Graduation Edition 2022 — 9
Michigan in Color
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
As a person of color, any type of
application, whether it be college, job
or internship applications are always
equipped with stress, self-doubt and
insecurity. I feel alone in academic
and social settings at the University
of Michigan, with about 55% of the
student population being white and
the median family income being a
staggering $154,000 for the Fall 2020
undergraduate population. I, as a
minority student who does not have
the privilege of wealth nor whiteness,
have had to endure a college experi-
ence overrun by feelings of imposter
syndrome. Here at the University, I
constantly feel the pressure of social
and economic factors like race and
social class that lead me to lose belief
in myself academically and profession-
ally. I dream to go to law school and
become a lawyer, which I know will
force me to exist within more intimi-
dating environments of professional-
ism, whiteness and years of enhanced
feelings of being an imposter.
Interacting with students in my
sociology, political science and pub-
lic policy classes has resulted in very
interesting yet uncomfortable conver-
sations. It seems like almost every stu-
dent has been interning for their local
congressman since high school and
have parents who own their own law
firm. Comparing my background and
experiences to others, the overwhelm-
ing sense of competition makes me
anxious and worried about my future
at the University and beyond due to
my lack of experience compared to my
peers. When it comes to discussions
surrounding internships or any other
professional opportunity, the number
of white students who seem to have
been handed positions because of their
family’s privilege is honestly astound-
ing.
This past January, I started my
application to the Ford School of Pub-
lic Policy. Even before the start of
my freshman year, I already knew I
wanted to apply to this program come
the winter of my sophomore year, and
I worked my ass off both academically
and professionally to try to secure an
acceptance. I completed the prereq-
uisites courses early, pursued intern-
ships that aligned with my political
interests and became an involved stu-
dent at the University to solidify that
public policy was my passion while
proving to admissions that I was a
dedicated student. I thought what I
was doing would be enough and that
I would stand out among hundreds of
applicants all competing for a spot in
the 70- to 80-person cohort. But when
talking to other students who had the
same dream of attending the Public
Policy School, it seemed that their
experiences, grades and accomplish-
ments were much more prestigious
than mine. And when it was time to
start my application, I needed to think
of something that made me different
from the rest of the applicants. There
was an easy conclusion: my ethnicity.
I am a Latino student at the Univer-
sity; I am a part of the mere 6.98% of
the undergraduate population that is
Latinx.
Diversity has been proven to be
beneficial in the classroom. Whether
it’s ethnicity, socioeconomic class or
religion that sets individual students
apart, learning in diverse environ-
ments improves students’ cognitive
skills and critical thinking. By boost-
ing an individual’s abilities and intel-
lect, diverse classrooms nurture
further academic success and inno-
vation. More diverse classrooms not
only make me feel more comfortable,
but they also create an open space for
dialogue regarding important issues
affecting various cultures and ethnici-
ties. I knew my ethnicity would ben-
efit the Public Policy School’s cohort,
but I did not want to wonder if I had
only been accepted for the sake of the
school’s diversity numbers. My impos-
ter syndrome made me feel that my
experiences and grades would not be
enough for the acceptance email that
I’ve been dreaming of since I learned
about the Public Policy School.
I had to come to accept that a major-
ity of the students applying, on paper,
most likely appeared to admissions as
identical. So many of us are pre-law,
political science majors waiting on an
acceptance to the Public Policy School.
Most of us are politically active and
involved in related organizations on
campus, and some of us naively believe
we can become president one day. Due
to this, I knew the one place I could
truly stand out would be in the applica-
tion essays. It felt like the three 300- to
400-word essays would determine my
future.
After filling out basic demographic
information in the early part of the
online application, it was finally time
to view the essay prompts. Unsur-
prisingly, the first one was the staple
“diversity essay.”
This year’s prompt started out by
informing the applicants about how
research has shown that diverse work
groups are better at solving problems.
They noted, however, that working in
such groups can present considerable
challenges to students who struggle
to work with others from different
backgrounds. The question then asked
the applicants to write about an expe-
rience working in a diverse setting
and specifically asked that the essay
be focused around the challenges of
working with differences. The final
part of the prompt questioned the
applicants to discuss in what ways one
could improve on how productive and
respectful they were to others of a dif-
ferent background.
Though I was expecting at least
one essay to prompt me about my
background, this question was the
most difficult one to write, taking me
weeks of constant drafting and edit-
ing. I think it’s important for admis-
sions committees to ask questions
which allow students to vulnerably
talk about their identities, but when
it comes to this specific question, it
seemed that the committee was only
trying to see how white students have
been able to interact in diverse set-
tings. Instead of just asking about an
experience in working in a diverse
community, they asked about how the
environment was challenging. After
rereading the prompt over and over, I
began to get angry. In what environ-
ment at the University have I had the
opportunity to even work in a diverse
setting? To me, this question asked,
“How, as a person of color, have you
faced challenges working in a diverse
environment despite never being in
one?” I’m almost always one of about
three Latinx students in 300-person
lectures, the only person of color in
discussion sections and one of four
brown students crossing the entire
Diag, the center of the University. In
all of my group projects and breakout
rooms, I often find myself having to
settle without having my ideas appre-
ciated, being talked over and feeling
stupid. I wish I had the opportunity to
work in a diverse group setting so that
I could finally be listened to, not doubt-
ed or ignored, but that is simply not the
reality here at the University.
