The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Michigan in Color
6 — Wednesday, April 13, 2022

A recent article published in The Michi-

gan Review left many Michigan students 
appalled yet unsurprised. After digesting 
the manipulative and hateful content of the 
piece, we felt that it was necessary to address 
the author’s poor interpretation of Ameri-
can racial dynamics and recycled conserva-
tive talking points in order to debunk some 
fundamental issues that appear in common 
discourse. We need to talk about “reverse 
racism.” 

Reverse racism is first and foremost 

a myth. The concept also referred to as 
reverse discrimination, is the backward 
notion that color-conscious programs such 
as affirmative action that seek to address 
racial inequality are a form of anti-white 
racism. Not only is this concept completely 
ludicrous, it is also an immensely harmful 
ideology that actively sets back racial prog-
ress.

The current battleground of this discus-

sion is the Trotter Multicultural Center 
here on Central Campus. In an attempt to 
drum up controversy, the author of the piece 
grossly mischaracterizes the purpose and 
history of the building in order to perpetu-
ate the harmful narrative that marginalized 

students of Color are actively engaging in 
some sort of modern ‘reverse segregation’.

For context, a Black graduate student sub-

mitted a letter to the University of Michigan 
Administration expressing his frustration at 

“white student organizations kicking Black 
and brown students out of spaces within 
Trotter because their white organizations 
reserved the space.” Instead of understand-
ing the historical and societal context of 
these events and coming away from the situ-

ation with reflection or understanding, the 
author proceeded to react to the letter with 
an air of indignation and disgust. 

“It has become almost a cliche to say it 

at this point, but if a white advisor to CSG 

wrote a letter to the administration articu-
lating his discomfort that there are too many 
black students in a campus space, he would 
be deemed unfit for office,” the article states.

This is a demonstrably disingenuous per-

spective of the events taking place in Trotter 

and is only a small example of the “reverse 
racist” rhetoric that permeates the article. 

The author’s apparent “gotcha” moment 

highlighted in this quote only serves to show 
how hopelessly delusional his perspectives 
on racism and race relations actually are. 
His purposeful ignorance of the historical 
context of segregation and domination of 
Black Americans at the hands of the white 
race is as disgusting as it is shallow. 

To no one’s surprise, the author has not 

and will continue to not have any repercus-
sions for his racist assertions against the 
students who find a safe haven in Trotter. 
We do not mean to imply that the University 
should necessarily take action against this 
student for practicing his freedom of speech. 
However, we do mean to say that neither he 
nor other white students at this university 
have to deal with the emotional anguish that 
comes from the public release of such tone-
deaf, insensitive and historically inaccurate 
information. 

How did we get here? How does the dom-

inant racial group get to play the victim? 

For some, the concept of racism is very 

easy to grasp. Throughout our lives, we are 
taught that discrimination against another 
on the basis of their race is a practice that 
should be denounced and outright abolished. 
We hear about and learn of the historical 
figures who fought against racist oppression 
and paved the way for our modern society. 

We hear of their virtue and undying loyalty 
to social justice and humanity and celebrate 
their memory. Many historical figures, par-
ticularly of the Civil Rights Movement, are 
rightfully lauded as heroes.

We all know of the legacies of Dr. Mar-

tin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, Malcolm 
X, Charles Houston, Harry T and Harriette 
Moore, among many others. Yet, for some 
reason, the author felt the need to twist the 
words of Dr. King in order to portray him-
self, and white students by extension, as the 
victims of systemic racism. This is gross. We 
shouldn’t need to explain why this is prob-
lematic, but we genuinely don’t think the 
author understands. So let’s engage in basic 
modern social theory. 

Racism and discrimination are not the 

two-way streets that the author implies. The 
historical domination, oppression, enslave-
ment, rape and perverted bastardization of 
Black culture by the white race is the foun-
dation of this country. The vestiges of that 
cultural dynamic permeate throughout 
every modern institution. Black students 
cannot segregate white students. This is 
simple. To insinuate that the author and 
other white students can be the victims of 
targeted racism is tantamount to claiming 
Black students have any sort of profound 
institutional authority. 

Not enough white people in Trotter Multicultural Center, white student claims

A summer in the construction boots of my father

The beauty of wilted flowers

It was a ceremonial and cine-

matic day in Santiago Papasquiaro, 
Durango. The streets were flooded 
with families observing the cere-
monies taking place throughout the 
city. At every angle of our periph-
eral, there were bandas playing 
corridos, food trucks selling elotes 
and raspados and a desfile full of 
mariachi bands accompanied with 
young women dressed in folklórico 
attire. We were making our way to 
the feria, which for many was the 
main attraction of the festivities. 
Though the cloudy weather may 
have discouraged many from being 
outside, there was no denying that 
the people of Santiago Papasquiaro 
were not going to miss the first day 
of their esteemed and most antici-
pated fair. 

