The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Michigan in Color
Wednesday, October 31 2018— 7A

NOLAN FELICIDARIO/Daily

Figure 1

WILLA HUA/Daily

Figure 2

WILLA HUA/Daily

Figure 3

The University of Michigan just 
scored an “F” on racial equity in 
a public university study. And 
since we are in the spirit of writ-
ing guides, I thought it would 
only be right to create a guide 
where a Black student attempts 
to educate their peers on how to 
be a little more civil and cultur-
ally competent.
I write this to the incoming col-
lege student, and anyone who 
might’ve gotten too much expo-
sure to Fox News. I write this to 
all of the racist, sexist, bigots in 
the classroom and around cam-
pus. I write this to the parents 
who failed miserably to educate 
their pasty-ass kids in their lily-
white neighborhoods. I write 
this to the professors who’ve 
essentially told me that they’re 
sorry, but I need to sit down, 
shut up, and deal with it. I write 
this as solace — in solidarity to 
those who have had to put up 
with too much for too long from 
their oppressors. 
“I am tired of being sick and 
tired.” — Fannie Lou Hamer

How to not be racist: a starter guide for UM 

Basics/101- (Shit You Should Know, But Your Parents Probably Failed to Learn and Teach You)

Common Myths that derail actual conversations on racism

MYTH 1: The Irish were 

slaves, too. You don’t see me 
complaining. 

The Irish were never slaves. 
“While it is true that anti-

Irish sentiment was present in 
the United States until well into 
the 20th century, but that is a 
separate issue from 17th century 
indentured servitude,” Leslie 
Harris, a professor of African-
American history at Northwestern 
University, said. “The descendants 
of indentured servants, Irish or 
otherwise, did not face a legacy 
of racism similar to the one faced 
by people of African descent.” 
Harris also notes “an indenture 
implies two people have entered 
into a contract with each other 
but slavery is not a contract . . . It 
is often about being a prisoner of 
war or being bought or sold bodily 
as part of a trade. That is a critical 
distinction.”

MYTH 2: Asians are able 

to pull themselves up by their 
bootstraps — why can’t you all?

Asians are not, and have 

not, been subjected to the same 
complex and purposeful systems 
that were built to oppress Blacks. 

Let me emphasize: Asians 

definitely were (and are) 
discriminated against. There 
were lynch mobs, housing 
discrimination, internment camps 
and immigration quotas to oppress 
Asian people. But the system that 
oppressed Blacks has been here 
longer, was enforced more brutally 
and has remained to this day. 

Let us not forget: Asians were 

not subjected to as heavily as 
a community to slavery, black 
codes, segregation, redlining, 
ghettos, police brutality and prison 
systems. And let’s remember that 
stereotypes cast Asians as smart 
and workaholics, while Blacks are 
portrayed as lazy, dangerous and 
dumb. These stereotypes can cost 
jobs, opportunities and even lives.

The struggles that Asians and 

Blacks went, and continue to go 
through, are completely different. 
Asians came over mostly as willing 

economic migrants or as refugees 
fleeing war. Blacks were forcefully 
taken from their homelands to 
work as slaves.

3. MYTH: I am not 

responsible for my ancestors’ 
ills. 

Yes, yes you are. Whether 

your ancestors owned slaves 
and exploited their labor to 
gain familial wealth, or you are 
simply white, you are benefitting 
from a system created to help 
you succeed. Most recently, the 
history of immigration law, civil 
rights law, and this country at 
large has one people’s history at 
large. Name one law that helped 
Black people that wasn’t undoing 
some shit white people did. 

You benefit from their ills every 

day. 

