Wednesday, February 27, 2019// The Statement
6B
A
nn Arbor: liberal heart of the
Midwest, is the place I call
home. A beloved college town in
which things like a deer cull can monopo-
lize months of public debate. Ann Arbor,
although filled to the brim with small
town charm and regularly honored with
numerous seemingly arbitrary accolades,
is not a city without its fair share of prob-
lems. In particular, like many cities in
modern America, Ann Arbor is plagued by
an inequality gap.
This gap was something that I grew
up in and around, implicitly aware of
throughout my childhood, and explic-
itly disturbed by as I entered high school.
Unfortunately, however, Ann Arbor’s
problems are far too often ignored —
swept under the rug by a unique form of
Ann Arbor elitism that uses extreme out-
ward social liberalism to cover the reality
of racial and economic homogeneity that
is increasingly prevalent in this town.
My first experiences with this side of
Ann Arbor culture began in elementary
school. Bryant Elementary is located in
one of the few low income neighborhoods
in Ann Arbor, surrounded by multiple
public housing projects and large, low-
income apartment buildings. The school
welcomes a diverse student body, both
racially and ethnically, among which a
large percentage receive free or reduced
lunch. My dad would often say that when
he attended our school concerts, he felt as
if he was sitting in a meeting of the United
Nations.
My neighborhood was not originally
included in the Bryant school zone, but
it was added as a result of a citywide
redistricting effort to bring about socio-
economic diversity. However, among the
10 or so children that lived on my block,
my brother, my cousin and I were the
only ones to attend public school. Instead,
many of our neighbors, fearful of the
behavioral issues and other distractions
that their children may have encountered
at Bryant, choose to send their children to
a $20,000 a year private school at which
they would be surrounded by classmates
who, socioeconomically, looked just like
them.
Reminiscent of the racial homogeneity
used to protect the cultural integrity of
white neighborhoods in postwar Detroit,
my neighbors, though a diverse group of
individuals, leveraged economic barriers
to essentially achieve the same goal: pro-
duce an artificially created “safe” space,
sheltered from change and the reality of
the diverse outside world.
This attitude, however, is entirely para-
doxical when considering my neighbors’
political affiliations and apparent core
belief system. Though my neighbors, like
many Ann Arborites, bleed blue on the
outside, speak of how they cherish diversi-
ty and inclusion, and mourn the tragedies
surrounding the demise of public educa-
tion, their ideologies seem to be entirely
lost in implementation. When given the
opportunity to immerse their children
in a diverse environment, like Bryant
school, they veered in
the opposite direction.
This perplexing confla-
tion of values is some-
thing that I perceive
to be representative of
the greater Ann Arbor
community: Social lib-
eralism is celebrated
from a distance, but
hardly
practiced
up
close.
I wish I could say
things got better when
I reached high school,
but unfortunately, the
inequity that I wit-
nessed in education
frankly got worse. The
diverse group of stu-
dents that sat beside
me
all
throughout
elementary
school
seemed to disappear,
especially as I tran-
sitioned
into
taking
self-selecting advanced
classes. I soon noticed
that my classes felt less like a U.N. meet-
ing and increasingly more like a Senate
Republican conference (though of course
very different in political leanings.)
This extreme racial homogeneity of
advanced classes seemed to create a
restrictive tradition for success at my
school, a tradition that mandates white-
ness as a prerequisite for admittance
to the school’s high-achieving culture.
When students fall behind — a trend that
often occurs along racial lines — they are
isolated from the opportunities of aca-
demic success that have come to define my
school statewide.
I didn’t have to look far to find evidence
of this achievement gap. Photos hung
in the entrance hall of my high school
depicting great, (predominantly) white
alumni. The idea of college for many of
my classmates was an expectation, not an
achievement. And when 87 students from
my graduating class decided to attend the
University of Michigan, almost none of
them were African American.
My journey in public education contin-
ues at the University of Michigan. Here, I
have gained a new perspective of life in the
city, realizing that the Ann Arbor I grew
up in and the Ann Arbor that I experience
as a University student are remarkably
different. Using the model of gentrifica-
tion, it is almost as if the wealthy Universi-
ty students are a type of gentry, bringing a
wave of investment that is in turn shaping
and changing the culture of the city. Can-
ada Goose jackets have replaced Birken-
stocks as the fashion piece of choice for
people I encounter around town, Range
Rover SUVs are beginning to threaten the
hordes of Subarus in the parking lots, and
New York City-priced apartments in high
rises sprung up around town.
The culmination of these outward eco-
nomic status symbols create a restrictive
culture that uses high prices to maintain
an exclusive and homogeneous commu-
nity. As the high visibility of this elite
class culture spreads across campus, stu-
dents who can’t produce a certain look or
lead a certain lifestyle are being excluded
economically, socially and psychologically
from what seems to be the dominant cul-
ture of the University community.
This cultural evolution strays far from
the University’s founding value of provid-
ing a quality education for the common
man, a place where you could get an East
Coast education without belonging to
the East Coast elite. However, trends at
Michigan in both the high average income
of the student body, and high prices of
tuition and livingindicate the opposite.
Though the University has taken active
efforts to attract low income students to
its doors, this public institution no longer
appears to be a place for the common man.
To be common at the University of Michi-
gan is not to be from the 50 percent, but
to be from a family who makes $154,000
or more a year — in other words, belong to
the privileged elite.
Given the many changes to the city of
Ann Arbor in recent years, both physically
and demographically, the future of the
city is unknown. However, what is certain
is that if the city follows the trend of build-
ing an ever growing economic border
around its limits, the inequality gap and
its effect on city culture will continue to
grow. Who Ann Arbor is really for is now
the dominant question. Is it for the people
who live here currently? The people who
will be able to afford the increasingly
high price of cost of living in the future?
Or is it for the cultivation of a diverse and
multi-dimensional community that Ann
Arbor voters demand, yet take no steps to
enforce?
Ann Arbor is in the midst of an identity
crisis — we preach one set of ideals yet
practice another. We know who Ann Arbor
was in the past, but until residents and the
University decide to act on their beliefs
and take control of who they want to the
city to be and belong to in the future, the
fate of the city is left to the trends of eco-
nomic development. Until Ann Arbor can
find a way to bridge the divide between
theory and practice, the future of the city
may be out of our hands.
Thoughts on wealth in Ann Arbor
BY PHOEBE JOHNSON, STATEMENT CONTRIBUTOR
Evan Aaron // The Daily