregated place,” Muruako 
said. “A lot of Arab people live in 
Dearborn, a lot of Latinx people 
are in southwest Detroit and 
Black people are throughout 
the city, so we hope that these 
communities 
come 
together 

rather than just staying in their 
own areas.”

Attendee Jennifer Penaloza 

is a sophomore at Detroit Cristo 
Rey High School. Having never 
visited the University before, 
Penaloza said she enjoyed the 
campus, and the social justice 
aspect 
of 
Dreams2Reality 

appealed to her.

“I just joined it because I was 

interested in the social justice 
part of it,” Penaloza said. “I 

thought it would be cool to go and 
talk about that stuff with other 
people who are interested in it as 
well.”

Keynote 
speaker 
Shawn 

Blanchard, a Detroit native and 
a University alum, talked to the 
group after their campus tour 
about achieving financial success.

“Who 
wants 
to 
be 
a 

millionaire?” 
he 
asked 
the 

students. Everyone, including the 
PILOT volunteers, raised their 
hands. The average millionaire, 
he told them, has seven streams 
of income.

Blanchard said he has six 

streams of income, as an author, 
the style adviser of a suit 
company, a motivational speaker, 
a proprietor of online courses 
for aspiring writers, the owner 
of a publishing company and the 
founder of a fitness movement, 
Run This Town/Networkingout.

“So if I ask you what you want 

to be, sometimes we can raise our 
hand and say one thing, but I’ll 
tell you guys this — that doesn’t 
have to limit you,” Blanchard 
said. “I’ll tell you guys, you guys 
can do anything you want to, and 
not only can you do anything you 
want to, it doesn’t matter where 
you’re from either.”

Blanchard said his mother 

often had drugs in her system 
while she was pregnant with 
him, and of his seven brothers, 

Blanchard 
said, 
three 
have 

passed away and three are 
incarcerated. Even as a student at 
the University, Blanchard said he 
was “very non-traditional.”

“I had to raise my younger 

brother myself,” Blanchard said. 
“I actually brought him up here 
to the University of Michigan, 
once he got out of juvenile, that 
is. I was here at the University 
of 
Michigan, 
working 
three 

jobs, raising a younger brother, 
had a girlfriend living with me, 
majoring in mathematics and 
economics … Just like I have 
multiple streams of income now, 
I had multiple issues that I had to 
work through.”

After graduating in 2005, 

Blanchard moved to New York 
City, earned a master’s degree in 
secondary math education and 
founded a mentorship program 
for young men.He later moved 
back to Detroit and Mayor Mike 
Duggan appointed him director 
of Youth Services in 2014. In the 
role, Blanchard oversaw youth 
initiatives 
and 
worked 
with 

local businesses to created 5,600 
summer jobs for young people 
in the city. Blanchard has since 
received former President Barack 
Obama’s Volunteer Community 
Service Award and been profiled 
by CNN.

“That means no matter what 

you’re going through, wherever 

you’re from, whatever is going 
on at home, at the end of the day 
you can do anything, and as I’m 
standing here right before you 
right now, that’s proof of doing 
it,” Blanchard said. “And as you 
guys are sitting here right in this 
room right now, that’s proof that 
you guys can do it, too.”

Student 
organizations 

have been on the vanguard of 
pipelining high schoolers from 
underrepresented backgrounds 
to the University. While the Go 
Blue Guarantee focuses on class 
disparities 
with 
guaranteed 

tuition 
and 
progrmas 
like 

Wolverine 
Pathways 
target 

specific school districts, PILOT’s 
programming 
intentionally 

recruits students of color, but 
from all over the Midwest. 

LSA 
senior 
Antonio 

Gallegos told The Daily last 
August 
the 
program 
was 

instrumental 
in 
closing 

culturally-specific 
information 

gaps.

