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

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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

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