Since I was in the sixth grade, 

my family and I traveled to my par-
ents’ hometown in Mexico every 
year. The month of July attracted 
not only a lot of domestic visitors, 
but a lot of other Mexican-Amer-
ican families that had ties to the 
state of Durango. I felt immensely 
joyous to be standing on the soil 
where generations of my family 
had grown up.

Except in 2016, I wasn’t real-

ly there. I was in the middle of 
nowhere Montana.

The date was July 16. The fright-

ening noise of my phone’s alarm 
jolted me awake at 4:30 in the 
morning. Reality quickly sank in, 
and I was upset that I was not a 
part of the vibrant crowd march-
ing down the streets of Santiago 
Papasquiaro. Rather than spend-
ing the summer in Mexico visiting 
my abuelitas and primos, my dad 
insisted that my brother Oscar and 
I spend a couple of months with 
him in Montana to work at his con-
struction site—the very opposite 
of Durango. The wind blew loudly 

through the many valleys and 
mountaintops of America’s ninth 
least populated state. Within those 
blue, green and gray valleys was 
scattered, sparse and rundown 
infrastructure. The very limited 
civilization seemed so insignifi-
cant when contrasted to the vast-
ness of the state’s nature. People 
displayed classic American cordi-
ality, of course, but rarely the hos-
pitality and colors I had witnessed 
in Mexico just a year prior. 

At 15 years old, the thought of 

making my own money seemed 
promising and offered some finan-
cial freedom my peers were not 
afforded. After doing my own 
research on the up and coming 
state, I learned that many other 
construction workers ventured to 
the Great Plains state of Montana 
and made really good money. Hell, 
I was excited! Little did I know 
what I was getting myself into.

After two months of working 

with my dad, I somehow failed to 
get used to the monotonous rou-
tine he went through every morn-
ing. The pesky alarm, pungent 
smell of the drywall and joint com-
pound boxes scattered throughout 
our temporary apartment compet-
ed with my overwhelming drowsi-
ness from my lack of sleep. We had 
returned home from the construc-
tion site at 1:30 a.m., a few hours 
prior, so it was extremely difficult 
for me to find some sort of motiva-
tion to keep my eyes open. 

On the other hand, my dad had 

no problem with getting less than 
three hours of sleep. He somehow 
managed to wake up in a radiant 
mood every morning. Every other 
day, he would wake up earlier than 
the rest of the crew and buy us all 
donuts from the nearest 7-Eleven. 
It annoyed me so much in my tired 
grumpiness. How the hell did he 
do it? He urged Oscar and me to 
hurry because he did not want us 
to be late on our last day of work.

My dad has worked in construc-

tion for more than 30 years. In 
those three decades, he has mas-
tered the craft of drywall finish-
ing. Construction workers who 
specialize in this are referred to as 
tapers. Though the task of a taper 
is considered by many other con-
struction workers to be one of the 
least physically demanding, the 
monotonous task of smearing joint 
compound across hundreds of dif-
ferent units still felt extremely 
strenuous. I had no idea how my 
dad, at the age of 54, remained 
poised through these conditions. 
Although my dad is nearing the age 
in which he becomes eligible for 
the plethora of benefits all elderly 
Americans are entitled to, my dad’s 
citizenship status deems him ineli-
gible of receiving these perks.

Both of my parents are law-

fully permanent residents. My 
dad first came to the United States 
in 1988. One of my uncles, who 
had migrated to the states before 
my dad, was in Chicago at the 
time and informed my dad of the 
rapidly expanding employment 
opportunities. Eventually, my dad 
returned to Mexico and got mar-
ried to my mom. My parents both 
agreed that if they wanted to start 
a family, moving to the United 
States was the right thing to do 
because of the seemingly limitless 
upward mobility and the ultimate 
allure of the American Dream. In 
1997, both of my parents crossed 
the Mexican-American border and 
headed back to Chicago.

