EMMA CHANG | SUMMER EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR

T

he 
California 
primaries 
were a few weeks ago and 
the 
Michigan 
primaries 
on Aug. 7 are fast approaching. 
This November marks the national 
midterm elections that have the 
potential to change America’s 
political 
landscape, 
and 
this 
country 
needs 
some 
serious 
changing. But how exactly did we 
get to this point in the first place? 
A lot of people point to President 
Donald 
at 
Trump 
and 
the 
Republican Party, which is very 
true, but I’m also looking at the vast 
number of people who did not vote 
and, though they did not directly 
support Trump, were essential to 
his presidential victory.
In the past week, I have 
scrolled 
through 
Twitter 
and 
read tweets about how similar 
America’s 
relationship 
with 
Mexican immigrants is to the way 
the Nazis treated their Jewish 
population. And they are not 
wrong. One tweet, in particular, 
pointed out how taking rosary 
beads from Mexican women is like 
taking wedding rings from Jewish 
women. Another tweet highlighted 
the differences between platforms; 
on the one hand, people on Twitter 
are outraged, while on Instagram, 
people have just recently started 
to acknowledge the state of our 
nation. This struck a chord. Here I 
was, peacefully watching “Gilmore 
Girls,” and at this moment, people 
in this country are being torn away 
from their families— and I feel like 
I haven’t done anything. The only 
immediate course of action I could 
think of was to like the tweet and 
feel sad about where we are as a 
country. But that’s not enough.
In a generation where political 
activism 
and 
awareness 
is 
a 
defining 
characteristic 
of 
a 
person, the question remains: Do 
we actually know or even care 
about what is happening? How 
many of us actually keep up with 
the minute details of our state 
legislature? Sure, I could tell you 
the midterm elections are this 
year and yes, I understand that 
they are important in combating 
our current administration. But 
could I tell you anything about 
the candidates? Most likely, no. 
As a person who likes to think 
of herself as “politically aware,” 
this revelation was incredibly 
disconcerting, especially as the 
Michigan primaries and midterms 
approach.
Social media has fostered a 

false grasp of politics within our 
country’s youth. It’s much too 
easy to retweet or post a picture 
of your political opinions and feel 
as though you are participating in 
the democratic process. This exact 
thing happened with net neutrality. 
It is still a huge issue, yet is no 
longer trending on Twitter and, 
therefore, no longer relevant to our 
generation. But the opposite is true. 
Other outlets such as podcasts like 
“Pod Save America” and Crooked 
Media’s other content are great 
for feeling informed and trying 
to understand the conversation, 
but a lot of this so-called “action” 
stops there. The company does a 
fantastic job highlighting those 
on the ground, trying to get things 
done as well as creating their own 
campaign 
against 
the 
current 
administration, but how many 
of their listeners actually follow 
through on the passionate requests 
and commands of Jon Lovett and 
Jon Favreau?
This false sense of awareness is 
dangerous. With only a surface-
level understanding of both the 
candidates and issues at hand, a lot 
of the great aspects of democracy 
are lost on a complacent public. One 
of the best features of this country 
is our right to vote, yet much of the 
younger generation did not vote in 
the presidential election, an issue 
with repercussions that none of us 
thought possible. 
As a result of the last election, I 
know a lot of my friends and other 
young people around the country 
have worked diligently to help 
educate both ourselves and our 
peers. Yara Shahidi, an 18-year-
old actress from the hit shows 
“Black-ish” 
and 
“Grown-ish,” 
started an important campaign 
called “Eighteenx18,” a program 
that works to educate and register 
younger voters. Just how much 
impact has the program had, 
however? The actress has 2.4 
million followers on Instagram, but 
only 16,600 follow the program’s 
account. That’s less than 1 percent 
of her audience. Sixteen thousand 
is still a lot, but is it enough?
Some would argue it is. Others 
would argue that they have a 
much 
deeper 
understanding 
both of their role as a voter and 
who they are voting for, and they 
might be right. But there are still 
people out there that might not 
have the opportunity, privilege or 
motivation to spend hours combing 
through 
state 
and 
national 

