4 Thursday, May 10, 2018 The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com OPINION 420 Maynard St. Ann Arbor, MI 48109 tothedaily@michigandaily.com Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan since 1890. 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 Continue reading on page 5.