This past year has been a lot to deal
with and having constant access to
news about the traumas of our realities
has only worsened our mental health.
Especially in the Black community, it
seems like every time we recover from
one thing and find some happiness,
another disastrous headline or tragic
event surfaces to bring us back down.
The Black community has lost many of
our brothers and sisters since January
2020. Kobe Bryant, George Floyd,
Breonna Taylor, Chadwick Boseman,
John Lewis, Ahmaud Arbery, Cicely
Tyson, Hank Aaron, Natalie Deselle-
Reid and Naya Rivera are only a few of
the angels we have recently gained.
We’re facing these heartbreaking
losses while the pandemic keeps us
isolated from the distractions and
loved ones we go to for comfort. We’ve
constantly hoped and searched for
a light that will guide us out of this
lonely darkness, only to be thrown
in deeper. One way I have tried
to bring myself out of the empty
darkness is by absorbing Black joy
through different artistic mediums.
I’ve listened to a lot of music by
my favorite Black artists and read
inspirational books by Black authors,
but I have spent most of my time
watching countless movies and films
I’ve loved my whole life that showcase
Black voices in a positive light.
Nostalgia has pushed these classic
reruns back into my life, including
“Cinderella” with Whitney Houston
and Brandy, “Black Panther”, “Jump
In!” and many other films that
brought me joy when I was younger
and when the world seemed so much
brighter. Revisiting these old sources
of happiness have been great ways
to take my mind off the turmoil
this country is undergoing. While I
enjoyed these trips down memory
lane, I couldn’t help but notice how
many of my favorite films don’t
illustrate Black people in the positive
way that I remember.
Disney was a staple in my
childhood. Its filmography was a
big source of my happiness. These
movies and shows made me feel
like I could achieve anything in my
wildest dreams. A notable film that
I was excited to rewatch was “The
Princess and the Frog.” I loved this
movie as a kid because Tiana, the
only Black Disney princess, was the
only princess I was able to see myself
in. The music, the characters, the
plot, everything about the movie
made me so happy as a kid. Watching
it again brought me some joy, but why
is the only Black Disney princess a
frog for the majority of her film? I
didn’t notice this when I was eight.
I was just happy to finally have
that representation. It caused me
to wonder why that representation
has to come at such a dehumanizing
cost? Why do displays of Black joy
always come with a price? Disney is
supposed to be a place where dreams
come true. My dream is to live in a
society free of racists and racism, but
I guess that is one dream Disney isn’t
willing to grant.
Now that I am older, I am able to
catch the subtle hints of racism in
dialogue, like in “Total Drama Island”.
I’m over Black characters dying first
in horror films like in “Scream 2”. I
am sick of the role of the Black best
friend being implemented in shows
and films just so they can be awarded
their diversity points, like in “Clueless”.
I can’t help but wonder if Tiana would
still be my favorite princess if I was
given more options, ones that aren’t
as demeaning. I’m either asking
why there are no Black people in
a film or TV show, or, if I’m lucky
enough to get that representation, I
find myself asking why the plots are
so saturated with racism?
I love the displays of Black culture
in “The Princess and the Frog,” but I
am no longer willing to accept the
underlying consequences as a price
for this exposure. It’s 2021, and
Black stories about our happiness
without having to overcome some
kind of racial tragedy have been
long overdue. That being said, not all
displays of Black culture have been
negative; movies and shows like
“Little”, “Soul”, “The Wiz”, “The
Fresh Prince of Bel-Air”, “Black is
King”, “That’s So Raven”, “Coming
to America”, “Bad Boys” and so
many more are great examples of
this display of unapologetic Black
culture. Movies that encourage you
to find your purpose, love who you
are and rise above the standard
are uplifting messages that the
Black community and our Black
children should be able to access.
These positive messages within
Black representation have given me
that hope I have been looking for
amongst the darkness. I can’t wait to
see what comes next.
There exists an overwhelming
amount of cognitive dissonance
when it comes time to address the
awful actualities of former President
Barack Obama’s legacy, but if we want
to ensure that the era of Trumpism is
truly gone for good, it must be done,
lest we are doomed to repeat the
mistakes of the past. As the first Black
president of the United States, Obama
was, and still is for many, a symbol of
progress and hope. For people my age,
he was the first president many of us
have memories of — and juxtaposed
with the recent administration, it’s
easy to feel a sense of nostalgia for the
bygone era of his presidency. But this
nostalgia for Obama is just that ––
nostalgia –– and it ignores the reality
of the fact that his administration was
right-wing, white-supremacist and
imperialist in nature.
To start, one of the most overlooked
ways the first Black president harmed
his own people was abroad in Africa.
