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