5
OPINION

Thursday, July 11, 2019
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com OPINION

AKAASH TUMULURI | COLUMN

H

appy July, everyone. 
Hot take: the Fourth 
of July sucks. Before 
the comments section swells 
with 
beer-drunk, 
barbecue-
stained 
American 
spirit 
to 
chastise me, I am a patriot. I 
love pigging out on burgers 
and lathering on suntan lotion 
to celebrate the soldiers that 
fought in the dead cold with 
little to no food for our free-
dom. Sorry, I gave no warning 
— that was sarcasm. And burg-
ers and suntan lotion might 
not be dangerously ironic, but 
this is: Our national holiday of 
independence centers around 
the 
biggest 
post 
traumatic 
stress disorder trigger imagin-
able — fireworks — in the same 
month that we are supposedly 
celebrating 
minority 
mental 
health awareness and veter-
ans, a group of people highly 
susceptible to developing post 
traumatic stress disorder. Yes, 
July is Minority Mental Health 
Awareness Month. Surprise!
The final twist of the ironic 
blade — admittedly, a per-
sonal one — is that as a fourth 
grader, on Independence Day, 
a classmate of mine named 
Billy Brown told me I was 
not an American because I’m 
brown. I said, “You’re Brown, 
too,” though I didn’t realize 
last names wasn’t what he was 
talking about. Now I know, 
screw Billy Brown. But as a 
fourth grader, that realization 
sent me spiraling and shaped 
how I view myself today. And 
today I’m validated by what? 
A July dedicated to awareness 
about the mental health issues 
of someone like me — issues 
that, personally, arose in July 
on a day that is supposed to cel-
ebrate all Americans, but left 
me feeling as un-American as 
ever? No, I’m validated by the 
fact that Billy Brown went to 
jail on cocaine possession nine 
years later. Catharsis never felt 
so good. 
Let’s talk about more facts. 
The Fourth of July used to be 
a holiday celebrating American 
diversity, not American patrio-
tism or freedom or whatever we 
claim it celebrates now. Post-
Civil War freed slaves claimed 
the holiday in 1865, at the end 
of the Civil War. And so, for a 
few years, the Fourth of July 
was a Black holiday, celebrat-
ing emancipation and equality. 

But sadly, during the post-war 
period in which Black Ameri-
cans were grappling for a sense 
of unity, community and equal-
ity, segregationists began to 
reclaim the holiday, barring 
public celebrations in predomi-
nantly African American com-
munities. By 1902, the spectacle 
that took place on the Fourth in 
Atlanta was filled with white 
floats and white speakers to 
place an emphasis on what 
kind of American the Fourth 
was celebrating — an ideal that 
doesn’t exactly describe those 
that look like me. 

Back to Minority Mental 
Health Month. The necessity 
of formalizing a month to focus 
on issues of mental health in 
minority communities cannot 
be overstated, so I’m stating 
it. I’ll offer a trigger warning 
before my quick digression, 
as much of this stuff needs to 
be said but doesn’t necessarily 
need to be heard: LGTBQ+ per-
sons are 2.5 times more likely 
to experience depression, anxi-
ety or a mental disorder than 
heterosexual persons. One in 
six gay men attempt suicide at 
least once in their lifetime. 30.8 
percent of transgender-identi-
fying persons have considered 
suicide. Non-whites actually 
report lower levels of depres-
sion than their white coun-
terparts, but that’s a fact that 
can easily be misconstrued. A 
staggering 48 percent of white 
people, compared to 31 per-
cent of African Americans and 
Hispanics, and 22 percent of 
Asians, receive mental health 
care. And to be diagnosed with 
a mental disorder, one has to 
receive care first, so MMHAM 
is clearly a necessity that must 
be promoted further — espe-
cially because the self-care and 
#thrivingnotsurviving 
move-
ments that have swept through 
this country in the past 10 years 

seem to be disproportionately 
representative. 
And finally, why July? The 
Fourth of July is a day marred 
by a history of discriminatory 
tension and violence, so why, 
four days into the awareness 
month, do we want to under-
mine minority sense of self-
belonging with a holiday that 
hasn’t 
historically 
reflected 
everyone’s values? Because the 
Fourth of July doesn’t seem like 
a holiday particularly inclined 
to date-related changes, then 
perhaps we should think about 
moving MMHAM. Or at least 
think about providing and, 
more importantly, advertising 
adequate and affordable sup-
port systems for those on the 
Fourth of July who may feel 
outcast, misrepresented or sub-
jugated. In order to keep up 
with the equality and health 
ideals we’re supposed to be 
able to uphold for at least one 
month. Maybe all the other 
months 
are 
already 
taken, 
so MMHAM took the only 
remaining cell in the govern-
ment’s “What can this month 
be for?” Excel spreadsheet. But 
adequate resources and aware-
ness campaigns can’t afford to 
be hindered by bureaucratic 
bottlenecks like the slightly 
more arbitrary designation of 
which month we should “be 
aware” in. 
So if MMHAM is going to 
stay July, we need to put more 
effort into actually making peo-
ple aware of the resources that 
are available to them, because 
I’ve had this metallic umami 
of “another thing done just to 
placate the electorate” settling 
onto my taste buds since this 
month started. This is in addi-
tion to the sharp sour of “little 
Billy Brown is trying to take 
my crown” that starts to wax 
nostalgic around the Fourth of 
July. Huh, ironic. Tastes like 
bleach. 
Final note on Billy Brown: 
He’s fine. He’s a white male 
from a suburb of Milwaukee. 
Nothing was ever going to hap-
pen to him. He got a day in 
“jail,” then was released. It’s 
not even on the books. He did 
a month of community service. 
He is currently going to UCSB. 
But I’m over it.