Through the United States Africa
Command, which originated in 2008
under President George W. Bush,
Obama oversaw its advancement and
expansion as he worked effortlessly
to continue neo-colonialism by
extending U.S. influence throughout
Africa via military dominance.
Domestically, Obama arguably
made it his mission to harm Black
Americans.
His
administration
contributed
more
heavily
to
the militarization of the police
than any president, leading to an
overwhelming increase of police
brutality in Black America. This
directly resulted in the emergence of
the Black Lives Matter movement,
which, as you may recall, started
during the Obama administration for
this reason. Ultimately, the Obama
administration responded to this
movement and subsequent protests
by sending troops and tanks to
Ferguson, calling Baltimore rioters
“thugs” and working to increase
surveillance of prominent Black
activists — sound familiar?
Looking toward immigration,
Obama’s
immigration
policy
resulted in fostering the growth
of
Immigration
and
Customs
Enforcement. Starting in 2008,
his administration cultivated the
Alien Transfer and Exit Program
which
deliberately
sought
to
create complications for migrants
seeking to cross the border, by
separating them from their families
and shipping them off to mystery
locations without any identification
or means to contact their loved
ones.
As
his
admisinistration
continued on, it participated in
the deportation and removal of
nearly 2.7 million undocumented
immigrants. Additionally, it caused
tens of thousands of undocumented
parents to be stripped of contact
with their own children, most
likely forever; some “disappeared”
only to be found in countries
they weren’t even from, where
they were most likely trafficked,
sexually abused or killed. On top
of this, in 2014, the administration
constructed
border
detention
facilities with the sole purpose of
placing
undocumented
parents’
children in cages. The growth in
detainment of immigrants occuring
during the Obama era proved
especially lucrative for firms like
Corrections Corporation of America
and GEO Group, two companies that
contributed hundreds of thousands
to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential
campaign.
From
his
military
coup
in
Honduras,
displacing
the
democratically-elected
leftist
government of Manuel Zelaya and
putting a far-right narco-dictatorship
in its place, to his parliamentary
coup in Brazil, which gave rise to the
fascist Bolsonaro regime, to his soft
coup in Paraguay, to his managing
of Project Gunrunner, which led
to armed drug cartels in Mexico
with thousands of weapons, to the
sanctions he imposed on Venezuela
after declaring it an “extraordinary
threat to the national security of the
United States,” the great instability
regarding immigration is not only the
fault of the Obama administration,
but Obama as well. If you’re appalled
at the violence that took place at the
U.S. Capitol last month, imagine how
the citizens of these countries felt
when forces of U.S. imperialism came
to wreck havoc and unleash chaos in
their home countries, all in service of
capital and Western hegemony.
On the other side of the
globe, Obama was also actively
destabilizing the Middle East,
having
dropped
over
26,000
bombs on seven Muslim-majority
countries in 2016 alone (a low
estimate).
His
administration
conducted
airstrikes
in
Syria,
Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen,
Somalia and Pakistan and led a
drone-strike program in which 90%
of the people killed were civilians,
or non-enemy combatants. During
his time as president, he initiated
the civil war in Yemen and offered
$1 billion in weapons sales to Saudi
Arabia, resulting in one of the
largest modern-day humanitarian
catastrophes with over hundreds
of thousands of casualties. Obama
armed the Israeli apartheid regime
with $38 billion in military aid and
launched a war in Libya, using
NATO to support rebel groups of
Islamist extremists and resulting
in the destablization of the Libyan
government and an increase in slave
markets. Yet, while the president
who allegedly told a White House
aide in 2011, “Turns out I’m really
good at killing people. Didn’t know
that was gonna be a strong suit
of mine” continues to be seen as
a beacon of good in the Western
world, the Global South still suffers
from the evils of his legacy.
With the U.S. military being
one of the largest polluters, bigger
than
140
countries
combined,
producing more greenhouse gas
emissions than any other institution
on the planet, it’s clear the Obama
administration was not the climate-
change conscious, science-believing
administration it led the American
public to believe it was. Furthermore,
Obama worked diligently to increase
domestic oil production to record
levels and allowed police officers
to attack Indigenous protestors at
Standing Rock in order to build a
corporate oil pipeline.
As
Paulo
Freire
wrote
in
Pedagogy
of
Freedom,
“The
capitalist system reaches, in its
globalizing neoliberal crusade, the
maximum efficacy of its intrinsically
evil nature.” This was embodied in
the Obama administration, and from
a dialectical standpoint, because
of its fundamentally contradictory
nature, ushered in the era of
Trumpism we just witnessed.
Naturally, it’s very easy to read
these accounts, hear these details, see
these article links and brush them off
as “things of the past.” It’s even easier
to justify these atrocities by saying
that “Trump did these things, too.”
It’s even easier to trivialize them by
pointing to the positive aspects of
Obama’s presidency. What’s hard,
is making a conscious decision to
modify our behavior and attitude
in order to overcome the cognitive
dissonance we face when we hear
the truth about someone we once
admired. If we really want to say
“no thanks” to Obama, we can start
by remembering that these aren’t
simply article links and facts. These
are real events that happened to
real people with real families whose
lives (if they still have them) have
been changed for the worse, forever,
because
of
President
Obama’s
administration. And if you think
that’s bad, wait till you find out who
his vice president was.
Michigan in Color
Biblioamorapathy is a
made-up word
Biblioamorapathy.
Adjective,
though in some especially sneaky
cases, functions as a noun. Derived
from
the
Latin
roots
“biblio,”
meaning book, “amora,” meaning
love and “pathy,” to feel. Defined as
the special sort of giddy feeling one
gets after checking out a particularly
large stack of books from the local
library, or happening across a dirt-
cheap box of yellowed, dog-eared,
paperback novels at a yard sale –– the
kind of yard sale held in a desperate
attempt to exhume a home of all its
oddities. It’s the painting of a poppy
field in Marseille whose colors
bleed so finely together under the
fluorescence of display, yet seem so
entirely out of place on the blank wall
above the couch in the living room;
spider web-fractured holiday-themed
mugs gifted by friends who were
now nothing more than strangers
exchanging tight-lipped smiles. A
feeling that comes from the beautiful
realization that the book forced upon
you by your world literature teacher,
with indiscernible brown stains in its
margins and blue arrows and circles
around seemingly meaningless words
left by students past, ultimately proved
itself to be the kind of book you found
yourself counting hours, minutes and
seconds until the next encounter.
Biblioamorapathy, in its entirety, is a
feeling of pure elation –– one that has
never been defined before in any kind
of classical dictionary, thesaurus or
new-age search engine that interprets
popular slang for Generation X.
Though in order to truly define
biblioamorapathy, or any other
word for that matter, we must
trace its origins, obtain a sound
understanding of all its varying
contexts and tenses, so that when
we finally do put it into writing, in
extensively detailed research papers,
in beasts of literary works conceived
in the most peculiar of ways ––
perhaps while standing up, in the
shower, writing in exclusively bright
pink ink — we know in our hearts
that we have done the word proper
justice. I first became acquainted
with biblioamorapathy the minute I
learned to read; I found it intertwined
within anecdotes on the backs of
cereal boxes in seizure-inducing
color palettes, no doubt an attempt
to distract from the potential health
implications that would soon arise
from the sheer amount of saturated
fats. I found it in “Fun with Dick and
Jane,” in the boyish exploits of “Frog
and Toad,” later in the home I created
at Hogwarts alongside Harry Potter,
and soon after in the gardens of the
Brontë sisters and Dante’s journey
through Inferno.
Biblioamorapathy manifests itself
in a multitude of ways –– the most
common a telltale nagging itch that
tickles the pit of your stomach and
soon diffuses into your bloodstream,
seeping into the folds of your grey
matter, coating the endings of your
nerves, so that in due time, every fiber
of your body begins to vibrate with an
unseen force of belligerent joy. The
only remedy is immediate exposure
to the half-finished book splayed
on your bedroom floor, the novel
with a department store coupon
for a bookmark in the recesses of
your bag vehemently demanding
to be read. Biblioamorapathy is
a learned sensation, devoid of
any innate predisposition, born
from the ability to love books and
be loved by books. While often
mistaken
for
heart
problems,
indigestion, or Langston Hughes-
esque weary blues, it’s important to
understand that biblioamorapathy
isn’t a complication but rather a gift
endowed upon the lucky few of the
world.
SARAH AKAABOUNE
MiC Columnist
No thanks, Obama
Where’s the Black
joy in Hollywood
MARIA PATTON
MiC Columnist
What went wrong: Egypt’s political landscape and the impact of the youth
MARIAM ALSHOURBAGY
MiC Columnist
“Kefaya!” (Enough!) screamed the
Egyptian youth as Hosni Mubarak
planned his fifth six-year presidential
term. “Kefaya!” they said to their
parents and grandparents when told
to sit back down and wait for time
to mend their country. “Kefaya!”
they yelled to the painfully familiar
corruption
and
manipulation.
“Kefaya!” became the motto of the
Egyptian youth in a movement not
only in opposition to the old regime
but against an entire ideology
ingrained in the minds of all Egyptian
generations prior.
Egypt’s youth, aged 30 and
under, makes up 60% of the entire
population. So on Jan. 25, 2011, when
they stood together in Tahrir Square,
they took the nation by surprise. They
were the first in generations to stand
united against oppression despite the
insurmountable obstacle it presented:
The Egyptian government comprises
individuals 40 years of age and older
with decades of experience in politics.
So even as the revolutionaries gained
more optimism and secured their
first hearing with the government,
who could they have sent to make
negotiations? The fight came down
to some naive 20-year-olds trying to
negotiate with military strategists
who had years of experience in
feigned appeasement.
There is a false dichotomy when
it comes to analyzing the political
and economic reasons behind the
revolution. The Egyptian people spent
30 years under Mubarak’s inefficient,
irresponsible and corrupt regime.
One cannot group the protestors’
grievances under either politics or the
economy as the citizens endured low
wages, collapsing health care and a
failing education system to the point
that other nations began to know
Egyptians as apathetic and apolitical.
The Egyptians needed a revolution
to restore their dignity, stolen by
Mubarak’s 30-year-long tyranny.
Nonetheless,
these
protesters
made the mistake of listening to the
older generations, who told them to
be “grateful that the President even
mentioned, or reiterated, some of
the demands” they made. So they
washed the graffiti, swept the roads
and left the square before securing
any of their demands. Nevertheless,
they were still optimistic –– after
all, nothing had ever before grabbed
the attention of the government or
prompted the whole nation to stand
together. Right after that, Mubarak
stepped down and public officials
speedily organized an election and
several candidates were nominated
on the platform of representation and
democracy. However, did the National
Association for Change, the Coalition
of the Revolution’s Youth, independent
trade unions, independent Islamists,
the radical left, the March 9
Professors, human rights groups,
the Constitutional Referendum and
the Muslim and Christian religious
establishments who came together in
support of the 2011 revolution all want
the same thing? Yes and no.
United in wanting Mubarak out
of office, but divided by political and
religious ideologies, each group was
left scrambling for points of cohesion.
Meanwhile, the military, on the
opposing side, proposed a single man,
Ahmed Shafik, to run their campaign
instead of splitting their votes over
multiple runners, a strategy that came
at a great cost for the revolutionaries
as it once again deepened the divide
between the people. And although
the military did not successfully elect
their candidate, this divide proved
insurmountable –– no one candidate
seemed able to pacify the country.
These mistakes have something
in
common:
inexperience.
The
revolution of 2011 was an uprising by
the youth and for the people, but the
youth did not have a point of reference
or the guidance of wiser minds –– even
the oldest generation alive was born
in the midst of this corruption. The
younger generation was vulnerable
to the manipulation of military
officials and the older politicians that
made up the regime. Nevertheless,
this youth would grow up and prove
they have an advantage. They saw
the power they had when they stood
behind a common purpose with a
single voice and gained an increased
understanding of what goes on behind
closed doors in Cairo. As they look
forward, being part of the revolution
of Jan. 25 against Mubarak’s regime
gives them the experience they need
to engage in more successful political
activism in the future.
Fast forward to 2021, and Egypt
is still suffering under military
leader Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. After
the mishaps of the last political
revolution, Egypt was in ruins, and
the fastest way to reassemble the
torn country was to elect strong
leadership. But at what cost? The
streets may be safer now, but prisons
no
longer
distinguish
between
criminals and political activists
who oppose al-Sisi’s regime. As the
government
supposedly
invests
billions of dollars on projects to
restore
the
economy,
Egypt’s
infrastructure and public services
are collapsing. Even as the faith in
the democratic system was restored
after the revolution –– since Egypt
saw unprecedented voter turnout
and multiple parties on the ballot for
the first time in generations –– this
hope only lasted for a year under
former President Mohamed Morsi
before Sisi’s military coup –– which
amassed near-unanimous support
and ended any hope of political
representation. Sisi learned his
lesson from the events of Jan. 25 and
worked harder to stifle any attempts
of revolution. Unfortunately for him,
the youth took their own notes.
The next step is to wait. The youth
must wait for an opening to return to
the square after learning from their
previous mistakes. The revolution of
2011 was the first sign of the power of
new ideologies and tolerance amongst
younger generations, but they didn’t
have the experience that only comes
with time on their side. The last thing
they should do is lose hope because,
even if they can’t see it yet, they are
now at an advantage. So they should
remain optimistic and never forget
how Kefaya, a single word, held so
much power. This is the opportunity
of a complete revamp of society, to
make it better and to say Kefaya to
oppression.
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
10 - Wednesday, February 10, 2021
Graphic by Alan Yang. Images courtesy of Gage Skidmore, Joan Hernandez, Mike D. Photography and gdcgraphics.
KARIS CLARK
MiC Columnist