This semester, I traded in my aforementioned chronically open Google Docs tab for a chronically open Spyder file. Lo and behold, in my attempts to become a Renaissance woman, I took a coding class! As my senior year capstone!

After a long day of asking whichever unlucky person who happened to mention knowing Python for help ending with my roommate Grace, she mentioned one of the most thought-provoking guest lectures she had ever attended in her SI 430 class, given by Prof. Mustafa Naseem. Within five minutes of her summarizing his lecture, I found a new role model, undeniably furthered by the coincidental fact that Naseem is Pakistani like I am. The first time I recognized I wanted to pursue a purposeful career was when I visited Pakistan: Seeing the disparity in living conditions between my relatives and the children we passed in clothing markets and hearing about a brother and sister picking up a half-eaten mango off the street to eat have permanently altered my perception of what my priorities in life should be. Learning of the creative approaches Naseem took to tangibly dismantle patriarchal standards in Pakistan expanded the realm of possibility to me in terms of how to use tricks of the trade for societal progress. Thus, coincidentally on the last day of International Women’s Month, I planned out my final article for Michigan in Color. As a section with the mission of utilizing narrative to facilitate social change, introducing the work and experience of Naseem to our readership will hopefully expand the spectrum of how readers can work towards propelling social progress in their own pursuits. 

Even within our initial email interactions to set up an interview time, it became clear that Naseem is a natural facilitator. He was eager to read my previously written articles, connect me to social impact opportunities and further discuss possible opportunities after our interview. During our Zoom conversation, every so often he’d pause to check on Milo, his sister’s dog who he was babysitting at the moment. Milo clearly had a thriving social life; Naseem once even paused to set up his playdate with a friend’s dog later in the day. It became immediately clear to me that family is an integral part of Naseem’s life, not just as an overarching concept but as a day-to-day engagement. In asking him about his driving force to work in the intersection of social impact and technology, he instantly cited his father as his primary inspiration, pointing to a photo of him on Naseem’s desk. As a family physician running his own private practice, Naseem’s father cross-subsidized medical costs, offsetting the price difference of affordable medicines offered to lower-income Pakistanis by selling at higher costs to insurance companies. 

“Before the words social impact and social entrepreneurship were coined, he didn’t charge for prescriptions” Naseem said. “It’s good when you’re able to contribute on the side with volunteering, but I think I’d want to be able to do this 40 hours a week and get paid for it. And that inspiration comes from my dad.”

Currently, most of Naseem’s work is based in Pakistan and is largely intervention-based, providing strategies to mitigate and address pressing issues. 

“When I’m trying to cause behavior change, I want to do it in a place where I feel like I understand the landscape (…) and with communities where I have a perspective,” Naseem said.

It all started with his involvement in vaccination efforts to eradicate polio, a disease that Pakistan was working to eliminate for good. Ultimately, a large reason that Pakistan’s polio eradication campaign faltered into failure was vaccine hesitancy. Naseem had noticed trends of this phenomenon while working at a vaccine delivery service. 

“I quickly came to realize men had a big say in child health. If a mother was declining vaccination, oftentimes it was like ‘iske abbu ijaazat nahi de te,’ or his father is not okay with this,” Naseem said. “So we need to start influencing the man.” 

Alongside one of his colleagues, Sacha Ahmad, their team came up with SuperAbbu, meaning Superdad. SuperAbbu serves as a health hotline for current and prospective fathers to ask accredited doctors questions about maternal and child health and share their own stories. “The idea was to get men more involved in pregnancy and childcare,” Naseem said.

Initially, naysayers thought that this service would be unutilized — no man in Pakistan would see the need. However, Naseem’s team came to realize a wholly different reality: Since fathers weren’t allowed in the gynae wards, they usually waited outside as their wives got checkups. 

“Men were interested, but they just didn’t have access,” Naseem said. 

After launching SuperAbbu, the service was inundated: 30,000 total calls from 20,000 users, asking questions ranging from preliminary information about pregnancy itself to how they could best help their wives throughout the process. Evidently, while access to information had been stifled, demand had been pent up. 

“Part of my work is influencing men to be better partners, better parents, and better fathers,” Naseem said. “The other part, as I quickly realized, (relates to) social determinants of health. Seventy percent of our well-being is determined not by our genetic makeup or by the quality of care we have access to, but the environment that we are in.” 

So Naseem came to understand that, in addition to expanding access to quality care, he needed to address social determinants of health.

According to the World Health Organization, social determinants of health include the conditions where people “are born, grow, work, live and age,” as well as the broader forces and systems at play in one’s everyday lives, including political, economic and social policies, norms and systems. Interestingly, recent research has shown that these social determinants may be even more important than quality healthcare or good lifestyle choices. As an example, Naseem outlined potential negative effects of racism in one’s daily life. 

“If you’re at work dealing with microaggressions, it increases your stress levels, which increase cortisol levels, which leads to heart attacks,” Naseem said. “Similarly, if you’re a woman living in a patriarchal country and there are limits to your freedom of movement or if you’re in an abusive relationship, it impacts your health.” 

Particular to certain communities in Pakistan, the latter condition is unfortunately not so uncommon. As a diaspora-hyphenated-Common-App essay Pakistani American, I’ve always hesitated to characterize my family’s homeland as a country with the stereotypes it’s often associated with, but I assume and hope that the readers of this article are nuanced thinkers who don’t jump to hasty generalizations. Associating Pakistan with patriarchal standards isn’t meant to be normative or in favor of Western cultural superiority, but simply descriptive in terms of the lived experiences of many women who’ve had encounters within that realm. As readers and writers with hyphenated identities that are split between the East and West, it’s a tough line to tether: How much do we portray incessantly positively in a way that doesn’t delve into posing as progressive liberal “we’re just like you” Westernized mini-societies, or how much do we critique without disparaging in the “America please save us, Homeland is actually accurate” genre? Honest cultural assessments can only occur if we step out of the zero-sum mindset of Western centrality. A critique of Pakistan does not mean an extra point for the United States, and vice versa. As a topic that my nerdy all-coincidentally-did-Model-UN-and-are-now-prelaw friends get into frequently, our conclusion is “let things be shitty … in a vacuum!”

