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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