“I didn’t even really think 

Michigan 
was 
a 
possibility 

for me,” he said. I’m a first 
generation student so I didn’t 
know anything. The Big House 
really gave me the resources 
necessary to apply and not only 
apply, but once I came here even 
at my orientation people within 
PILOT, the student organization, 
were reaching out to me.”

enzymes to perform chemical 
reactions. 
She 
said 
this 

biocatalysis knowledge could 
offer a more sustainable method 
of performing experiments. Suh 
also worked in a biochemistry 
lab researching and examining 
how microorganisms in the gut 
impact human health.

Suh 
said 
she 
hopes 
the 

scholarship 
will 
allow 
her 

to focus on her research in 
graduate school. She hopes to 
earn her doctorate in organic 
chemistry and go into academia 
and research.

“I feel incredibly honored,” 

Suh said. “It’s an amazing 
opportunity and a prestigious 
title to hold … I feel really 
thankful to my lab members and 
all of those who have supported 
me and the University which 
has provided me with so many 
research opportunities.”

LSA junior Noah McNeal, 

a scholarship recipient, works 
with 
high 
energy 
particle 

physics and filling in the gaps of 
the Standard Model of physics. 
He is studying in the KOTO Lab, 
working specifically in the decay 
of kaon particles.

“The 
problems 
we 
want 

to solve in physics are tough 

questions that we don’t have any 
answers to,” McNeal said. “They 
are fundamental and concern 
why we exist, how we exist and 
how this universe is piece-by-
piece; we can understand the 
fuller picture.”

McNeal began his research as 

a freshman in UROP and hopes 
to continue working with the 
lab and write a thesis. He plans 
to go to graduate school to study 
physics and go into a career as a 
physics researcher.

McNeal said he has spent 

a long time working on this 
application for the Goldwater 
Scholarship and has learned 
more about himself and his 
career path through this process.

“I am elated,” McNeal said. 

“I have been working on it all of 
fall semester so getting to this 
point was something that … has 
been incredibly rewarding. The 
inward thinking I’ve done and 
the introspective thinking about 
my future and my career goals 
has been invigorating and I feel 
that I am on a career path and 
line of work that suits me.”

Engineering 
senior 
Eric 

Winsor, the fourth recipient, 
won the scholarship for his 
work in mathematics. According 
to 
Dyson, 
the 
Mathematics 

Department has had at least one 
Goldwater Scholarship recipient 
every year since 2002.

PILOT
From Page 1

DISCRIMINATION
From Page 1

SCHOLARSHIP
From Page 2

But the attack on Douma 

was in a way kind of a wake-up 
call, a reminder that we have a 
responsibility, so it definitely 
motivated this protest.”

Rackham 
student 
Nusayba 

Tabbah, one of the organizers of 
the event, agreed with Alsubee 
that 
complicity 
is 
an 
issue, 

especially when a conflict has 
been going on for a long time.

“Even last year, there were 

chemical attacks on civilians, and 
for a while, people acted outraged, 
but eventually nobody cared,” 
Tabbah said. “I kind of felt like it 
was a cycle, and when I saw it on 
the news again yesterday, I felt 
helpless feeling like I couldn’t do 
anything about it.”

In an attempt to combat this 

feeling of helplessness, Tabbah 
said she and a few friends got 
together to bring the conflict 
back to the forefront through the 
action. By putting the names on 
the Diag, she hoped to humanize 
the conflict again and make people 
realize real lives were being lost.

Alsubee hoped by writing the 

names on the ground in the Diag, 

students would recognize as they 
went through their mundane 
tasks, they were stepping on the 
names of people who could no 
longer go through these types of 
mundane activities.

“There was an intended shock 

value that we were going for,” 
Alsubee said. “You’re on your 
way to class, you’re doing such a 
mundane activity and on your way 
there you’re stepping on names of 
people who died.”

LSA sophomore Layla Hak, 

who also participated in the 
demonstration, 
felt 
it 
was 

necessary to demonstrate in a 
public area to inspire people to 
take action.

“People don’t talk about it 

enough, so I think that if it’s in a 
very public arena, it will cause 
people to start talking and maybe 
take action,” Hak said. “It’s so 
easy to just donate and raise your 
voice about it.”