Nonetheless, it’s no surprise that women in Pakistan are living under patriarchal standards. In the age of globalization and technology, these same women have found creative approaches to create community in navigating these difficulties. Where does a lot of this support reside? Facebook. Alongside his colleague Dr. Maryam Mustafa from Lahore University of Management Science in Lahore, Naseem set out to learn more about what he dubs “digital safe spaces.” I had actually heard of the general concept before through my mother, as she’s part of a few of the Facebook groups for Pakistani women herself. Essentially, they’re created by women, for women. Members can post anonymously or with their information, and all content is vetted by an overall moderator, who posts anonymous content messaged to them. 

According to Naseem, there are three things that happen within these spaces. To start off, users are able to get the weight of their experiences off their chest — when their stories are out in the world, it’s no longer their burden to carry. 

“The second thing that happens is you’ll start to see a lot of comments pouring in, and you realize you’re not alone,” he said. These spaces are filled with women who’ve gone through similar situations, so the collective support is tremendously significant.

 “And then the third thing that happens is you’re able to collectively brainstorm strategies or provide material support,” Naseem said. “We’ve heard things like this for abusive marriages: This woman wanted to get out of her marriage and leave her partner, but she was scared for her children’s wellbeing and didn’t have material resources. So somebody said, ‘Be ready at 11 p.m. at this intersection with your kids, I’m going to pick you up from there and take you to a halfway home.’ ” 

In that specific instance, the community also conducted fundraisers for this woman to provide her with financial support to begin her new life. 

“A lot of times, when you think of who’s an entrepreneur, you think of tech bros in the Bay Area, largely men,” Naseem said. “All of these women are creating infrastructures on the internet that didn’t exist … circumventing all technologies that don’t serve them and creating infrastructures on the internet that do serve them. To me, they’re entrepreneurial. To me, they’re founders.”

Like attracts like, and as Naseem says, “Once you start to create a supportive community, it attracts other supportive people.” He noticed this with the men using SuperAbbu: Once a supportive community was established, it became a virtuous cycle of sorts as users uplifted each other in their self-improvement journeys.

“This then normalizes behaviors,” Naseem said. “There’s tens of thousands of men sharing stories, (conveying) ‘Okay, I’m not alone.’ ” 

As a graduating senior, listening to the innovative insights of Naseem had me preemptively adding “look up how to take another semester” in my to-do list. The combination of passion for his work and sheer intelligence was so evident, and I can’t help but think we’re blessed as a university to have his presence. As a professor, he has an important goal for his students. 

“We have this mantra at Michigan, leaders and best. I think that’s inspirational and important,” Naseem said. “But it also then starts to paint a picture of brilliance here, not elsewhere. I want to teach my students that when you go work in these communities, just because the person you’re working with is non-literate or doesn’t know how to read or write, doesn’t mean they’re not intelligent. Just because they happen to be low-income doesn’t mean they can’t solve their own problems or come up with interesting ideas.”

Diminishing the maize and blue superiority complex isn’t easy, and it may not even be necessary. (To echo the intuition of a certain Victoria Justice, I think we can all be intelligent.) The embedded goal of Naseem’s upcoming course is to signify just that. Being offered in the spring, this course is called Humanitarian Innovation: Co-Design for Social Impact. Within the class, U-M master’s students codesign resettlement processes with Afghan refugees who will accordingly receive three credits from Washtenaw Community College. 

“They’re your co-fellows sitting next to you in class,” Naseem said. “Not people you need to go to and source information from, but as equal members of the team who are going to get a grade as well. … You treat them as equals, you don’t treat them as information sources.” 

A persistent and relevant critique of philanthropy and social impact work is that marginalized communities are otherized, being asked carefully curated questions for a few minutes and leaving the problem-solving to the Big Boys. There’s a sort of paternalism and savior complex with these well-intentioned efforts, and to top it all off, navigating complex cultural hurdles in looking to help facilitate progress in marginalized communities is not one-size-fits-all. According to Naseem, these hurdles can at least be partially navigated through the concept of buy-in, an example of which is the new reflective journaling app for men that he’s working on with students at LUMS. The distinguishing factor of this app is that its prompts would borrow from Islamic concepts, namely muraqabah and muhasabah, the former methodology encouraging self-reflection on one’s closeness with God, and the latter methodology promoting reflections on how to work on one’s shortcomings to align with their religious morals. It’s no surprise that reflection and community are two of the major modes of facilitating behavior change, and Naseem’s work operates within the modality of cultural contexts, providing a transitory ease of sorts for individuals who utilize these innovations. There’s a sense of intimidation with something Other, and many of the benefactors of his technologies are everyday Pakistanis who quite simply would utilize a platform more if it related to their closely held values. The term “cultural competency” doesn’t do Naseem’s innovations justice, and I think their brilliance lies in their nuance: No behavior-changing solution is one-size-fits-all, but complicated problems don’t negate their worthiness of being addressed.

Undeniably, it is difficult to even get the opportunity to address them. Speaking for myself as a student trying to work in the realm of social impact, pathways are sparse. 

“Every student I end up working with wants to be able to do more of these things,” Naseem said. “It’s up to us to shape a society that encourages this kind of behavior because the demand is there.” 

I will testify myself that Naseem is the change he wants to see, as he spent a good portion of our conversation before and after the delineated interview portion referring me to so many resources and opportunities to look into. (Thank you so so much!) 

Ultimately, one could probably write a Harry Potter sized book on everything there is to learn from Prof. Naseem. As my loyal reader who made it this far, the rumors are not true: TikTok clearly didn’t impact your attention span thatttt much. Proud. To wrap up, I’ll leave us all with a descriptive and normative truth from Naseem: 

“I do think people want to do the right thing at their core” he said. “I think we need to align the incentives.” 

A tall order for our current society? Maybe. Realistically though, I think deep down we all know that a lot in our current world does not make sense, and many structures and systems are quite literally unsustainable. As a collective, humans are really great at ignoring things, but let’s be honest, that seven trillionth forest fire in California is not normal. 

To me, it’s inevitable that some of the best brains of our generation will have to work to solve society’s most pressing issues, and in a perfect world it would be easy to want to. Maybe the incentives don’t align everywhere in the world, but here in Ann Arbor, we’re blessed to be able to seek out opportunities to get involved and utilize our strengths for a common goal, and I hope that this article facilitates further involvement in Naseem’s important work and groundbreaking courses.

As a parting senior, a hill I’m willing to die on is that work you care about always excels. Clearly, here I am, four days before graduation and a semester after leaving The Michigan Daily finding my way back to writing about topics I care about. It’s undeniably important to integrate that intrinsic, passion-driven work with expanding your skillset (translation: my Python homework wasn’t that bad), but with inspiration from individuals like Naseem, maybe we can see more feasibility in a combination. Personally, I ended the Zoom conversation staring at my reflection in my perpetually-fingerprint-stained laptop screen, thinking “what are the odds?” The coincidence of hearing from a fellow Pakistani who did research in the university one of my cousins teaches at and another cousin attends, all spurred by a daily debrief with my roommate, seemed less like a coincidence and more like life’s little nod to maintain these tightly-held dreams. 

Message received! The pursuit of this tall order persists. 

MiC contributor Eliya Imtiaz can be contacted at eliyai@umich.edu

The post How Professor Mustafa Naseem is changing the world, one app at a time appeared first on The Michigan Daily.

Position(s): 2021-22 Managing Editor; Fall 2021 Senior Editor, Summer 2021 Managing Editor, Winter 2020 Senior Editor, Fall 2020 Columnist

Section(s): MiC

Semesters at The Daily: 5

I’m not the best at goodbyes. Shit, I really really really hate goodbyes. My thought process is, if you and I are at the level of explicitly saying it, instead of slowly faltering, instead of gradually saying hi less and less, if you and I need to draw that line of finality, why would I want you out of my life? It even reflects in my vocabulary: “bye… I’ll see you tomorrow”, “I’ll see you next week”, “I’ll see you soon”, to a faltered “I’ll see you.” 

So naturally, today I’m writing a partial goodbye to Michigan in Color. Because just like the people I’ve met and the memories I’ve made these past years, it’ll never really leave me, just like searching for Arrows (or Eros) International in a twin bed for three, eyeing garlic sauce at hometown Lebanese restaurants and concocting half cups of chai on the 8th floor of a noise complaint-ridden University Towers apartment. What I’ve gained from Michigan in Color are aspects of my identity and key components of my life that are simply permanently ingrained. In reflecting, I’ve realized that MiC is a real life practicum of arguably the most important tenet of anything good: trust. 

At this point, I’d like to make a disclaimer: if I’ve ever uniquely bestowed my advice to you at any moment, reader, I’m sure you’ve heard what I’m about to say. It always starts with an: “I saw a video on TikTok that said…” 

Some of you have heard this specific one: the idea of the video boiled down to the notion of trusting yourself. Essentially, every time you do something that makes sense to you, going forward and doing so is a direct indication to yourself that you trust your judgment. Every time you don’t do so, and stifle your inner monologue, you essentially tell yourself that you don’t trust your discernment. Regardless of whether or not this idea is right or wrong, astute or a generalization, deep or fake deep, it’s undoubtedly stuck with me and led to many moments in my life I wouldn’t have had otherwise. 

When I look back on what brought me to this notion of trusting my inner monologue, I think of when I began to articulate it. A look through my editorial record of pieces written for Michigan in Color makes clear the shifting trajectory from analytical pieces about politics and culture to narratives about my identity, my thoughts on l*ve, and my goals in life. Senior in Troy High Eliya would be shocked. Honestly, Junior in College Eliya wasn’t exactly cruising either when publishing “On Being Cupid’s Twin”, asking Yasmine and Easheta every three seconds, “are you guys sure it’s not too honest?” 

An adage almost as old as time is that MiC is an amazing community. But in picking apart why that is, I’ve realized that MiC is beautiful because of how foundational that same trust is to our mission, but in a different sense: trust between an editor and a columnist that our joint singular goal is the best piece that represents a columnist’s work; trust between two editors-turned-best friends that your work is poignant enough to tug at heartstrings, but not specific enough to call in the mystical haram police. Shift has often been dubbed therapy sessions, with everyone sitting at the table with the blue mini car and discarded boba cups jumping from topic to topic only as easily as a group of students with undiagnosed ADHD can, discussing how you can write that, where you read a piece that had similar voice, why you should publish, even if anonymously. 

Within the parameters of that table, every idea is worth being explored. The expression of these ideas is rightfully viewed as such a sheer act of bravery, because our family back home might read it, he or she might read it, that hiring manager might read it. At the core of our section is the purpose to be a voice for the oppressed: throughout our statements, analyses, poetry and more, we’ve dealt with our fair share of controversy. For the sake of the word count, I’ll lightly summarize that controversy as Good Trouble. Amid these possibilities, we carry on with trust— trust that things will simply be afterwards. I’ve seen firsthand repercussions of varying extents for certain pieces that writers have decided to publish through MiC, and the next day have seen the same writers come in ready to write their next piece. Oftentimes we take these acts of courage to no avail of their supposed goal: not every article wins a prize, not every confession brings them back— your heart may go through cycles of hardening and thawing. Such is the push and pull, but throughout that friction, we keep creating, we keep doing. In witnessing this bravery, I’ve come to realize that the opposite of fear is actually that very trust — trust that things will ultimately reach some form of homeostasis after the feat that is taking that risk of exposing our thoughts and vulnerabilities.

These vulnerabilities so easily roll off the tongue due to the deep friendships made in Michigan in Color. I can’t thank MiC enough for the experiences I’ve gained through its butterfly effect: singing the high note of “everytime” by Ari (nickname basis) with Kat from the streets of Chicago one month to the nefarious sidewalks of the Law Quad post-messy-Ricks-Thursday the next; marveling with tears of joy over how damn good that Hazelnut croissant from the Starbucks Reserve was with Anamika (just! enough); coercing the consistently late Neil Nakkash to pick up cookies for Yasmine and me as we muse over love and loss; debating with the brilliant mind of Kè Cruz why it should be capitalism, not capital; having every single Monday shift fail the Bechdel Test with Anchal and Kat, the list could and does go on.

I can’t summarize my time in MiC without acknowledging the sheer privilege it has been to be its managing editor this past year alongside Jessica. Jess, you are the paragon of considerate leadership. In my third year at The Daily, you so elegantly mask your shock that I’ll still intermittently forget we don’t use the Oxford comma here. Your work ethic inspires me boundlessly, and I want us to take this moment to be proud of ourselves. As Jess and I have discussed, managing MiC has literally and figuratively been blood, sweat and tears (once I got a papercut during shift, don’t worry.) We’ve definitely gained a gray hair or two, but MiC has been the truest form of a labor of love. 

That type of love doesn’t die, doesn’t cease and doesn’t go with a goodbye. So while I may finally close the infinitely open Google Drive tab on my laptop, while I may not trudge over to 420 Maynard chronically late for both Sunday meetings and shift, I can’t really say goodbye to Michigan in Color. It’s not honest. What I will say is, I’ll see you. Maybe not tomorrow, maybe not next week, but I’ll see you. 

The post Senior goodbye: Eliya Imtiaz appeared first on The Michigan Daily.

Sitting in a Detroit cafe, I’m currently typing away as I listen to a trio of middle-aged men jokingly bicker about their orders getting switched. “I ordered the cheese!” “No, I swear it was me!” A pause as they continue chewing. 

The silence breaks: “We’re good though.” And laughter commences. 

I may be wrong, but something tells me that they’ve been friends for a while, a thought that puts a smile on my face as I sip my coffee, continue to type away and wait for my dad to pick me up from the A2D2 bus. 

This year is the final one of my undergraduate career, and it seems like every passing day brings me closer and closer to a reality that simultaneously excites me but also frightens me: change. As a senior still recruiting for a full-time career (pity me!!!!), there’s a lot of ambiguity about what next year will look like. I have my goals: purposeful work, the Big Apple and frequent trips back home. Translating those goals into specificity is what’s proven to be difficult, and there’s an undeniable sense of anxiety in thinking about what will last after this hurricane of change takes place — what will remain in the eye of the storm? This train of thought isn’t necessarily comforting, which brings me to you. Or me, I should say. How are we? Let’s say it’s us 10 years from now. We’re at 31, letting everyone who’ll listen know that “actually, your thirties are the new twenties!”

Did we get that J.D.? Have we started the family? Do we see Sara, Rubab, Mama and Papa almost every other day? I wonder if we’ve grown tired of New York at some point, the city that we swore up and down since age 11 was made for us; the city that we knowingly nod about when someone says, “You just give New York vibes.”

InshAllah, there are some things that I know are true, simply because we’ll work to make them so. I’ll have my space and still see the Imtiaz clan frequently. I’ll get my J.D., because we told ourselves we would. Potlucks with Inaya and Mits may look different, but I know we’ll somehow find a way to bring an item from the classic menu every time. My friend Kat wrote about perceiving time in a non-linear sense, and, as always, her words have left an impact on me long after I initially read them. Apprehension of being on the precipice of capital A adulthood is understandable, but I’m trying to think that, barring unforeseen circumstances, we can always find a sense of stasis in any future universe. In a weird way, because I can see the future in this way, I’m determined to make it happen. So in writing to us, I know that maybe things aren’t picture perfect, rose-colored glasses, but I do know that things are. I think therefore I am, a really novel thought, right? Regardless, given that reality, we can keep on keeping on. 

Suddenly, the record scratches. 

I know we’ll have these cycles though. I wonder if we’ll still use every word beyond the it-word. Sad, melancholic, dejected (a personal fav), despondent, going on and on until the thesaurus.com suggestions expire. The reality remains that life will probably still be difficult as it will still be beautiful. We’ll call Marie in the wee hours of the night, and trade theories as to why it is that we think so much. Hopefully by then we won’t be so embarrassed of that fact. 

Still, you and I will probably scoff at “Everything happens for the best,” and immediately correct it with “Everything happens.” The only control is yourself and your faith. Currently, I’ve come to learn that life hits us with various circumstances, good and bad. We aren’t guaranteed the Good Life, but we’re guaranteed life, the basis of which we can forge our reality from. Does that mentality change throughout the years for us? I’m sure the pendulum still swings back and forth, teetering between chasing what we want and accepting our reality. Shit, you’re just 31 — we’re still figuring it out. 

In that sense, life is like people. Sixth-grade debate class had us argue the pressing question on Schoology posts, “Are humans inherently good or inherently bad?” We’d type away until meeting the minimum of three sentences and maximum of five, some arguing we’re born angelic, others claiming we’re naturally evil. Like some (not many) things, the answer is probably in the middle: we have the capacity to be both good and bad. And internalizing this perspective of free-will morality has helped me reframe any pessimism of how life sometimes just sucks. People, us included, can suck too! Why expect 100% perfection from our lives when we don’t always match up? In my perspective, we should simply try. Know the descriptive, and mold from the normative. Thank you, philosophy vocab list.

I wonder what happened with all that. When you read this later, you’ll know what I’m talking about… and I know, that you know, that I know. You’ll think, as I am right now, How am I so damn funny? I wonder how we’ll look back on it, in what way. 

Things like our sense of humor will always keep us floating. The idea of listening to the perfect song while strolling through a city will always put a smile on our face. Walking into one of our imprinted coffee shops, we’ll stand in line waiting to buy overpriced coffee that Mama will shake her head at, trying not to laugh at something Grace said either years ago or yesterday. I hope it was yesterday. Once we’re at the register, we’ll take a lingering second to order: “Could I possibly get… wait, so what exactly is a cortado?” I ironically wonder if we’ve learned throughout the years to be less restless, less impatient, as we wait for our order. The coffee will come. The coffee will come. We’ll tap our hands against our phone case to the beat of some song we’re in love with until we hear our name pronounced even more creatively than the last 7,000 times. That’s what we get for using our government name, I guess.

After grabbing my things, I turn around, scan the room and find you. Or you all. Smile and sit, inevitably shuffling seats around because if it’s the CrustSquad group chat we’re already causing a public noise complaint. I bite into the warmed puff pastry on the table until maybe I also hear, “Eliya. You didn’t order the cheese one!” 

A pause. Maybe a side eye or two.

And laughter commences. 

MiC Managing Editor Eliya Imtiaz can be reached at eliyai@umich.edu.

The post A letter to my future self appeared first on The Michigan Daily.

You may have heard of my birthday. It’s kinda famous (infamous? Depends on who you’re talking to.) It gets smirks, gasps, understanding nods or apologies — “damn, your birthday depression must really hit!” If you’re reading this around when I publish this piece, chances are you know where this is going. Yes, my birthday is on good ol’ Valentine’s Day. 

Scratch that, Valentine’s Day is on My Birthday.

When I was younger, the realization of February 14 being more than the day on which I made a point to wear pink, had yearly check-ins with distant relatives and rightfully expected my favorite birthday dessert of strawberry cheesecake, was definitely a recalibration of sorts. Getting my annual vaccinations was consistently a dreaded process, but I always blushed hearing the phrase “birthday on Valentine’s Day? So you’re getting two presents!” In all honesty, this coincidence made sense to me — it reaffirmed my already unwavering main character syndrome (yes, I did read too much Junie B. Jones!) 

As I got older, the two ideals — what a birthday represents and what Valentine’s Day represents — resulted in frequent mental clashes in the yearly reevaluation that comes with birthdays. Birthdays are usually the celebration of one’s self, and Valentine’s Day is typically a celebration of romantic love. Inevitably, there was an underlying spotlight on my love life that I placed in my head; the general context of the day was already all things romance, so in trying to celebrate another year gone by, I couldn’t help but place an unnecessarily large emphasis on my romantic successes or pitfalls in that past year. When was it my fault, when was it his fault, when was it just the overall circumstances? Did I learn to progressively chip away at my apprehensions within the past year? Even in writing this, I hesitate to articulate these thoughts in fear of their annual frequency becoming a ritual of sorts that I come back to year after year.

In recent years (translation: literally this past year), I’ve tried to prioritize the notion of self-love, first and foremost. I’m a proud follower of @wetheurban on Instagram, and shamelessly have had many-a-post from their account as my lock screen. Be it either doing both will.i.am and Fergie’s verses in “Meet Me Halfway” on the way to the Kroger on Crooks and Livernois, or making my favorite comfort oatmeal that coincidentally no one in my family likes, I’ve always been more than okay hanging out with myself. To avoid sounding like my very accurate label of being a business major, on good days I think of potential men in my life (or prospects, as the group chat and I like to call them) in the framework of value-add. I (again, on most days) am more than content with the self, platonic and familial love in my life so view most men on the metric of complementariness, not necessity. 

So I said “most” a lot in that paragraph. Every so often, there comes a disruption in which every notion I thought I held unwaveringly strong comes into question. For lack of a better term, I’m almost (will never admit fully being) down bad. And my brain then splits into two purviews like the two mini versions of Kronk speaking to him on each shoulder in “The Emperor’s New Groove.” One side is always giving excuses (maybe he doesn’t know how to communicate), while the other shakes her head in disappointment (and you choose to tolerate that?).

My inkling suspicion of romance is that it can disrupt your glass shield of self-love too dangerously. Beyonce’s never wrong, and she definitely wasn’t when she said we love dangerously and we love crazily (Jay-Z is out there somewhere yelling, “YES!”) While the unending, self-actualizing months of quarantine and virtual school forced me to find love and admiration and pride for myself, immediately afterwards I was hurtled into the clusterfuck that is the college “dating” scene, if it can even be called that. So on one hand, I repeat “I am healthy, I am wealthy” and on the other I say, “No matter what he’s doing…” New Girl vs. Cool Girl. I’m that girl vs. I want to be your girl. With my birthday and the day of all things love just having passed, I find myself ruminating on where the true Eliya really lies. 

And then I think about the chart of human emotions and feelings one of my best friends showed me in the peak of one of my Boy Crazes(™). “Why am I feeling so MANY THINGS?” I lamented. She pulled up a kaleidoscope-looking chart of sorts on Google Images with a large spectrum of colors and little words associated with each color, called a feelings wheel. “These are your feelings, and these are the emotions that can result as a product of them,” she explained. 

Yes, I may have slightly felt like a kindergartener, but the image of that chart remained imprinted in my mind as a symbol of the complexity and duality of not only myself, but all of us. Within us exist entire universes of emotions and feelings — one day you (and I) can be stoic and collected, and the next day we can be impassioned and lively. Bad bitchery, as my aforementioned group chat coined it, isn’t a contract you sign for eternity to never feel emotions like Ariel signed away her voice to Ursula. To me, it’s trusting your mind and being kind to yourself. In this day and age where emotions are seen as liabilities, I fall into many mental traps of thinking of myself as weak, and “all talk, zero game” when it comes to being Miss Independent. Then, a sense of cognitive dissonance is created: we objectively know our worth on paper, yet don’t act on that knowledge for a vague reason that maybe self-reflection (or therapy) will unearth one day. So on one hand, some of us find ourselves being “down bad,” and on the other hand, we simultaneously give ourselves a hard time for being in that state of mind. 