One year later, my parents 

moved from Chicago to Las Vegas 
because my dad was aware of the 
surplus of jobs available for con-
struction workers there. But when 
the boom subsided in Las Vegas, 
my dad was forced to leave his 
workers union. Because of this, 
for a very long period of my life 
growing up, my dad struggled 
with keeping a stable job. Since I 
was in elementary school, my dad 
has traveled to other states expe-

riencing similar booms to that of 
Las Vegas in order to find work. I 
can still remember the first time 
he went away when I first started 
the first grade. We were all weep-
ing because, for the first time, my 
dad was going to be so far from us 

and we wouldn’t see him until the 
next summer.

Neither of my parents were 

aware of the struggles they would 
blatantly face in trying to start 
a new family in a new country. 
Because of their citizenship status 
and lack of English proficiency, 
my parents have been hindered 
from the opportunity to live the 
life akin to that of the model white 
American family. Even to this day, 
my parents struggle with under-
standing mainstream American 
lingo and etiquettes and thus have 
rarely formed relationships with 
anyone else that didn’t experience 
the same immigration experience 
as them.

Nonetheless, my dad has put our 

entire family on his back. Growing 
up, my mother had to watch over 
me and my four siblings so it was 
very difficult for her to go out of 
her way to contribute to my fam-
ily’s income. Because of this, my 
family relied solely on my dad to 

put food on the table. Although 
my dad would continuously get 
his checks postponed, work in the 
coldest and most rural states in 
the nation and work an arduous 
amount of time every day, he never 
overtly displayed his exhaustion 
or dismissed us as a result. He was 
truly inspirational. My time work-
ing with him made me think of all 
the sacrifices he has made for the 
literal survival of my family.

The location of our worksite 

was in Bozeman, but the apart-
ment the rest of my dad’s work 
crew and I were staying at was in 
Belgrade. It takes 30 minutes to get 
from one city to the other and we 
were expected to arrive by 5 a.m. 
As brain fogged as I was, I swiftly 

slipped on my murky brown Wol-
verine work boots, stained white 
Dickies, 
ripped 
white 
Hanes 

T-shirt and headed straight to my 
dad’s white 2001 Chevrolet Astro 
van to wait for the rest of the crew. 

The skies remained gloomy from 

the night storm’s heavy showers. 
Though it was the middle of the 
summer, it felt as if I was stuck 
in a time loop in Montana and 
every day was replicative of that 
one overcast morning. My dad, 
dressed in his all-white work uni-
form, briskly maneuvered his way 
to the van. His silhouette, despite 
the backdrop of somber surround-
ings and nasty weather, main-
tained rhythmic footsteps trotting 
toward the van. Though my dad 
was noticeably older than the rest 
of the crew, there was something 
about his upbeat demeanor that 
made everyone else come off as 
downhearted.

Oversized 
jackets, 
jumbled 

chargers, weird wall decor and 
half melted candles clutter my 
roommates’ and I’s already small 
apartment. A high-rise build-
ing stands tall outside our large 
living room window, blocking 
off any daylight from flooding 
the apartment. Sitting among 
the clutter and the gloom is an 
orange-tinted vase. Growing out 
of the vase are soft, bright pet-
als flowing from the stems of a 
set of pink carnations. The floral 
aroma fills the tiny living room it 
sits in, but in a subtle way. It is not 
strong enough to smell when you 
walk in, but noticeable as soon 
as you sit down on the old, dark 
couch right across from it. When 
you don’t directly look at them, 
the flowers easily blend into the 
clutter, but once you do, they 
catch your eye. They brighten the 
entire dark apartment, bringing 
in that touch of brightness the liv-
ing room desperately needs every 
morning and afternoon. They add 
a layer of freshness that our dry, 
closed-off apartment can’t bring 

in since the windows are sealed 
shut. The freshness hits our faces 
when we come back from class 
later in the day, comforting us.

Growing up, I never cared for 

flowers. If anything, I disliked 
them. I disliked how expensive 
bouquets from the florists were. I 
disliked the bees that came with 
them. I disliked how much effort 
people put into growing them, 
and I disliked how mad they’d 
get when my ball rolled into their 
flower patch. I disliked their 
names, since I could never pro-
nounce them. I disliked how much 
work maintaining them was. But 
the biggest of all, I disliked how 
they’d always die so soon. My 
mother would always say they 
were a waste of money because 
of how quickly they would fall. 
When my family would buy her 
flowers, she’d get mad, telling us 
not to waste money. She’d only let 
us buy flowers to use when doing 
poojas as offerings to God. But for 
the personal decoration aspect, 
she would refuse to buy them. 
Instead, she brought up the idea 
of artificial flowers. She’d say 
they were just as pretty, and they 
last forever. So now our home is 
filled with tall glass vases hold-

ing fake roses and fake tulips and 
fake hydrangeas and fake peo-
nies, every fake flower the local 
craft stores had on sale.