Alsubee said he thought the 

demonstration’s humanization of 
the statistics was important, and 
he felt it made it easier for him to 
relate to the victims, though the 
conflict is something he has been 
thinking about for a long time.

“A big part of why the idea 

specifically intrigued me was 

that it’s a lot more focused on the 
individual lives because we’re 
writing their names, and the idea 
that behind all of those names 
there are people who had lives and 
stories and passions and dreams, 
just like you and me,” Alsubee 
said. “All my life I’ve known about 
what’s happening in Syria, and all 
my life it has affected me a lot, but 
writing down those names, I was 
like ‘wow, a lot of those names 
resemble my name, and my name 
could’ve been down there.’”

However, at the same time, 

Alsubee said he found the students’ 
reception of the demonstration to 
be ironic, given that many people 
seemed to walk past with nothing 
more than a glance. 

“There’s kind of an irony to 

the fact that a lot of people didn’t 
care,” Alsubee said. “They just 
kept walking, or if anything 
they shot a small glance. A lot 
of people did care, they did ask 
what we were doing, and maybe 
they stopped in the center to read 
what those names were, but it’s a 
little ironic to me that people keep 
going through their mundane 
daily lives, while at the same time 
stepping on the names of people 
who weren’t capable of going 
through their daily lives.” 

SYRIA
From Page 1

Read more at 
MichiganDaily.com

has created for herself, then my 
career will be more successful 
than I could ever imagine,” he 
said.

Levitsky began her lecture 

by 
discussing 
her 
journey 

to becoming a teacher. She 
explained 
how 
she 
initially 

disdained academia, but after 
pursuing a law degree, realized 
she enjoyed being in front 
of students and tackling big 
questions about social issues. 

While Levitsky recognized 

the difficulty of the subject, she 
also noted the power which 
could come from sociology.

“If you peel back all of the 

depression in sociology, our 
social science rests on a core of 
optimism, and I believe there 
is tremendous power in that 
optimism,” Levitsky said. “And 
I’m not talking about emotional 
power or psychological power, 
I’m talking about real political 
power.”

Levitsky 
gave 
two 

examples 
of 
ways 
audience 

members could study social 
change: 
understanding 
what 

drives a social problem and 
understanding the status quo. 
To look at an example of the 
former, 
Levitsky 
cited 
the 

racial inequalities against the 
Black community in regards to 
police drug searches and in the 
criminal justice system over the 
past 50 years.

“The criminalization of the 

African-American 
community 

is one area that has gotten 
worse over time, it hasn’t even 
stayed the same over the past 
half-century, 
it 
has 
gotten 

worse, and it is a particularly 
insidious problem because there 
is a self-reinforcing nature to it,” 
Levitsky said. “We know that 
racial stereotypes play a role 
in the criminalization of the 
Black community but locking 
up the Black community only 
contributes to the stereotype 
that Black people are criminals.”

To understand the influence 

of the status quo when looking 
at 
social 
change, 
Levitsky 

offered 
the 
instance 
of 

the #MeToomovement. While 
she acknowledged the impact of 
the recent activism, Levitsky also 
pointed out this was not the only 
time in U.S. history where sexual 
harassment issues have been 

brought to the national forefront. 
She also noted the common 
themes of powerful predators, 
and how fear of repercussions 
cause many survivors of sexual 
assault to remain silent.

“Through 
sociology, 
we 

know power works in different 
ways, and (in) many cases 
involving 
sexual 
misconduct 

and employment, power is based 
on dependence,” Levitsky said. 
“But there are other more subtle 
dimensions to power that are at 
work here too, and one of these is 
the capacity of power to silence 
people.”

According 
to 
Levitsky, 

sociology shows how silence 
maintain 
the 
status 
quo 

because it can cause persecuted 
individuals to withdraw from 
political and social spheres. 
She also said social change 
can occur when the status quo 
is disrupted, and highlighted 
some 
parallels 
between 

the #NeverAgain movement and 
the 1980’s Act-Up Movement — 
which she sees as one of the most 
concrete victories for activism. 

APPLE
From Page 1

Read more at 
MichiganDaily.com