Modern-day discourse in the media on relationships and love makes many arguments about the benefits of being emotionless and heartless, but when that heart inevitably does feel, we may think we’ve betrayed our model of 21st-century norms. Moreover, tapping into the image of “Cool Girl” for men (or as I call it, partaking in the pick-me industrial complex) even further emphasizes prioritizing your perception in the male gaze above who you actually are. Overall, in relationships, situationships and all the -ships in between, college culture seems to operate on the modality of not addressing genuine emotions. Many of us internally attempt to rewire our brains to not care, and to think that wanting a man in our lives is weak. Externally, we simultaneously try to convince them that we’re unbothered by their emotional unavailability, always down to “go with the flow.” What’s the end result? An all-encompassing sense of disconnect, one way or another, in which we refuse to acknowledge or prioritize what we feel and want to do in the midst of fitting into a persona. 

So if you find yourself in the same realm of cognitive dissonance as I have, my unsolicited advice is to not admonish your heart, but be compassionate to it. Somewhere out there, my friends who gave me this very same advice are reading this right now rolling their eyes, and yes, I am giving advice that’s been hard for me to internalize. Where I am right now is at a place of learning about the most impactful person in my life: myself. When I think about the ways in which my feelings may not exactly be linear, I remind myself that we all operate on a spectrum of emotions, tapping in and out based on the sheer nature of our predispositions and past experiences. I know that I love abundantly, be it to myself, my family, my friends, my Spotify playlists or whoever ~he~ may be one day. 

On the days (like this one, not like most) in which I scoff at the mention of my birthday being Valentine’s Day, I try to remind myself that something in the universe aligned to bring about my existence on a day many around the world were celebrating love. I choose to take that as an honor and as a result not be afraid of all the different shades in which my love manifests itself. And maybe it gives me the final word — I’m not ashamed to hope that when Mr. Him thinks of love, he thinks of me. Regardless, I know I am. 

MiC Managing Editor Eliya Imtiaz can be contacted at eliyai@umich.edu

The post On being cupid’s twin appeared first on The Michigan Daily.

I aptly dubbed last fall, my first in-person semester as a University of Michigan transfer student, the semester of learning and unlearning. How do I operate living on my own? What notions do I leave behind in my metro Detroit suburb? Which ideals and values are significant to me, and to what degree?

I unlearned the streets of my childhood hometown. I learned the ins and outs of my little corner on Forest Avenue. Some may argue I unlearned good driving by walking everywhere (I‘d argue against that claim), and some may (correctly) say that I learned the perfect method of defrosting my mom’s food. Beyond getting to know myself and my campus more, I’ve navigated critically unlearning my previous indifference to problematic norms of wokeness — namely current corporate diversity initiatives. Before transferring to the Ross School of Business, I had nothing to do with the sphere of business, so I just pointed and laughed at its disingenuous social awareness from a distance. But once my immersion into the business sphere truly began within my first couple classes of the previous semester at Ross, a disruptive seed was planted into my mind that watered and watered into a fully bloomed animosity, growing from distinct phases of being bemused to irked to ultimately disillusioned. The tipping point was when a shirt was handed to me in the basement of, ironically, the Trotter Multicultural Center emblazoned with big, bold, maize text that read “I AM DEI.” What’s free is free, so I took the shirt; it’s since become a comfy bedtime staple. I wore it once when my friend was over, and with a mortified stare, she asked, “You’re never going to wear that in public, right?”

She was right. I knew I never would— the words “I AM DEI” immediately rang tone-deaf in a way that I couldn’t quite articulate. Tokenizing? Hasty? Grandiose? Performative? The magnitude of my discomfort at the shirt couldn’t be summarized in a few words, but served as a microcosm of my irritation throughout the semester at being inundated with lingo, jargon and pretty-little-nothings about the overused yet undermined phrase “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” always devoid of any real action to address what consistently has perpetuated racist oppression: global hypercapitalism.

It’s undeniable that an education in business would showcase some pitfalls of the modern synthesis of business and wokeness. During the fall semester of my junior year at Ross, students take the highest concentration of required courses in what’s dubbed the Ross Integrative Semester, or RIS. Each year, there are several preselected RIS themes centered on creating business solutions with positive impact, and this fall’s themes were inclusive learning; transparent and inclusive workspaces; and support for physical and mental wellness. Immediately within the first couple weeks of class, there was no question that attempts at an image of social consciousness were sprinkled throughout most, if not all, of my courses — and while they may possibly have been well-intentioned, were ultimately rendered feeble and insufficient. Common terminology for assignments included phrasing like: “investigate a socially-conscious venture,” “discuss the triple bottom line” and “create a business plan that addresses inclusivity and transparency.” At face value, it seems as though the Ross community is a pioneer of “positive business” — the often discussed, yet infrequently realized utilization of business principles and practices to create solutions mitigating societal ills and promoting the greater good. Delving a little deeper though, this facade is easily broken by Ross’s lack of any tangible commitment to racial equity. Ross, for example, is one of the few schools in the University that doesn’t require a Race & Ethnicity course. Instead, what we do have is a single class period in a required Management & Organization course devoted to (slightly, kinda, not really) discussing Ava DuVernay’s 2016 documentary “13th.” The film touches on a wide breadth of issues related to the U.S.’s historical racism and oppression of the Black community through the prison system, and how it’s perpetuated by the active role of business interests within the prison-industrial complex. Thus, “13th” can help act as a springboard for a genuine discussion, but our conversation on its content was whittled down to 10 minutes of one class period. This brief discussion, in my experience, largely consisted of participation-point comments like “I had no idea the system was this bad!” and “it’s just so shocking,” centering their harrowed regret at past ignorance instead of truly unpacking the role that our goals as business students play in societal issues the film presents. We quickly touched on the role of business in the prison-industrial complex for a couple minutes, and this seemed to pass as adequate anti-racism learning to administrators, faculty and some students.

Additionally, to top off our “education” in this sphere, my peers and I are required to participate in the “Identity and Diversity in Organizations” degree requirement: a hodgepodge combination of a virtual seminar here, an out-of-the-blue reflection paper there, from sophomore to senior year with one focused “milestone” of identity, diversity, or organizations per year. “Participate” is honestly a loose term in this case, as students are permitted to sit with their cameras and microphones off on Zoom for the entirety of the discussion. Moreover, instead of designating a professor for this lesson — that’s meant to stand in for the Race & Ethnicity credit that several other U-M schools have — peer instructors are utilized, evidently creating a lack of legitimacy during each session despite the genuine efforts of peer instructors. All in all, it has become increasingly clear to me that Ross is tiptoeing around the actual implementation of an education that prioritizes anti-racism and the uplifting of intersectional perspectives, choosing instead to prioritize comfort in the status quo with discussions that drone on about diversity and inclusion but never equity. It seems that, as a microcosm of the larger DEI “movement,” Ross misses the mark of what the actual pursuit of diversity, equity and inclusion should be.

Another example of this “close, but not too close” approach took place in mid-September. This past semester, Ross administration had decided to integrate a “discussion” of Ben & Jerry’s statement on Palestine into the syllabus of one of our mandatory courses during RIS. Long story short, that fever dream-like moment consisted of tone-deaf suggestions — “Why don’t they just all sit at a table and hash it out?” — and irrevocably concerning statements such as “the BBA Council’s email over the summer in solidarity with Palestine should’ve recognized their audience; although there are Muslim students in this school, they’re still a minority.” Not only did this declaration imply that the feelings of Muslim students should not be prioritized, but it incorrectly lumped together Muslim and Palestinian identities, ignoring the existence of Palestinian Christians, among other communities. Most inappropriately, mere acknowledgement of the inherent humanity of the Palestinian people was thrown away as students chose to discuss the optics of speaking out on humanitarian causes instead. I was overwhelmed in a way I hadn’t expected — bathroom, breathe in, breathe out, brush away tears, breathe in, breathe out, back to class. I couldn’t stop thinking of my Palestinian friends and the horror that they’d have felt in witnessing this discussion of “communication strategy” on an occupation that had irreparably disrupted their lives and the lives of generations before them. Yet interestingly, the minute that there was any rift in our conversation, we were immediately told to move on. I was confused — what was the point of bringing up a contentious topic, and then pulling the rug out from under our feet as soon as deliberation began to take place? We can talk about the framing of a statement on Palestine and the effects it had on the company, but we can’t talk about the actual occupation of Palestine that the statement itself condemns and speaks out against? We can teeter around the lines of discussing oppression, but when conversations immediately extend beyond face-value pleasantries and carefully worded participation-point platitudes, that “inclusivity of important topics” is brought to a halt. 

This brings me to the notion of prioritizing white comfort in DEI. It’s undeniable that these discussions or speeches or workshops operate from a point of centrality assuming a white audience, with an unquestioned acceptance of capitalism. Individuals from marginalized communities are expected to provide context, explain a system and contextualize their experiences to an audience that is assumed to know little about the inequities and injustices marginalized communities face. One- to two-hour conversations occur, and there is no expectation for further self-education afterwards — just hear stories and leave. As a result, the burden of storytelling is already unbalanced. People of Color often feel the need to speak on behalf of their communities as representation is sparse, resulting not only in the sheer pressure of presenting your identity in the most palatable way, but also not being able to always speak accurately about experiences given their possible concurrence with stereotypes. Moreover, current DEI seems to thrive on vague, detached jargon with phrases like “experience,” “your truth,” “my truth” and “perspective,” decentering any acknowledgements of systematic injustice and the indisputable role neoliberal capitalism plays in it. A reckoning with the consistently symbiotic relationship between capitalism and racism is currently absent but necessary: slavery, which many scholars agree was the foundation of globalized industrial capitalism, was predicated on obtaining the cheapest possible labor for slaveowners, and even today — as hastily touched on in my aforementioned class — the gaping hole in the 13th amendment of “except by punishment” perpetuates a modern-day form of slavery: the high prison-labor population of mostly Black and Brown people for some of today’s most established companies.  

The reality is that race is part of a system of oppression that surrounds us all. Instead of acknowledging and studying the interlocking relationship between racism, capitalism and patriarchal standards to begin to effectively dismantle them, we whittle our language down to empty jargon like “identity” and “differing perspectives” because when language is more upfront, reactions are mixed at best. In Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s “Americanah,” protagonist Ifemelu, a Nigerian blogger and critic of race relations in America, is invited to give a DEI speech at a small company based in Ohio. Her opening line is “The first step to honest communication about race is that you cannot equate all racisms.” Ifemelu is met with “frozen” faces and an angry email calling her talk “BALONEY” — consequently, she’s not invited back. From then on, she learns to adjust the tone of her talks with friendly, inoffensive, smiling statements like “America has made great progress for which we should be very proud.” Here, honesty regarding racism in the U.S. is characterized as audacious due to sheer white fragility, and although these are scenes from a novel, they ring true as events that can easily take place in the real world. Overall, we must ask ourselves what the true character of DEI is. Is it something that genuinely begets progress, or is it an attempt at a bandage, quick-fix solution for systemic racism, like slapping a Band-Aid on a burst pipe? Is DEI a catalyst for change or just another lagging symptom of superficial woke culture that those in power are pushing to render face-value and ineffective? 