As Jeanne Curran, a emeritus 

faculty member at California 
State University-Dominguez 
Hill campus wrote, “When past 
actions, such as colonialism and/
or slavery, exploited some and 

privileged others, the exploitations 
and privileges became part 
of our system of law through 
the unstated assumptions of 
privilege. The law was created 
by the privileged, and so 
reflects their perspective to the 
exclusion of the perspective of 
those colonized, enslaved, or 
exploited. To the extent that 
we continue to take advantage 
of the unstated assumptions of 
privilege on which our current 
system is based, we continue to 
bear responsibility for the effects 
those unstated assumptions have 
on people harmed by them.” She 
goes on to say, “Institutional 
racism is racism that arises 
from the rules and normative 
structure of social interaction 
in personal relationships and in 
institutions, rather than from any 
discriminatory or racist intent of 
an individual perpetrator. In other 
words, some acts of discrimination 
and racism occur because 
someone, operating on racist 
or discriminatory assumptions 

and beliefs, intends to exclude or 
harm a specific group or person. 
But other acts of discrimination 
and racism occur simply because 
‘that’s the way we do things,’ or 
because ‘we’re just following the 
rules.’”

MYTH 5: Get over it. Slavery 

was so long ago. 

Lol. See figure 5 in the online 

version.

For more on why you shouldn’t 

blame Black people for what you 
did to them. 

 
MYTH 5: Africans were 

complicit, and sold other Blacks 
into slavery. 

Africans and Europeans 

had different definitions and 
understandings of what a slave 
was, so don’t even start with 
“Africans were complicit in the 
slave trade” when there is little 
evidence to support that they did 
understand the totality of what 
they were doing. 

A.B.

MiC Contributor

“Why is it so easy for white 

people to fix their barely-there 
lips or curl their fingers to tell 
people of color to leave the 
country if they don’t like it?

I wanna ask them why 

they don’t leave? Most, if not 
all, white people know their 
lineage. So why not go back to 
where they came from? After 
all, their ancestors chose to 
come here. Mine were stolen 
from Africa.” — WOC Allies

White people have been 

saying “Go back to your 
country” for ages, even though 
they all should be the first to 

leave. You stole this country 
from Native Americans. You 
committed genocide to keep 
it. You profited off Black and 
people of color’s labor for 
centuries to build this nation. 
You even created immigration 
loopholes to benefit from 
cheap labor. See: the Bracero 
Program. And now you want 
us to leave, so you can reap 
all the benefits? Further, 
many racists assert that if 
you acknowledge how racism 
affects you, a community 
or any social or political 
interaction, you are playing 

the victim. 

I’m here to tell you — that’s 

categorically false. 

If someone stabs you, do you 

just say, “Oh, it’ll heal itself”? 
Acknowledging institutional 
racism exists isn’t antithetical 
to social progress. 
Acknowledging wrongdoing 
is the healthiest way to move 
on and repair damage that has 
been done to communities for 
centuries. 

Someone is not a victim 

for acknowledging what has 
happened to them. 

Racism is not over. It is built 

into the fabric of American 
society — into how suburbs, cities, 
education systems, income levels 
and every single tier of existence 
are created. This system, which 
has been fashioned in America over 
centuries, is far too complex to be 
broken down in this starter guide. 
But to be fair, let’s look at just a few 
recent statistics on discrimination.

Blacks and whites in Educational 

Attainment:

As you can see from the data in 

figure 1, Blacks and Hispanics are 
enrolling more in college than ever 
— but why are they conferring less 
bachelor’s degrees? 

Spoiler alert: It’s not because 

they’re lazy. Maybe it’s due to the 
institutional barriers they’ve been 
facing since they were children. 

The idea of education being the 

great equalizer is a tall tale at best. 
The “American dream” is largely 
dead. And even though exceptions 
exist, social mobility has remained 
stagnant and even decreased over 

the past 30 years. 

In Harvard’s “Civil Rights 

Project,” “Lee and Orfield identify 
family background as the most 
influential factor in student 
achievement. A correlation exists 
between the academic success of 
parents with the academic success 
of their children. Only 11% of 
children from the bottom fifth earn 
a college degree while 80% of the 
top fifth earn one.” 

Maybe institutional and 

generational wealth has something 
to do with all of this, because

“But I’m not racist! I don’t see 

race! I’m colorblind.”

In any conversation about race 

in modern America, resorting to 
“colorblindedness” is a defense 
mechanism in order to avoid 
talking about race because you 
“don’t see it.” 

