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Thursday, May 23, 2019
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
OPINION

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the University of Michigan since 1890.

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Editorial Page Editor

Zack Blumberg
Emma Chang
Joel Danilewitz
Emily Huhman
Tara Jayaram

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Ellery Rosenzweig
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Anu Roy-Chaudhury

Alex Satola
Timothy Spurlin
Nicholas Tomaino
Erin White 
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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.

CASSANDRA MANSUETTI
Editor in Chief

EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS

W

hen are we adults? It’s 
something a lot of 
people disagree about, 
and there really isn’t one set 
answer as different freedoms are 
enabled at different ages. 
Let’s look at the ages for distinct 
privileges in Michigan. You can 
get an unrestricted license once 
you turn 17. However, would that 
really count as adulthood? You 
still can’t vote — that comes at 18 
(please register at vote.gov), like 
the ability to be sent off to war 
and pay taxes. Most people would 
probably say adulthood starts 
here, but the problem with that is 
two-fold. First, we have all taken 
introductory classes with 18-year-
olds, and it’s not very controversial 
to claim that they don’t, for the 
most part, carry themselves like 
adults. The second problem with 
adulthood at 18 is that you still 
can’t legally drink in the U.S., 
and the nationwide tobacco age 
is headed here as well. Would 21 
then be a fair adulthood age? I 
don’t think so, and it’s because 
there are two more ages worth 
examining: 11 and 14. 
In 1997, Nathaniel Abraham 
shot and killed Ronnie Greene 
outside 
a 
party 
in 
Pontiac, 
Michigan. 
He 
was 
convicted 
as an adult but sentenced as a 
juvenile and was released upon 
turning 21. He was 11 years old 
when he shot Greene. This is not 
a unique case — Michigan’s laws 
have favored sentencing those 14 
and above to lifetime sentences 
in the case of murder as well as 
similar crimes. This might be too 

common in Michigan. According 
to MLive, one in 10 prisoners 
serving mandatory life sentences 
were 14 to 17 at the time of their 
crime, and 31 percent of juvenile 
lifers did not commit the actual 
homicide. In addition, 69 percent 
of the juvenile lifers are Black.
Obviously, 
there 
are 
racial 
issues that must be addressed in a 
conscious manner, but this gets at 
something much deeper. Different 
castes of people are infantilized or 
over-matured depending on who 
they are and oftentimes where 
in society they come from. There 
are two examples — one more 
age-based and one more racially-
based. 
From the standpoint of age, it 
is somewhat absurd that there is 
a general societal expectation that 
people become adults at 18 given 
how many freedoms you still lack. 
One clear manifestation of this 
is how much more structured 
high school is (both academically 
and otherwise) than a typical 
university. The change is pretty 
drastic, and I do find it somewhat 
amusing 
that 
students 
who 
weren’t allowed to use their phone 
in class seven months prior are 
expected to manage much of their 
life on their own. 
From a racial standpoint, it 
seems 
that 
oftentimes 
Black 
people are unfairly made to appear 
older, and that comes across in 
a number of ways. There’s the 
choice of media to use mugshots 
of Black kids and senior portraits 
of white kids that make one group 
appear older and more deserving 

of punishment. Famously, there 
was a very different response to 
the crack crises of the ’80s and 
’90s (culturally, politically and 
otherwise) than the opioid crisis 
of today which is seemingly 
racially motivated. 
There should be one age for 
adulthood that is applied in a more 
equitable manner, and applied 
to 
everything 
and 
everyone. 
If you allow 18-year-olds who 
serve in the armed forces certain 
privileges not granted to others, 
it becomes clear that this is more 
virtue signaling than it is a serious 
attempt at legislating. Similarly, 
there is no reason to have such 
tough laws regarding minors — 
there is no reason the age where it 
is legal to try someone as an adult 
in Michigan could not be raised 
to a more reasonable one. This 
could address racial imbalances, 
like lifetime sentences given to 
minors. If the age that we want 
to assign adulthood to is 18, then 
on your 18th birthday, you should 
be allowed to drink, light one 
up, fire a gun, mail your ballot in 
and then, when you inevitably 
get arrested for the racket you 
cause by disturbing the peace, 
you should be tried as an adult, 
but not a moment before you’re 
18. Although this might not 
completely address the racial 
issue, holding all minors to the 
same standard might start to 
change societal perceptions of 
people. 

ANIK JOSHI | COLUMN

Anik Joshi can be reached at 

anikj@umich.edu.