I’m struggling with July

Akaash Tumuluri can be reached at 

tumula@umich.edu.

I

n his time as president, Donald 
Trump has continually used 
inflammatory rhetoric to stake 
out his political positions, from calling 
climate change a hoax to labeling news 
coverage he doesn’t like as “fake news.” 
However, Trump’s most aggressive 
outbursts are consistently focused on 
immigration. This makes sense: Since 
the very beginning of his campaign, 
Trump has made restricting Latin 
American immigration at any cost his 
number one priority. Interestingly, 
despite Trump’s xenophobic rants 
and inhumane policies, immigration 
levels have soared since he took office. 
Though this may seem contradictory, 
it serves to highlight how Trump and 
the Republican Party fundamentally 
do not understand immigration in the 
modern world.
While Trump has aggressively 
pushed to strengthen the border and 
deter immigrants from coming into the 
U.S., immigration policy extends far 
beyond the border itself. What Trump 
fails to understand is that immigration 
is not a standalone issue that is dealt 
with exclusively at the border. In real-
ity, immigration is deeply intertwined 
with America’s geopolitical relation-
ships, foreign aid decisions and climate 
policy. Reforming immigration policy 
in any meaningful way requires work-
ing with those issues as well.
Before diving into other issues, it is 
important to point out that Trump’s 
aggressive immigration policies — 
aimed at deterring migrants from 
attempting the journey to the United 
States — are likely not particularly 
effective. As a study published in the 
Stanford Law Review Journal ear-
lier this year, that specifically looked 
at immigration, explains; “criminal 
deterrence literature suggests that 
people generally do not know the law, 
are bad at rational decision-making, 
and even if they can make rational 
decisions, will choose to commit the 
crime because the perceived benefits 
often outweigh the perceived costs.” 
This analysis points out several key 
holes in Trump’s deterrence-centric 
immigration policies, mainly that 
immigrants often don’t know how 
Trump’s actual immigration policies 
legally differ from past plans. How-
ever, the most important part of the 
quote is the concluding section, a line 
that hints at the fundamental flaw of 
handling immigration as an isolated 
issue: Oftentimes, the situations immi-
grants are leaving behind supercede 
worries about American immigration 
policies. 
Global conditions have a major 
impact on immigration flow, which 
ties a whole host of American policies 

directly to the issue. Today, one of the 
most important factors driving migra-
tion is climate change. Many Central 
American countries, including Hondu-
ras and Guatemala, have large farming 
populations which suffer greatly as 
climate change destabilizes weather, 
limiting growing seasons and cutting 
into profits. Across the region, farmers 
are being forced to grow less lucrative 
crops, change their farming practices 
or simply not make money. With their 
economic prospects hobbled, many 
farmers are forced to migrate north 
to America and look for better-paying 
work. 
The United States’s huge carbon out-
put, the highest per capita in the world, 
has helped create this predicament. 
Though American climate change 
policy (to the extent it exists) largely 
focuses on problems facing the United 
States, American emissions have a 
global impact, as exemplified by this 
situation. The logical response to this 
crisis would be to pass common-sense 
climate protection laws. In the past, 
the United States even sent American 
farming experts to Central America to 
help farmers mitigate the effects of cli-
mate change on their crops.
However, in addition to railing 
against immigrants, President Trump 
has simultaneously worked to sys-
tematically destroy and undermine 
American climate protection efforts, 
subsequently displacing the same Cen-
tral American migrants he talks down 
upon. America, with Trump at the 
helm, has failed to take responsibility 
for the role its irresponsible climate 
policies have played in creating this 
wave of migration.
Another key issue which impacts 
migration flows is relations between 
the United States and Central America 
— particularly with respect to foreign 
aid. Many Central American countries 
struggle with gang violence, corrup-
tion and poverty, all of which are major 
factors pushing immigrants towards 
the United States. Ideally, the U.S. 
would combat this by providing aid to 
assist with these predicaments, help-
ing ensure that Central American citi-
zens feel safe in their home countries. 
Instead, Trump has taken the opposite 
route: Earlier this year, he drastically 
cut aid to El Salvador, Guatemala and 
Honduras. This was a dangerous move 
which will only worsen the conditions 
in Central America, driving more and 
more citizens to try and flee. 

Immigration is not a standalone issue

ZACK BLUMBERG | COLUMN

Zack Blumberg can be reached at 

zblumber@umich.edu.

Read more at michigandaily.com

The Fourth of July 
is a day marred 
by a history of 
discriminatory 
tension and violence 