“But then what do you do at a 

stop light?” — Trevor Noah

Put bluntly in the words 

of writer Hayley Burroughs, 
colorblindedness does the 
following: 

“It denies cultural heritage and 

negative racial experiences.

It fails to acknowledge the 

racial construction of whiteness 
and supports systems of privilege 
and oppression.

It discourages people from 

acknowledging the racism they 
face.

It views racism at the 

individual level without looking at 
the larger societal, institutional, 
and structural mechanisms in 
which racism operates.

It assumes we live in a country 

where race no longer matters, 
even though is still a major issue.

It invalidates people’s 

identities.

It narrows white people’s 

understanding of the world, 
disconnecting them.”

We all see color, or, more 

importantly, are capable of 
understanding that someone’s 
race affects how they move 
throughout the world. We know 
that obtaining money/resources 
does not alleviate racial struggle. 
As a result, colorblindedness 
ideology encourages and fosters 
racism, as it fails to recognize the 
economic, political and social 
differences within race. 

Racism is alive and well in 

America. And it’s not going away 
anytime soon. 

Racism is not just being a part of 

the Ku Klux Klan. Racism is also an 
attitude, in which you would prefer 
not to get involved with issues of 
race, or understand how race works 
and operates to keep minorities 
around you disenfranchised. Racism 

is putting your own comfort over 
the lives of the marginalized and 
oppressed. 

In America, you have two options 

when it comes to racism: 

1. Ignore all of this, and continue 

perpetuating the problems. 

OR
2. See exactly how this is, fight 

against it and stand up to it. 

Sitting and repeating “I’m not 

racist” does absolutely nothing to 
change racism. And pretending that 
you do not see it definitely does not 

change anything. 

I am tired of sitting in a class full of 

white racist students who have done 
nothing to educate themselves on 
how race works and operates in this 
country. 

Their “opinions” work to maintain 

the status quo and actively endanger 
my livelihood.

I wrote this so that you can be 

better, and so that this country doesn’t 
have to fall for the same reasons Rome 
did: the failure to incorporate people 
of different backgrounds into society. 

Blacks and whites in 

Unemployment: 

 
“In 1954, the earliest 

year for which the Bureau of 
Labor Statistics has consistent 
unemployment data by race, 
the white rate averaged 5% and 

the black rate averaged 9.9%. 
Last month, the jobless rate 
among whites was 6.6%; among 
blacks, 12.6%. Over that time, the 
unemployment rate for blacks has 
averaged about 2.2 times that for 
whites.” - PEW Research Center

Is it clear yet? 
Disparities between whites and 

Blacks exist. Racism is alive and 
well. 

“Victim Mentality”/ “Victimhood”/ “If you don’t like it here, then leave!”
Colorblindness

Racism Is Over

people of color haven’t had 

access to the “old boys network,” 
or nepotistic practices — those 
white people have had to keep 
their wealth insulated for years. 

Blacks and whites in Household 

Income: 

The data in figure 2 show 

that there is around a $30,000 
income disparity between the 
median Black household income 
and the median white household 
income. 
Spoiler alert: it’s not 

that the Blacks are lazy!

 “In 2016, the most recent 

year for which all of these data 
are available, the median black 
worker earned 75 percent of what 
the median white worker earned 
in an hour; the median black 
household earned 61 percent of 
the income the median white 
household earned in a year; and 
the value of net worth for the 
median black family was just 
10 percent of the value for the 
median white family. Related 
to these relative proportionate 
differences is also a wide range 

of absolute differences. While 
median hourly wages vary 
by a few dollars ($14.92 for 
black workers, $19.79 for white 
workers), the difference in median 
household income is tens of 
thousands of dollars ($39,490 
for black households, $65,041 
for white households), and the 
difference in median family net 
worth is hundreds of thousands of 
dollars ($17,600 for black families, 
$171,000 for white families).” - 
Valerie Wilson, Economic Policy 
Institute

The rest of this guide will be published online on 

Thursday, November 1. To view the published guide, 

visit michigandaily.com/section/MiC.