politics—yet still for some reason, 
feel as though they are deserving 
of the label “politically active.” 
I’m going to say it right now: I am 
one of these people. It isn’t that I 
don’t care, it is just that there are 
so many other things going on in 
my life that often take precedence 
over the fact that I really need to 
figure out for whom I want to vote; 
however, up until the California 
primaries and the writing of this 
article, I would have proudly 
stated I am very heavily involved 
in politics when, in reality, I’m not.
While I do sometimes think 
about how I should be helping 
out a campaign, I have realized 
I just do not have the time—or, 
rather, I do not want to make it 
one of my priorities. There are 
people out there who will make it 
a priority and will push campaigns 
forward, but there are still more 
people out there who have a basic 
understanding of politics, but no 
real wish to participate beyond 
voting. 
Therein 
lies 
another 
problem: voter participation. One 
of the biggest parts of a successful 
democracy is the voters. In 2016, 
only about 34 percent of Michigan 
residents came out to vote in the 
primaries, and 63 percent voted 
in the general election. Compared 
nationally, Michigan does pretty 
well; 28.5 percent of the nation 
came out for the primaries and 58 
percent for the general election. 
Still, though, participation in the 
country’s elections is an essential 
part of our democracy and even 
if you don’t feel like knocking on 
doors to help educate your peers, 
at least educate yourself and go 
vote. 
I applaud those who can join 
the political campaigns and are 
actively 
participating 
in 
the 
democratic 
process. 
However, 
the fact is, the majority of our 
generation is only trying to get 
involved. But just “trying” isn’t 
enough. It’s not enough to post 
your opinions on Twitter or 
Instagram. It’s not enough to 
simply go to a women’s march 
and post a picture captioned with 
support for the movement. None 
of the marches and protests are 
enough without an educated voter 
and their subsequent decision at 
the polling place.

5
OPINION

Thursday, June 28, 2018
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

rounds of the assessment, 
I 
found 
myself 
using 
a 
simple verbal strategy to 
my 
advantage: 
Whenever 
the Black face and negative 
word prompted the same 
key, I identified both with 
the verbal association Black/
bad, an alliteration which I 
felt made my responses faster 
and more accurate. If the 
similar phonology of these 
words contributed to the 
increased response rate, this 
seems to cast doubt on the 
idea that negative emotional 
responses 
are 
necessarily 
at play in the IAT. Now, it’s 
certainly the case that not 
everyone 
was 
using 
this 
makeshift strategy, so I can’t 
argue empirically that this 
explains the results. But I 
think this demonstrates on 
theoretical grounds that a 
delay in response time is 
not necessarily caused by 
negative 
emotional 
biases 
against a particular race.
Still, influential studies 
have shown that preferences 
for names can result in a 
detectable and unconscious 
bias 
against 
minority 
groups. 
So 
the 
question 
is, if not the IAT, how 
else might we go about 
quantifying the phenomenon 
of implicit bias? In order to 
arrive at a more rigorous 
demonstration, I think the 
neurobiological 
findings 
by University of Southern 
California 
neuroscientist 
Antonio 
Damasio 
should 
be 
considered. 
According 
to 
his 
somatic 
marker 
hypothesis, 
our 
rational 
deliberation of options is not 
a purely indifferent process, 
devoid 
of 
any 
emotional 
content. 
Instead, 
certain 
outcomes are “marked” by 
physiological 
responses 
according 
to 
our 
own 

mindset and experiences.
Under this framework, a 
demonstration 
of 
implicit 
bias becomes clear. Imagine 
a 
manager 
who, 
in 
two 
separate 
cases, 
considers 
whether to call police on 
someone who has entered 
their establishment without 
ordering anything. If the 
physiological responses of 
such a decision, or something 
like it, could be measured 
(say, by using galvanic skin 
detectors, 
which 
measure 
our 
stress 
response), 
we 
might 
have 
objective 
evidence 
that 
negative 
emotions 
underlie 
our 
seemingly bias-free decisions 
when 
race 
is 
involved. 
Unlike 
the 
psychometric 
IAT test, which relies on 
the circumstantial fact of 
delayed response, I think 
such a physiological result 
could provide a definitive 
measure of implicit bias.
That said, I encourage 
everyone to take the IAT 
for themselves and grapple 
with the question of what 
scientific result constitutes 
direct evidence of negative 
racial bias. To reiterate, I feel 
that we haven’t yet arrived 
at an objective standard to 
definitively say that a certain 
individual is “unconsciously 
racist.” 
A 
scientific, 
and 
strictly 
neurobiological, 
approach 
might 
someday 
take us there. The history 
of America has been fraught 
with 
racial 
strife 
and 
injustice for a majority of its 
history; let’s all contribute 
to progress by tackling these 
difficult questions with an 
open and deliberative mind.

Pretend Politics

Emma Chang can be reached at 

emmacha@umich.edu

Farid Alsabeh can be reached at 

falsabeh@umich.edu.

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The science behind implicit bias by Farid Alsabeh continued below:

