7-Opinion
T
his past week, there was a little
drama in the race for New Mexico’s
1st Congressional District. Sheridan
Lund, the precinct chair of the Democratic
Party of Bernalillo County and candidate for
the congressional seat, tweeted a now-deleted
attack on one of the candidates. The charge
being leveled was that Victor Reyes, a former
top aide to New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan
Grisham and one of the candidates for the
congressional seat, was only pretending to be
a person of color. Reyes is a second-generation
Mexican-American. Many of the other
candidates running for Congress in this district
released statements condemning the attack.
What interested me is that at the time that the
offending tweet was deleted, it only had about
two likes and two negative quote tweets.
My recent tweet about Fortnite skins got
more likes than these poorly thought-out
musings on colorism. By responding to Lund’s
message, every candidate in the race was able
to accrue some political capital and establish
themselves as the candidate of racial justice. But
they shouldn’t have responded.
This falls in with a trend with which I’ve
taken issue recently: treating certain social
media posts as much more influential than
they actually are. Media literacy is important
and constantly evolving. Today I am offering an
additional digital rule of thumb: Don’t engage
with posts that don’t have traction (likes,
shares, etc.). If a post doesn’t have engagement,
that is the internet’s way of telling you that no
one really found the post to be compelling, so
you won’t actually be swaying any opinions by
condemning it. Actors on the digital landscape,
no matter how large or small the audience,
have a responsibility to only respond to a piece
of media they disagree with if it has an actual
audience. Otherwise, they aren’t countering the
sway of the original idea.
On the contrary, they are amplifying it
to their audience who wouldn’t have been
exposed to it in the first place. Those who
devote themselves to criticizing irrelevant posts
that gained no traction on the
merits of the
idea presented are distorting the narrative —
and doing a disservice to themselves and their
audience in the process.
Highlighting the fringe is how many figures
of the online political influencer class make
their livings. Ben Shapiro, probably the most
influential conservative online pundit, recently
released a YouTube video entitled “Leftists
OUTRAGED Over Bill Burr Jokes at 2021
Grammys.” The premise of the video is that
there are currently swathes of rabid Democrats
who want to take your comedy away from you,
a premise engineered to infuriate his audience.
This simply wasn’t true.
If you looked on Twitter, where the outrage
was allegedly coming from, a couple of negative
posts had gained a few hundred likes. But it
seemed for every negative tweet about Bill
Burr with five or ten likes, there were scores
of people absolutely indignant that people
could be so sensitive, all producing the same
ten offending Tweets as evidence for a larger
cultural sickness.
So what should people respond to on the
internet? I would offer a couple of criteria for
a post to be considered worthy of a response.
First, how much traction did this idea actually
get? If Joe Schmoe posts on Facebook that we
should put the Social Security Trust Fund into
Bitcoin, and the post receives two likes and
one “Interesting!” comment from his second-
grade teacher, I am confident that the national
narrative would not benefit from a prominent
account screenshotting it, posting to their
thousands of followers, and doing the 21st
century equivalent of eviscerating the person
on a daytime talk show.
However, if Joe Schmoe’s post somehow
manages to gain traction, then it might be
worth engaging. On the other hand, if Ezra
Klein, a New York Times columnist, tweets that
we should put the Social Security Trust Fund
into Bitcoin, regardless of how much or how
little engagement the post gets, this thought
is relevant and merits a response. Overall, you
should respond if the thinker is prominent or if
the reach of their thought was large.
These criteria apply less and less the
closer the person is to you. I still want
to empower you to get into Facebook
arguments with your cousins about what
time of year is best for seeing geese, because
that person actually has a huge audience
relative to your life — you and everyone
close to you are the intended audiences. In
a lot of ways, the internet is not necessarily
a public forum. It is the Diag. You aren’t
there to speak about and listen to a specific
topic, you are there to do your own thing.
If someone is shouting at the top of their
lungs from one of those benches in front
of Hatcher Graduate Library, you and
everyone else would probably walk right by
them. But if you see a crowd of a thousand
listening to some weirdo’s ideas about the
Federal Reserve, you have much more of a
desire to comment.
On the internet, we perceive things to be
much more oriented at us than we do in real
life. The phenomenon I am talking about is
based much more on remoteness. If Facebook
arguments with relatives are hand-to-hand
combat, I am preaching against snipers:
rummaging through the internet for the sole
purpose of becoming enraged, finding the
worst articulation of the offending concept, and
pulling the trigger.
Let’s circle back to the tweet that caused all
my strife in the NM-1 congressional race. What
should the candidates have done? I don’t want to
sound too much like a kindergarten teacher, but
ignoring it is often the best policy. Platforming
the fringe is a poor decision. If an idea isn’t
held by a significant number of people, it isn’t
important enough to bring to the attention of
your audience, or even worth your time.
I know it’s almost all I write about these
days, but this phenomenon contributes
to political polarization. Picking the least
articulate, least important post which was
unable to gain any traction on the merits of its
ideas, and magnifying it — responding to it as
if it’s something greater — causes audiences to
perceive society as a split between themselves
and those who formulated the odd ideas in
question. And that is rarely an accurate map
of the populace. There is a genre of accounts
that will find a post with not much traction,
expressing the least developed version of an
idea, and compile it with thousands of others
with the goal of proving how much better X or
Y ideology is than the other.
Ignoring fringe posts won’t solve much.
It won’t dismantle polarization, bigotry or
online rudeness, but it will avoid unnecessarily
elevating an idea no one listened to in the first
place. It’s also a way to practice some self-
respect. Often the only way we can interpret
social media is as a direct message to us, and
one which needs a response. Thinking of the
internet as the Diag instead of a conversation
or a forum can help you escape this mindset.
People aren’t talking to you, they’re preaching
into the air. It isn’t your responsibility to
counter every silly thing someone says from
their digital soapbox, but if other people start
engaging with the idea, then you have the right
to add your own commentary about the original
post. With these criteria for social media non-
confrontation, you can become a beacon of
restraint in the digital age.
Opinion
Wednesday, April 7, 2021 — 13
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
ALEX NOBEL | COLUMNIST
O
n a basic level, humans need
four things to survive: food,
water, shelter and air. Three of
these have already been commodified,
leaving only air untouched. Human
beings take an average of 22,000 breaths
per day. Whether someone is exercising,
sick or breathing polluted air, breathing
is something that isn’t noticed until it’s
difficult to do. Between the COVID-19
pandemic, the West Coast wildfires and
an increase in global pollution, clean air is
becoming more and more of a luxury. Air
cannot become commercialized like food,
shelter and water already have; this would
put the lives of millions of people in danger.
COVID-19 has taught us many things
about the way our society functions, but
one major takeaway is that even basic tasks
like breathing can become disrupted by
unexpected phenomena. As elementary,
middle and high schools move to reopen,
they have faced the question of how to
fit hundreds of students into hot, poorly
ventilated classrooms.
At first glance, schools should be hotbeds
for viral spread. Infections are 18.7 times
more likely to occur indoors, where virus
particles remain in the air for up to three
hours. However, schools have invested
heavily in high-efficiency particulate air
filters that work to prevent molecules from
being transported by air. While these are
not perfect, they have done a solid job in
classrooms that have invested properly in
the air filtration systems.
But what happens when a school district
cannot afford the ventilation systems that
satisfy Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention guidelines? A federal watchdog
service found that 41% of grade schools
needed to update or completely overhaul
their air filtration systems prior to COVID-
19. These schools often faced tight budgets
and had to opt for the cheapest filtration
systems. New York City’s public schools
have bought over 30,000 new air filtration
systems since the pandemic started, but
teachers, concerned they will not be enough
to ensure students’ safety, crowdfunded
an additional $159,000 to purchase more.
Schools in poorer neighborhoods need to
upgrade their current systems just to reach
the pre-pandemic filtration level of those in
schools in rich neighborhoods.
Unfortunately, this problem extends
beyond
classrooms.
Due
to
cheap
construction materials and techniques,
the air in our homes can be up to five
times dirtier than outdoors. As people are
spending more time indoors because of the
pandemic, they are spending more time
breathing dirty — albeit, COVID-19 free
— air. Dozens of health issues have been
linked to unclean indoor air, such as asthma,
allergies, depression and sleep apnea.
Yet, outdoor air can be just as dangerous.
Data from the World Health Organization
shows that nine in every 10 people globally
breathe air that exceeds WHO standards
for pollutant levels. That same data found
that seven million people die every year
from air pollution, and air pollution is
responsible for roughly one out of every
eight deaths worldwide. The United
Nations estimates that air pollution costs all
nations combined around $5 trillion every
year in prevention and mitigation efforts.
In the United States, the Clean Air Act
has helped lower lead air pollution by 92%
since 1980, but globally, half of all people are
experiencing worsening air quality.
Last fall, California, Oregon and
Washington experienced unprecedented
wildfires. The fires were not only
unprecedented in their severity, but also in
their effect on the nation’s air quality. As a
result of the fires, one in seven Americans
experienced dangerous levels of pollutants
in their air. The fires impacted air quality
in nearby areas such as Portland, Ore.,
which had the world’s worst air quality,
but their impact was also felt across the
world, including in Europe. As climate
change increases the frequency of forest
fires, they will only continue to harm
global air quality.
Urban centers generally have the
worst air quality, and as more people
continue to move to cities around the
world, they give us a good place to start
improving air quality. One basic step
that cities can take is creating more
green spaces. Whether by planting trees,
creating roof gardens or expanding
public parks, creating these green spaces
reduces air pollution and provides
residents with cleaner, cooler air, along
with many other health benefits.
Another major step that can be taken
is transitioning toward electric buses and
trains and encouraging biking and walking
through safer trails and sidewalks. Motor
vehicles in Philadelphia contribute to
about 60% of the city’s total air pollution,
demonstrating how switching to green
transportation could significantly lower
emissions.
Like all aspects of climate change, air
quality issues harm vulnerable populations
the
most
and
compound
existing
inequities. Solutions must take this into
account or risk worsening inequalities.
Air quality isn’t about preserving the
planet or environment for generations to
come. Rather, it is about improving public
health right now and averting preventable
diseases, health problems and premature
deaths.
The price of clean air
LYDIA STORELLA | COLUMNIST
Michigan’s sex-ed hurts students’ sexual health
Lydia Storella is an Opinion Columnist and
can be reached at storella@umich.edu.
V
accines. The epitome of short-
term pain, long-term gain. A
scientific achievement and feat
of human accomplishment that can be
received in a grocery store pharmacy.
A quick pinch in the arm gives people
more hope than they’ve felt in a year. The
vaccine is nothing short of a miracle and
likely what will usher us out of the current
pandemic. While it seems like campus
is abuzz about the vaccine, especially
with Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s, D-Mich.,
statement about vaccine availability for
all adults aged 16 and older on April 5,
I am deeply concerned by a pattern of
behavior that has emerged: lying about
one’s situation expressly for the purpose
of getting a vaccine.
Like all education in the United States,
individual states set their own standards
for sex education. Many states need to
reform these standards. Only 39 states and
Washington, D.C., require sex ed and/or
HIV education, and it only gets worse from
there.
A mere 17 states require that the
information provided be medically accurate
— five of which don’t even require sex
education
in
classrooms.
Additionally,
five states require only providing negative
information about homosexuality, and 19
states require that sex ed must teach that it is
important to wait until marriage to have sex.
The last time the state of Michigan
updated its sex-ed standards was 2004,
nearly 20 years ago. It includes relics of
the past, such as forbidding teaching that
abortion is reproductive health and requiring
“stressing abstinence from sex.” While
Michigan requires HIV/AIDS education, it,
along with 19 other states, does not require
sex education. Family planning drugs or
devices (e.g. condoms) cannot be handed out
to students.
In fact, much of the content about
contraceptives (labeled “risk reduction”
in the summary) is left to the discretion of
the school districts, which means that many
Michigan students do not receive education
about birth control options, leaving them
vulnerable to sexually transmitted diseases
and teen pregnancy.
Sex education has positive effects on
the health of students. The Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention assesses
that the benefits of providing quality sex
ed to students include delaying sex, having
fewer experiences with unprotected sex and
avoiding sexually transmitted diseases and
unintended pregnancy. The CDC provides
sex ed standards for fifth, eighth and 10th
graders, which culminates in the 10th
grade with discussions about contraceptive
options (which includes condoms as well
as abstinence), consensual sex and sexual
health.
Leaving so much important information
to the judgment of individual school
districts means that the quality of sex ed
varies widely across the state of Michigan.
The required emphasis on the importance
of abstinence and forbidding discussions
of abortion as reproductive health in all
Michigan public schools only works to limit
the knowledge of Michigan students about
birth control, which impacts their sexual
health and safety going forward.
The
sex
education
standards
also
make no mention of content regarding
LGBTQ+ issues or sexual orientation in
general. Considering that the percentage
of Americans who identify as LGBTQ+ is
growing, especially among the younger
generations, it is imperative that such
information
be
taught
in
Michigan’s
public schools, which have over 1.5 million
students.
While
Republicans
tend
to
prefer
including abstinence and Democrats were
more likely to prefer including discussions
about birth control, consent and sexual
orientation,
both
Republicans
and
Democrats want some form of sex ed to be
taught in the classrooms. But it’s difficult
to get state lawmakers to be proactive in
fighting for sex education due to the topic’s
controversial nature. Even in progressive
states, it can be difficult to implement sex ed
reform; in California, comprehensive sex ed
wasn’t required until 2016.
In states with a Republican-controlled
branch of government, like Michigan,
implementing sex education reform can
be even more difficult. Fifty-nine percent
of Republicans think that premarital sex is
morally unacceptable, compared to 27% of
Democrats, leading many to oppose material
that could be seen as encouraging students
to have sex.
Not only does comprehensive sex education
help to reduce rates of teen pregnancy and
sexually transmitted diseases, but preaching
abstinence doesn’t even help to reduce the
rates of teenagers having sex. Studies have
shown that abstinence-only education does
not delay sex, but instead leaves students
unsafe and at risk for pregnancy and sexually
transmitted diseases.
But few topics are as important
to the Republican Party as abortion,
which is the second-most important
issue for Republicans when deciding
which presidential candidate to vote for.
States that emphasize abstinence in sex
education have the highest rates of teen
pregnancy and teen birth. Thirty-one
percent of teenagers who get pregnant
have an abortion; access to birth control
dramatically
reduces
pregnancy
and
abortion among teenagers. While free
and accessible birth control is a separate
issue from sex education, it is possible that
teen abortion rates would decrease if all
states included a judgment-free discussion
of contraceptives in their sex education
and diminished the importance placed
on abstinence. This could help to reduce
abortion rates, something that Republicans
certainly support.
Michigan sex education needs to be
updated. Stressing abstinence and making
discussion of contraceptives discretionary
only makes Michigan students unprepared
for sex whenever they choose to have it.
Considering that sex is a natural and vital
human function, it is ignorant to assume
that abstinence is a helpful way of teaching
teenagers about sex, especially since it
has been proven that comprehensive sex
education reduces rates of unintended
pregnancy
and
sexually
transmitted
diseases. Michigan, along with the rest of
the country, must update its sex education
standards in order to educate its students on
safe sexual health and experiences.
Alex Nobel is an Opinion Columnist and
can be reached at anobel@umich.edu.
Design by Sharon Kwan
SHUBHUM GIROTI | COLUMNIST
Enough is enough — we must
defend the Uighurs
O
n Monday, March 22, the United
States, the United Kingdom and
Canada coordinated with the
European Union in sanctioning China over
their treatment of Uighur Muslims in their
country. This move begs the question: why
did this policy take so long to be enacted?
The Uighurs are a minority Turkic-
Muslim population located mainly in
northwestern China who have recently
become the target of Chinese monitoring
and detention. Starting in 2016, the
Chinese government was found to have
been creating “re-education camps,” or
facilities in which they captured and
imprisoned the Uighurs. China spent
a long time denying that their camps
were actually being used for malice.
Instead, China asserts that the prisoners
were simply being re-educated because
some
had
become
“extremists,”
although no such evidence exists. In
2018, the Chinese government finally
acknowledged that these places existed
and were not for re-education. They
said they were imprisoning individuals
for low-level crimes and vocational
training. However, anecdotal accounts
completely reject this notion.
In 2019, U.N. representatives sent a
letter to the U.N. High Commissioner
explaining their concern with the large
number of Uighurs being imprisoned,
and the fact that the Chinese government
was violating human rights laws. During
former
President
Donald
Trump’s
administration in September 2019, the U.S.
finally spoke up and condemned China’s
actions on an international scale. Critically,
former President Trump himself said
in the summer of 2020 that he had been
holding off on sanctioning China over their
treatment of the Uighurs for the past year
to preserve trade talks. This leads us to the
question of where we should morally draw
a line between our economic prosperity
and human rights abuses happening in
other countries.
It is no secret that economics and global
politics play a massive role in domestic
politics, but this issue highlights how far
will some countries, specifically the U.S.,
will go to protect trade talks and economic
negotiations when human rights abuses
are transpiring every day. The protection
of human life and preservation of human
rights must be the utmost priority.
One
major
goal
of
the
Biden
administration must be to build back the
U.S.’s image on the international stage after
world leaders both literally and figuratively
laughed at Trump and the country. From
Trump criticizing NATO to taking the U.S.
out of the U.N. Human Rights Council, our
international reputation has taken a hit.
While President Joe Biden did return
the U.S. to the United Nations Human
Rights Council, this is not enough.
Taking a firm stance on human rights
would set the ball in motion for the
U.S. to come back as a key player in the
international community. Joining in
on these sanctions is a step in the right
direction, but it would be even better if
the U.S. decided to stop doing business
with companies associated with Uighur
labor, such as Nike, Amazon, Gap, Adidas
and many more.
Biden should call on the U.S. Senate to
fast-track and pass H.R.6210, the Uighur
Forced Labor Prevention Act. This act,
which passed the House of Representatives
on a bipartisan 406-3 vote, ended up stalling
in the Senate committees. If Biden is truly
committed to ensuring Uighurs in China
are treated fairly and better protected, he
must use the bully pulpit of the presidency
and place a magnifying glass on this issue
for the world.
The time to favor economic benefits
over the internment of hundreds of
thousands of individuals and human rights
abuses is over. We as a society need to
recognize that our economy and individual
monetary success pales in comparison
to the livelihood of individuals we may
not personally know. It is imperative that
as we continue to pressure the Biden
administration about the human rights of
people of color in this country, we do not
forget that his influence goes far beyond
just these 50 states. If Biden takes a firm
stance on defending the Uighurs, we can
finally say our president is working for
everyone.
Shubhum Giroti is an Opinion Columnist
and can be reached at sgiroti@umich.edu.
JULIAN BARNARD | COLUMNIST
No comment: the value of restraint in the digital age
Julian Barnard is an Opinion Columnist and
can be reached at jcbarn@umich.edu.