Towards a unified theory of adulthood

OLIVIA TURANO | COLUMN
Feminists, enough about men. Let’s talk about women
I 
 

am a proud feminist, supporting 
political, economic and social 
equality regardless of gender that 
has been absent for, really, all of time. I 
too wake up some mornings fighting 
the desire to throw on my pink pussy 
Women’s March hat, slap a new “Pro-
Women, Pro-Life” frame on my Face-
book profile picture, tweet “men are 
trash” and check “crush the patriarchy” 
off the “Feminist with a To-Do List” 
to-do list I bought for $10 at a feminist 
boutique before moving on with my life. 
Much of the recent outcry against 
far-right abortion legislation has been 
because men — usually white, straight 
and wealthy — continue to craft laws 
that are not only incredibly restric-
tive, but also ignore basic female biol-
ogy and public opinion. Alabama’s new 
bill, which passed with the votes of 25 
white, male senators, effectively bans 
abortion at six weeks — earlier than 
many women even know they are preg-
nant — and criminalizes abortion, even 
in cases of rape, where a woman and 
doctor performing an abortion face a 
stronger penalty than a rapist.
Almost 50 years after Roe v. Wade, 
we are still fighting for even the most 
basic access to women’s reproductive 
health. Feminists are quick to turn on 
men and, to be fair, the vitriol against 
them isn’t exactly unwarranted. The 
patriarchy has reigned for too long, and 
women have had enough. 
But, in order to truly tackle the “femi-
nist agenda,” we can’t continue to blame 
our oppression entirely on the patri-
archy and our patriarchs. We need to 
talk about, perhaps, feminism’s primary 
obstacle today: white women.
I am from the Upper West Side of 
New York City, which houses a less 
affluent but still fortunate breed of 
white New Yorkers. Moving from New 
York City to Ann Arbor — another 
upper-middle class, white, liberal haven 
— it was initially hard to conceptualize 
that, despite the persistence of gen-
der inequality across America, white 
women, broadly speaking, are not 
allies of other marginalized groups. 
Amidst a flurry of condemnation 
towards the 25 male state senators 
attempting to control and legislate 
women’s bodies through the new abor-
tion ban in Alabama, there is a smaller 
group pointing out that white women 
remain complicit in promoting these 
laws — women like Alabama state Rep. 
Terri Collins, who sponsored the bill, 
and Governor Kay Ivey, who signed it 
into law. While the law may be legally 
unenforceable due to Roe v. Wade’s 
federal legalization of abortion, this 
law was passed with the intention of 
challenging that decision, emboldened 
by the Trump-era right — and women 
played a role.

This is part of a much bigger issue. In 
the 2016 presidential election, 53 per-
cent of white women voted for Trump. 
By contrast, 94 percent of Black women 
and 69 percent of Latinas voted for Hill-
ary. Even more surprisingly, this wasn’t 
a unique 2016 nightmare phenomenon. 
In fact, this followed a consistent pat-
tern of white women supporting the 
GOP nominee, as they did in the 2004, 
2008 and 2012 elections. 
In the 2018 midterm elections, white 
women followed other demographic 
groups in moving towards the left, 
but only slightly. 49 percent of white 
women voted Republican. Meanwhile, 
92 percent of Black women supported 
Democrats. 
You may be asking why I am so freely 
implying the association between being 
a feminist and voting for Democrats. 
Feminism is not confined to Demo-
crats — in fact, feminism is undeniably 
stronger when it transcends party 
lines. Feminism should and can be 
for everyone. However, as long as the 
goals of feminism are supported by the 
left and largely neglected by the right, 
when white women cast their votes for 
Republicans they are shielded by the 
privilege of their skin color.
While white women walk through 
the streets each day carrying the soci-
etal implications of what it means to 
be female, we are also protected by the 
privilege that being white grants. White 
women stand at a crossroads of being 
female and white, and when they cast a 
vote, they must choose where their pri-
orities lie. And while externally many 
of us may wear shirts that proclaim 
“the future is female,” we often fail to 
address our fellow white women who 
identify with their race before their 
gender.
More often than not in our current 
political climate, voting Republican is a 
privilege not all are afforded. In fact, 42 
percent of women who had abortions 
in 2014 were under the poverty line. 
Wealthy white women will always be 
able to find a way to get an abortion if 
they need one. But for those with weak-
er economic prospects, the attempted 
new legislation is devastating.
Until we, as feminists — and espe-
cially as white feminists — hold white 
women accountable for failing to pri-
oritize women’s issues in their votes, 
feminism will fail to truly take root 
in policy. Without the support of the 
most wealthy and powerful women 
in America, feminism falls short. Fair-
weather feminism is no longer enough 
for white women. Feminism needs 
your full support, now more than 
ever.

Olivia Turano can be reached at 

turanoo@umich.edu.

