6 OPINION
Thursday, June 4, 2020
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
OPINION
A
s you consider joining the ranks
of the leaders and the best,
I can’t, in good conscience,
allow you to make the decision to come
to the University of Michigan without
taking the time to share this with you.
As someone who chose to come to the
University, I know how exciting it is to
envision yourself here. Scrolling through
the websites and social media accounts,
you’ll see game days, students in our
esteemed research labs and photos of
multicultural student groups on the
Diag. However, what you won’t see is a
university fulfilling its stated mission.
I decided to come to the University
after attending Hawken School, a small
private high school in Ohio. Most of the
students who attended the school, like
me, were white and entered the school
unaware of the systems of oppression
that affected the people of color in our
community. Hawken took responsibil-
ity for developing our understanding of
race, vulnerability and of every citizen’s
responsibility to be an active member of
society and an ally in the fight against
issues they don’t directly experience. As
a result of the institution’s efforts, I felt
compelled to find a college where I could
further develop my understanding and
leadership on broader societal justice.
I decided to attend the University
because I wanted to learn how to tackle
these issues of privilege and racism at an
institution whose mission is “to serve
the people of Michigan and the world
through preeminence in creating, com-
municating, preserving and applying
knowledge, art and academic values,
and in developing leaders and citizens
who will challenge the present and
enrich the future.” As I’ve been attend-
ing the University for two years, there
certainly have been moments where I
have learned about race, being a global
citizen and what real leadership looks
like. Student-led initiatives like the Musi-
cal Theatre Department’s Color Cabaret
create an environment of vulnerable,
open and genuine discussion on race in
society while simultaneously celebrating
the diverse background of the student
body. You may think this is because the
administration at the University takes
broad and resolute action to support
the mission of the institution and fos-
ter diversity, equity and inclusiveness.
However, in times like these, when we
need leadership the most, the University
is teaching us that leaders wait until it is
comfortable to get behind an issue, while
the best stand silently by, afraid to upset
the status quo.
After over 300 hundred people
accessed an email template that I created
to send a message to University President
Mark Schlissel from the student body,
Schlissel offered an obligatory message
that amounted to a general acknowledg-
ment of work to be done against racism
and violence, but failed to highlight any
concrete accomplishments or cite any
new efforts by the University to fulfill
its institutional obligation. In 2016, The
Michigan Daily reported on the pro-
posed Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
goals Schlissel mentions in his recent
statement, saying “DEI will continue as a
major focus of the institution throughout
my presidency, beyond our initial five-
year Strategic Plan.” Sabrina Bilimoria,
who graduated in 2016 and was a Michi-
gan in Color editor at The Daily, criti-
cized the DEI plan which required more
mental and emotional labor from mar-
ginalized students. She wrote, “There’s
such a lack of understanding from Schlis-
sel and many, many administrators as to
a common way to talk to students with-
out tokenizing them and asking minority
students to do all the work.” Four years
later, the University continues to put the
burden on minority students to educate
their white peers on race and allyship by
remaining absent in the discussion. It is
not Black people’s responsibility to teach
white people how to understand race.
Understanding race is a fundamental
component of citizenship and if the Uni-
versity actually intends to fulfill its mis-
sion, one driven by creating leaders and
citizens, it should take steps to develop
and lead these discussions to truly fur-
ther intellectual diversity, equity and the
teaching of racial justice for the entire
student body.
Other universities across the country
have already taken action to support
Black students and the Black com-
munities within their sphere of influ-
ence: The Manhattan School of Music
pledged that “all performances will
feature work by African American cre-
ators or those from the African diaspo-
ra,” while the University of California
stated that, “As part of our commitment
to find solutions to address these issues,
the University of California will take
immediate action to re-examine our
own practices and ensure we imple-
ment the recommendations of the Pres-
idential Task Force on Universitywide
Policing that we established two years
ago.” The University of Michigan, how-
ever, appears to be focusing more on
continuing inadequate commitments
than reexamining what these commit-
ments fail to achieve and how to prog-
ress towards racial justice.
An open letter to prospective students
ANDREW GERACE | OP-ED
Andrew Gerace is a rising junior in the
College of Literature, Science & the Arts
and the School of Music, Theatre and
Dance and can be reached at
agerace@umich.edu.
KEITH JOHNSTONE | COLUMNIST
“
An individual has not
started living until he
can rise above the nar-
row confines of his individu-
alistic concerns to the broader
concerns of all humanity.” —
Martin Luther King Jr.
In my columns, I attempt to
stay facially neutral about my
personal
background
when
it comes to political issues,
trying my hardest to give the
untouched facts about an issue
or political figure to lead read-
ers to my conclusion, usually
with a sarcastic comment or
two along the way. However,
with this column, I think my
personal story is important
because, when I watched for-
mer Vice President Joe Biden
make his comments on The
Breakfast Club, no matter how
hard I tried, I did not see them
through a journalistic, impar-
tial lens. I did not see them as
a liberal voter who wants to
see progressive changes made
in government. I did not see
them as an American citizen
who loves this country despite
this dark era that we are all
experiencing together.