As I got older, I started dis-

agreeing more with my mother, 
especially with her stance on 
flowers. I always kept my opinion 
to myself because I understood 
costs add up. The only times I 
got to pick out real flowers were 
for our poojas. We would rush to 
Nino’s on our way to the Bharati-
ya Temple, and I would follow 
quickly behind my mother into 
the store, since we were already 
late to the scheduled pooja. We’d 
speed to the flower section. They 
always had a variety of beauti-
ful flowers, every color that you 
could think of. They’d sometimes 
have roses, jasmine, sunflowers, 
lilies and mums, but they always 
had carnations, usually the pink 
ones. Carnations were our staple 
— the flower we would get almost 
every pooja. They were always 
the cheapest ones at the store and 
the most readily available. My 
brother and I would sit there in 
the car, cutting them off of their 
stems in preparation for pooja. If 
we did the pooja at home instead 
of the temple, we would sit at the 

dining table taking turns cutting 
them. I’d do the first half, and he’d 
do the second. Once pooja began, 
we would pick each petal off and 
offer it to god. I would sneak one 
of the flowers in my pocket or put 
it under my leg until after pooja. 
After coming home or leaving our 
pooja room, I’d keep it in my room 
until it almost completely disin-
tegrated, because I didn’t know 
how to properly preserve them 
(and still don’t), or until it got lost.

Eventually, my father took up 

gardening 
during 
quarantine. 

He’d buy packets and packets 
of seeds and plant them under a 
grow light, then transfer them 
outside once it got warm. He’d 
take me to Bordine’s, the nearest 
flower and plant shop, and let me 
help pick out the flower plants I 
liked. He never bought the ones 
I picked, but he let me give my 
input on the colors of the flowers 
he liked. We’d get hydrangeas, 
hibiscus, zinnias and three dif-
ferent colors of roses. No carna-
tions. 

Moving out of the house, I was 

given real flowers for the first 
time instead of the fake ones my 
mother loved, for my apartment. 
I came home all excited to put 

them in our vase. An instant smile 
grew wide on my face from how 
pretty the flowers were. Coin-
cidently, they were pink carna-
tions, my favorite. They reminded 
me of when I was younger and 
would sneak a few flowers from 
the bunch to keep in my room. 
The flowers did everything arti-
ficial ones could never do. They 
brought in a calming aroma into 
the room, a feeling of fresh life, a 
splash of subtle color, brightening 
the room in every way fake ones 
couldn’t. But within two weeks or 
so, they died. 

Day by day, another flower 

would droop over to the side. A 
petal would fall, laying next to 
the vase on the black table. The 
feeling of freshness left the room 
along with any life left in those 
pretty flowers. They wilted and 
were done for. But I’d leave them 
in the vase, because I can never 
get myself to throw them out. To 
throw out something so beauti-
ful and selfless felt wrong. The 
tiniest amount of life left in them 
still brightened the room, at least 
in my eyes. And thinking about 
it, there was something equally 
beautiful in the pile of fallen pet-
als and drooping stems. How 

they still shine even with a pale 
hue that takes over each petal. 
How the pretty flower smell 
would remain even though it was 
so subtle. How they still caught 
everyone’s eyes once they saw the 
vase, but in a are they saving dead 
flowers way. There was some-
thing beautiful in the way they’d 
fall after holding on for so long 
once they were cut from their 
plant, how they selflessly held on 
for so long just to make our lives 
more beautiful. How each flower 
would fall after giving every bit 
of life it had left, until it couldn’t 
hold on or give any more any lon-
ger.

The wilted flowers added some 

things to my life that the fresh 
ones couldn’t. It dropped petals 
for me to keep as a pretty col-
lection. It made my roommates 
laugh a little every time they’d see 
it, filling our room with laughter 
which, in turn, brightened up the 
room. It was an incentive to go 
buy more flowers. And it was a 
reminder to appreciate the things 
in our life in the moment because 
eventually, they will wilt. And it 
was a message that the end itself 
is just as beautiful as the flowers 
first blooming still on the plant. 

Design by Zoe Zhang

 STEPHEN BUCKLEY & 

KAILANA DEJOIE

MiC Columnists

 IRVING PEÑA

MiC Columnist

 ROSHNI MOHAN

MiC Columnist

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

Courtesy of Kailana Dejoie