I reflected on the final part of the
aforementioned prompt: “Are there
things you wish you had done differ-
ently or might do differently in the
future to work more respectfully and
productively with people who dif-
fer from you?” No, but this question
caters to white students who trample
the minority students at this school,
creating a welcoming prompt for them
to ease their way into. When talking
to older friends in the Public Policy
School who helped edit my essay, we
all agreed that this prompt seemed
to be purposefully phrased so that
admissions would be able to see which
white students were “woke” in appre-
ciating diversity and understanding
its importance. These students are
obviously necessary for a holistically
diverse environment, but the ease of
being able to discuss working with
people of different backgrounds pro-
vides advantages to white applicants
over actual students who would con-
tribute to a diverse cohort. I am a
person of color who has solely been in
majority-white environments, I could
not think of a time where I faced a
challenge working across differences,
because I have rarely been presented
with differences in my work environ-
ments. A challenge I have to constant-
ly deal with is not being valued as a
thinker and student within the class-
room. It’s not my duty to respectfully
and productively work with students
who can’t see past my skin color.
When I sat down with Moon Choe,
owner and operator of Moon Cafe, a
Korean restaurant and frozen yogurt
shop on State Street, for a 40-minute
interview, I’ll admit I expected some-
thing of a sob story: a few cliché sen-
timents about being down on his luck
and needing students to stop by so he
can pay the bills. What I got instead
was a chance to gain new insights
on laissez-faire parenting, the subtle
racism that is a hallmark of the immi-
grant experience and the private
joys he is able to embrace from the
COVID-19 pandemic, among other
topics of discussion. Choe is full of
surprising wisdom, which he dishes
out freely, sans condescension.
As soon as you walk in, Moon Cafe
comforts you. The walls are painted
yellow and purple, clashing with the
black-and-white checkerboard floor.
Large-framed, abstract art prints
hang on the walls, and the entire
stretch of a mantel piece is lined with
small figurines. The eclectic interior
reminds me of the yummy hole-in-
the-wall eateries my friends and I
frequented during our high school
years back at home and immediately
assuages those requisite nerves I
feel as a newcomer to the journalism
scene.
Choe is in his early 60s and, despite
his gray hair, looks much younger
than his years. On the afternoon that
I walk into his shop, he wears wire
glasses, a yellow University of Michi-
gan hoodie (like the true Michigan
dad he is) with a few sauce stains,
comfy sweatpants and padded slides
with Puma socks. He’s dressed, in
other words, for a long shift at the res-
taurant. Choe is thoughtful and very
eloquent. Though he gestures for me
to take a seat at the booth in front of
him, he never quite settles into the
bench facing me. Instead, he hovers
by it, always ready to take a call or
hand a customer their order.
I’m caught off guard when Choe
begins the interview by throwing me
the first question: he wants to know
what my position at The Michigan
Daily is. I tell him I’m a Senior MiC
Editor, and he nods and replies that
his daughter, Gina, also used to hold
a Senior Editor position at The Daily
during her undergraduate years. In
our brief conversation, he mentions
his children’s academic achievements
several times. I can tell by the way he
casually namedrops “neuroscience at
Princeton” that he speaks of his son
and daughter fondly and often.
Much of Choe’s identity is, in many
ways, tied to his role as a father and
husband. Shortly into our conversa-
tion, Choe takes a phone order and
calls out to the kitchen: “Yeobo? Spicy
pork!” (Yeobo is a pet name, roughly
translated from Korean to “darling”
or “honey.”) Later, she calls him dang-
shin — another sweet term of endear-
ment — when they’re working in the
kitchen together. While trying to
put into words what it’s like to work
with his wife, he chuckles and says,
“I cannot think of any bad things.
Just wake up early in the morning, eat
together — we always eat together …
there’s no special meaning, we’re just
married … and then we spend time
together. That’s it.” The restaurant
is a two-person operation. Last year,
they employed a couple U-M students
part-time, but now, since business is
slower than usual, it’s just Choe and
his wife, Yoon, running the cafe.
Choe and Yoon, along with their
son and daughter, immigrated to
America from South Korea nearly 15
years ago and eventually settled in
Ann Arbor, Mich. During his career,
Choe worked in the automotive
industry for 32 years. (His engineer-
ing background shows in the way he
tends to speak in exact figures, pre-
cise times and percentages.) When
he retired a couple years back, he
decided he wanted to take on “fresh
and new” work. “My (children) grew
up here in Ann Arbor … so it is our
town,” he tells me. He decided to open
a frozen yogurt shop to meet new stu-
dents, and he calls this new job a dif-
ferent type of “good stress.”
The “diversity” question
Moon Cafe and kindness during COVID-19
HUGO QUINTANA
2021 MiC Columnist
JESSICA KWON
2021 Senior MiC Editor
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This photo is from the official album cover of “Sawayama,” owned by Dirty Hit.
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