I saw the comment as a
Black man who has been
made fun of for wearing my
naturally curly hair inside of
the University of Michigan’s
Ross School of Business. I saw
these comments as a Black
man who never felt at home in
the rich white suburbs where
I grew up. For my entire life,
people have told me that I do
not belong, no matter where
I am, that I am somehow less
than human because of the
color of my skin, and hear-
ing a white man say that some
people “ain’t Black” because of
their voting patterns sickened
me. Biden has no place telling
anyone how Black they are for
countless reasons, chief among
them is that he ain’t Black and
could never be. Until he has
walked in the shoes of a Black
man or woman, he cannot pass
judgment on a single one of my
brothers or sisters. Blackness is
a much deeper issue than your
vote for the presidency or the
language you use or the music
you listen to. In my opinion,
the true measure of Blackness
is how the world interprets
you and how you interpret the
world, and no vote can take
this life experience away.
Your vote for the presi-
dency may not define your
Blackness, but it does define
something much more cen-
tral to your character. As my
granny said, “it don’t matter
whether you’re Black, white
or Puerto Rican, as long
as you’ve got heart,” and I
believe that, at its core, heart
is really what’s on the ballot
this November. Sure, Biden
has professed that his cabinet
would “look like the country,”
meaning having more diversi-
ty than the people in Trump’s
cabinet like clammy-handed,
lying, unqualified Ben Carson
and Elaine Chao, the woman
who gets to be Mitch McCo-
nnell’s wife. However, as a
middle-class person myself, I
understand the selfish argu-
ment that Trump lowered our
taxes and brought unemploy-
ment, especially Black unem-
ployment, to an all-time low.
However,
these
were
results of the Obama Admin-
istration — of which Biden
was a critical part — and
its economic recovery plan
after
the
financial
crisis.
Also, a little thing called the
COVID-19 pandemic — which
has disproportionately bur-
dened minority communities
in part due to the Department
of Health and Human Servic-
es guidelines making it more
difficult for people to receive
health insurance — wiped
out that record. Addition-
ally, Trump’s administration
has made it more difficult
for both documented and
undocumented
immigrants,
who have been proven to
boost economic productiv-
ity, to enter this country. The
administration has widened
the latitude of prosecuto-
rial
sentencing
discretion,
and they have nonsensically
tightened the already inef-
fective work requirements on
food assistance while encour-
aging work requirements for
Medicaid.
These discriminatory poli-
cies are all targeted specifi-
cally at communities of color
and, while I get the allure
of a tax cut, I believe hav-
ing heart means looking out
for people beyond yourself,
beyond even your immedi-
ate community, to look at the
greater good.
So, yes, if you vote for Don-
ald Trump, you are still Black,
but you show a fundamental
disregard for your brothers
and sisters, and you ought to
consider the thousands you
are robbing of opportunities
before condemning them to
the very life that our ancestors
fought to prevent.
In the end, while extremely
insensitive, #YouAintBlack is
not a symbol of Biden or any-
one in the Democratic Party
taking our community’s vote
for granted. In fact, I think it
is quite the opposite. The mere
fact that Biden, Pete Buttigieg
and Elizabeth Warren have
all been on the same radio
show whose previous content
includes Soulja Boy roasting
Drake — which is by far the
most savage thing I’ve ever
seen — is a remarkable testa-
ment to how much Democrats
value the opinions of Black
voters in 2020. See, when voter
turnout in the Black commu-
nity fell in 2016, propelling
us into the era of the pornstar
president with perfectly nor-
mal-sized hands (wink wink),
I believe the Democratic Party
woke up to the fact that Black
voters make this party what it
is today and we could destroy
it if we stopped participating.
Maybe the Democratic Party
learning that lesson is the one
good thing to come out of the
Trump era.
Look, at the end of the day,
I got lucky. I was born into a
family with two parents, two
sisters and two dogs who have
all loved and cared for me
my entire life. Because of my
ancestors’ sacrifices, I was
born free and, because of my
own actions, I have lived free.
However, not a second goes by
where I am unaware that with
one bad judgment call or one
bad financial decision, that
freedom can be taken from me
and I could be left at the mercy
of our government. Though
I have not fallen victim to
these circumstances, many of
my brothers and sisters have
and, for them, it is my duty to
vote for a president who cares.
This is why I am Black, and I
am voting for Joe Biden. If you
have a heart, you should too.
Joe ain’t Black, but he needs us and we need him
Keith Johnstone can be reached at
keithja@umich.edu.
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