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Thursday, May 10, 2018
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
OPINION

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A

s a student of political science
and international studies at
the University of Michigan,
I have learned about human rights
atrocities across the globe from the
Rwandan Genocide to the Rohingya
Crisis in Myanmar. In these courses,
I have learned that a fundamental
human right is freedom
from
discrimination based on any identity
including race, ethnicity and gender.
These courses have touched on
human rights concerns in the United
States such as suffrage for women
and human trafficking. Not once have
I heard of Jim Crow laws referred to
as human rights violations or seen the
Civil Rights Movement addressed in
a class focused on human rights. The
Civil Rights Movement was a fight
for human rights and, as such, should
not be excluded from conversations
or classes about human rights.
On Tuesday, March 20th, Carol
Anderson came to the University
of Michigan to give a lecture about
her most recent book “White Rage”
which addresses the reactions of
White Americans throughout history
to combat attempts to provide Black
Americans with equality and human
rights. Earlier that day, I had the
privilege of meeting Dr. Anderson
through an International Institute
event. Anderson told us about her
first book “Eyes off the Prize: The
United Nations and the African-
American
Struggle
for
Human
Rights, 1944-1955.” She spoke about
the groundbreaking research that
she did while writing this book,
linking the movements together
in a way that had never been done

before. She treated the Civil Rights
Movement as an extension of the
human rights movement of the time.
This perspective made me stop and
think; I had never heard these two
movements connected before. As Dr.
Anderson described the Civil Rights
Movement as a fight for human rights,
I realized that the conversation about
human rights is still incomplete.
The Civil Rights Movement was
a human rights movement. Black
Americans were fighting for rights
as citizens of the United States, rights
that have also been recognized by
the international community as
fundamental human rights. The
Civil Rights Movement fought for the
equal treatment of Black Americans
during the time of Jim Crow laws.
Jim
Crow
laws
discriminated
against Black Americans based on
their race and prevented them from
receiving equal access to education
and public services. Under the
Universal Declaration of Human
Rights of which the United States is
a signer, all humans have a right to
education and equal access to public
services. Under this document, all
people specifically have the right to
freedom from discrimination. The
Civil Rights Movement fought for
Black Americans’ access to these
universal human rights making it just
as relevant in the history of human
rights as any other movement.
Civil rights movements in other
countries, such as the movement
against Apartheid in South Africa,
are referred to in the framework of
human rights so the American Civil
Rights Movement should be as well.

Apartheid called for the separation
of citizens of the same nation
based on their racial identities and
appearances. Black South Africans
were separated from their White
counterparts and treated as second-
class citizens, much like Black
Americans were in the Civil Rights
Movement. There is no reason for two
such similar moments in history to be
treated differently in the academic
context. Black American Civil Rights
should be included in the framework
of human rights education.
The conversation about human
rights needs to be expanded to
make room for discussion of the
Civil Rights Movement. One way
to accomplish this on campus is
greater collaboration between the
International
Institute
and
the
Department
for
Afroamerican
and African Studies. International
studies
courses
focusing
on
human rights should utilize this
collaboration to better include the
Civil Rights Movement in their
curriculum. The two departments
are already making progress with
this event featuring Dr. Anderson.
However,
the
Donia
Human
Rights Center should use increased
collaboration with the Department
for
Afroamerican
and
African
Studies as an opportunity to host
more events focusing on this issue
to encourage students to think of
Black Americans’ civil rights as
human rights.

ALI SAFAWI | COLUMN

EMMA CHANG
Editorial Page Editor
EMMA RICHTER
Managing Editor

Emma Chang
Joel Danilewitz
Samantha Goldstein
Elena Hubbell
Emily Huhman
Tara Jayaram

Jeremy Kaplan
Sarah Khan
Magdalena Mihaylova
Ellery Rosenzweig
Jason Rowland

Anu Roy-Chaudhury
Alex Satola
Ali Safawi
Ashley Zhang
Sam Weinberger

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.

ASIF BECHER
Editor in Chief

EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS

AUDREY GILMOUR | COLUMN

Civil rights are human rights

Audrey Gilmour can be reached at

audreymg@umich.edu.

Republicans’ Medicaid madness
E

arlier
this
year,
President
Donald
Trump’s administration
told state Medicaid
directors it would
support
states
seeking
waivers
to
impose
work
requirements
for
people
covered
by
the
public
health
insurance
program—
a
partnership
between the federal
government
and
the 50 states plus
the
District
of
Columbia. So far,
Kentucky,
Indiana,
Arkansas and New Hampshire
have received these waivers
and it is estimated over a
million people will be affected
by these work requirements.
In
April,
the
Michigan
state Senate passed their own
Medicaid
work
requirement
bill, Senate Bill 897, that would
require “able-bodied” enrollees
to document at least 29 hours of
work, education or job training
per week lest they lose their
health coverage. Off the bat, I
should note other states that
have already implemented work
requirements, or have asked for
waivers to do so, set them at
only 20 hours per week. So even
by their fellow Republicans’
standards, S.B. 897 proposed
by state Sen. Mike Shirkey,
R-Clarklake, is extreme.
The bill is currently in the
state House of Representatives
and has the support of Speaker
Tom
Leonard,
R-DeWitt.
Luckily,
Gov.
Rick
Snyder,
whose one silver lining may
be his support of Medicaid,
believes
this
bill
to
be
unreasonable and will likely
veto it. However, according to
Leonard, Shirkey is working
with the governor’s office to
make changes to S.B. 897. The
only solution I can suggest is to
burn the bill.
The logic behind Shirkey’s
bill is simple enough to follow.
Medicaid is expensive, costing
Michigan 30.2 percent of its
budget in 2016. Republicans’
solution?
Use
work
requirements to force people
off of the program. Under less-
stringent work requirements
like those in place in Kentucky,
approximately
150,000

Michiganders would lose their
Medicaid coverage resulting
in a 15-percent reduction in
enrollment.
The
impact of S.B. 897
would be even more
devastating.
To be fair, there
is an urgency in
reducing the cost of
Medicaid
because
the legislation that
created the Healthy
Michigan program,
an
expansion
of
Medicaid
under
Obamacare,
has
a
provision
that
would
shut
the
program down if net
costs outweigh net savings.
If
that
happens,
Michigan
will revert to pre-expansion
Medicaid rules and thousands
would lose coverage. However,
just because work requirements
are a solution does not make it
the right solution for Michigan.
The
basic
logic
behind
work requirements, as far
as I can tell, is that they
will eventually lead people
either
to
employer-based
private health insurance or
to a family income above
138 percent of the federal
poverty line, the cutoff under
Medicaid expansion.
While Obamacare did reduce
the medically uninsured rate
in this country, there is still
the problem of the Medicaid
coverage gap, an unfortunate
circumstance where a person
or family makes too much
to qualify for Medicaid but
not
enough
to
qualify
for
Obamacare
subsidies
to
help pay for private health
insurance. And what about
employer-provided
health
insurance? Well, that workplace
benefit is rapidly disappearing
(though state legislators may
not have noticed seeing as
they have coverage). Per the
Kaiser
Family
Foundation,
only 57 percent of surveyed
employers
in
2015
offered
health insurance to at least
some of their employees and
expect workers to contribute,
on average, 29 percent of the
premium for family plans.

ALI
SAFAWI

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