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Thursday, July 30, 2020
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com MICHIGAN IN COLOR
My experience in a COVID-19 hotspot
Recently, my family drove down
to Tennessee to immerse ourselves
in nature and find some peace and
adventure during such dystopian
times. While being up in the Smoky
Mountains was beautiful and well
worth the trip, it was also scary
driving past the crowds of locals.
Tennessee is one of eighteen
other states recognized as a COVID
“red zone” with limited safety
measures. The Center for Public
Integrity defined these red zones
as having more than 100 new cases
per every 100,000 people within
the last week. They were previ-
ously indicated to be in the yellow
zone for test positivity between
5-10 percent. While federal rec-
ommendations have been made
such as closing bars and gyms and
encouraging more outdoor dining,
this is far from what I saw.
IZZA AHMED-GHANI
MiC Staff Writer
MENA: America’s ‘white’ minority group
Read more at michigandaily.com
Photo provided by Izza Ahmed-Ghani
Throughout the course of my
academic career, my race has
“changed” three times. In elemen-
tary school, I was advised by my
teacher to bubble in “Asian” on a
standardized test since my parents’
mother countries of Iraq and Leba-
non are geographically located on
the continent of Asia. A few years
later in middle school my race was
suddenly “Other” since Asian was
reserved for Southeast Asia and
India. Then, when I went to take
the PSAT my freshman year of
high school, there was a startling
new addition to the race category:
“White (including Middle Eastern
origin).” Of all the questions on the
exam, and this was the most con-
fusing bubble I had to fill in — to
identify myself.
The generalization and erasure
of Middle Eastern and North Afri-
can culture has been a constant
tumultuous addition to the already
ongoing identity struggle many
young adults go through. MENA
Americans and white Americans
have different reputations, differ-
ent cultures and different struggles
in the United States. Even now as I
write in a newspaper section des-
ignated for students of color, the
U.S. government continues to label
me as white. These two statements
GRACE GARMO
MiC Staff Writer
directly contradict each other, yet it
is a perfect analogy for how we are
treated and perceived in America.
Bubbling in “white” in the race cat-
egory on any standardized test or
legal form almost feels like disre-
spect, because throughout my life,
several of my white classmates per-
sistently made it a point to socially
isolate me and made sure I knew
that we were not the same. Token-
ing Middle Easterners as “white”
when convenient and “Other”
when convenient is how American
society interacts with us histori-
cally, and now, it has been declared
on a piece of paper.
When I bubble in “white,” I am
actively neglecting my arched eye-
brows, my enlarged nose, my olive
complexion and my thick dark hair.
I am repressing all the times my
peers have asked me if my family
is associated with terrorist orga-
nizations and snuck judgemental
looks at my parents while speak-
ing our native tongue. I am shov-
ing aside my identity struggles as
an Arab-American who has no race
to identify with because we were
an afterthought without a spot left
for us. As a community, MENA
individuals socially receive the
negative consequences of having a
minority status, yet on legal docu-
ments we are forced to check a box
that misrepresents us.
As a student of color, diversity
Design by Hibah Chughtai
As if the local Trump hats and
Confederate flags weren’t disturb-
ing enough, the majority of the
tourists and locals refused to wear
masks. Young and old alike would
walk about downtown like noth-
ing has changed. The only mask
enforcement was inside shops and
restaurants; even then those masks
were worn with noses exposed.
The majority of the people in
Gatlinburg, Tenn., where I had
briefly stayed, were majority white
and from the South, coming from
states with few governmental
restrictions imposed. Therefore
any families who wore masks were
openly ridiculed and mocked. The
unspoken consensus was to be
complicit in carelessness — as if
“coronavirus is a hoax.”
Mind you, this isn’t some made
up remark. Along the trip, I came
across a family on a trail from Lou-
isiana. She remarked that the case
numbers are fake and that, at its
worst, the virus manifests like that
of a common cold. “People aren’t
really dying from COVID, the sur-
vival rate is 99.99 percent,” she
exclaimed.
She
begrudgingly
mentioned
the current state and public health
protocols were impending upon
watching their football games. I
remember giving my brother an
exasperated look as we left them.
I think the concept of social
distancing and masking has some
unnecessary
negative
connota-
tions. The idea of wearing a mask
has been seen as almost exagger-
ated to be oppressively restricting.
While the yellow zone indicated
above for Tennessee may seem
small, it demonstrates these num-
bers are only increasing and nation-
ally indicates poor implementation
of federalized mandates to dimin-
ish exposure.
How do you get someone to
internalize what it means to be in a
was a tremendously crucial factor
in my college application process.
I was excited to add to the univer-
sities’ cultural variation and share
my experiences with my new peers.
However, every time I got my hopes
up, the same realization would
dawn on me: I won’t be counted.
When researching the Univer-
sity of Michigan’s undergraduate
demographic, I couldn’t even tell
how many MENA students there
were. All I could see in the pie chart
was a large slice of ‘white,” and my
identity was lost somewhere with-
in it. Despite the Common Applica-
tion allowing students to make the
distinction between “white (Euro-
pean)” and “white (Middle East-
ern),” all this did was give MENA
students a false glimmer of hope
despite a total lack of practical-
ity. The fact that MENA students
get excited when our existence is
officially acknowledged on a form
blatantly illuminates the problem
at hand.
On the U.S. Census, tens of thou-
sands of Hispanic or Latinx indi-
viduals bubble in “white,” yet also
have the opportunity to make the
distinction of their ethnic back-
ground which shows up on virtual-
ly every legal form. This distinction
is commendable, and I believe that
MENA individuals should have the
same opportunity. Especially in a
post 9/11 world, Muslims and Arabs
have become a larger target for dis-
crimination, and it is crucial that
we have a separate legal identifica-
tion to ensure that the MENA pop-
ulation is showing up to the polls,
securing jobs at a consistent rate,
and graduating from high school.
Read more at michigandaily.com
global pandemic? These aforemen-
tioned sentiments and the lack of
action in areas like Gatlinburg are
not only recklessly naive, but they
are selfish and a proven endanger-
ment to not only American health,
but America’s educational dis-
parities,
concerning
magnitude
of unemployed people, homeless
people, the food insecure and so
many other people and institutions
whose very existences are chal-
lenged viciously by this virus.