I come bearing no surefire solutions, but I do know that we can start inching towards actual diversity, tangible equity and genuine inclusion by first addressing the roots of oppression and power imbalances. In DEI conversations, the stories People of Color share about experiencing racism should not have to share space with self-centering apologies and even justifications for past racism due to the fact that “you’re from a small town.” Moreover, individual experiences should be taken as that — solely individual — rather than one-and-done explanations of historical oppression. Some may think that current efforts can’t hurt, but the reality is that many current DEI efforts have continuously proven ineffective at best, and potentially harmful at worst, serving to make people complacent under the impression that efforts are being made. For example, implicit bias training has shown to be inconsequential in several studies, and interestingly enough, a study by Cornell’s Associate Dean of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion unearthed that the paradox of stereotype awareness is that it actually tends to perpetuate said stereotypes. This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be cognizant of our internal biases, but rather our unlearning must be thorough in framing the proper context and history of typecasting marginalized communities. As Charlice Hurst writes in “The Stanford Social Innovation Review,” placing “racism in the individual rather than the system … fails to communicate that the survival of systemic racism does not depend only on individual attitudes.” Similar to most ideals in this country, the current notion of DEI heightens the facade that everything occurs on an individual level, and its danger lies in its characterization as a transformative, ground-breaking, tangible solution to racism. Oftentimes, that characterization can come from sheer hypocrisy: how can Goldman Sachs speak to diversity and inclusion (fittingly, not even attempting to claim equity) when it quite literally targeted the Black community for high-interest subprime mortgages in the 2008 housing crash? There always seems to be something missing: a story left without context, an example of systemic pitfalls without naming the system, policy or interests that perpetuated that outcome. As a result of that vagueness, DEI falls into and perpetuates the classic “snowflake” image that conservatives hold with the American left, which may speak to the overall cognitive dissonance of neoliberalism: maintaining space for the fallacy of the “economically conservative, socially liberal.” The awkward middle ground is doubly harmful, as conservatives who already view DEI with disdain (maybe for different reasons) look at current DEI discussions devoid of addressing the root causes of inequity and injustice as simply complaining about nothing. And in that respect, they may have a point: without addressing the real roots of racist oppression in DEI subject matter that businesses profit from, “woke” corporations and institutions are nothing but pots calling the kettle black. 

From personal experience, I myself have found DEI events (and related clothing merchandise) to be, for lack of a better word, corny. In my opinion, one can achieve a happy medium of genuinely educating themselves by combining listening to the perspectives of others with the active pursuit of knowledge. Discussing stories about how our lunchbox smelled different in elementary school is always fun, but it can only get us so far. Lack of justice and equity in our society has been deeply entrenched for generations, and one speaker sharing their experiences of having their name wrongfully mispronounced in a Ted Talk-esque venue cannot reverse that stronghold. These facets of learning can’t necessarily occur overnight, but the process can begin by mere acknowledgement, at least. 

Ultimately, the Ross School of Business is a microcosm of a larger corporate system that reinvents itself every so often in conjunction with the ebbs and flow of societal norms. As awareness of social issues and injustices becomes more prevalent in our society, it’s evident that corporations can’t operate business as usual — they know they must integrate perfunctory marketing to effectively virtue signal. As the act becomes more convincing, we can either ingest it without question, or not only expect better but change our expectations. There lies a paradox in corporations claiming to advance diversity, equity and inclusion in a capitalist industry that was built, and continues to thrive, on actively perpetuating inequity. Oftentimes, that paradox is difficult to unearth given corporations’ active efforts to costume as changemakers, but other times, it is evidenced by language and terminology that equates your ‘racially anxious’ truth with my ‘actively-affected-by-racism’ truth. 

MiC Managing Editor Eliya Imtiaz can be contacted at eliyai@umich.edu

The post The DEI Conundrum: An untold failure of the American left appeared first on The Michigan Daily.

Every so often I hear about Hazaras in Afghanistan. I just did last week — it was mostly children who died. I remember how Khaled Hosseini so beautifully and eloquently painted a heartbreaking picture of the recent history of Afghanistan in his novel, “The Kite Runner.” To this, students at my high school analyzed questions such as, “Why did Hassan and Ammar get treated so differently?” and, “What was the basis of discrimination and subjection for Hassan and his family?”  

Every so often, I hear about a blast in Pakistan and, every so often, I meet a family friend whose uncle, cousin or sibling was killed in these blasts. Just yesterday, I found out about the Gilgit massacre of Shia Muslims: initiated over a difference in Eid dates. I stared blankly at my laptop screen wide-eyed, shocked at the abhorrent events and appalled that I just now heard of them. When thinking about the intra-religious persecution of Shias, especially in my home country of Pakistan, I think about my privilege to freely practice my Shiism here. But then I wonder: Is it really freedom when yes, I openly use a sajdiga for my daily prayer, but still have to hear the classic “Why do you pray on a rock” joke? Is it really freedom when I have to feign toleration upon hearing Sunni Muslims say, “We’re allowed to marry Jews and Christians, just not Shias”? 

Every so often when I hear the news, I turn to the only method of denoting solidarity in this day and age: Instagram social activism. This metric is by no means indicative of genuity, but it is telling enough in the sense that many Muslims will post about all social justice issues — only until it comes to Shias. Ironically, these are the same Muslims who retweet, “When it’s Muslims, the world is silent,” as though oppression is even a competition to begin with. For me as a Shia and my best friend as an Ahmadi, there’s another layer to that silence; when it is us, even fellow Muslims will be silent. The sense of solidarity that every so often arises among Muslims is always amazing to see, but a disquieting part of me feels like an outsider looking in, knowing that this same unity will never be granted to persecuted Muslim minorities.

Although these creeping realities often surface, being in a subgroup affords one the clarity of noting not only hypocrisy, but logical inconsistencies. When you exist at the intersection of multiple identities, it becomes almost a habit to attempt mentally checking off the boxes when evaluating the validity of activism: If advocating for women’s rights, does it only center white women? If uplifting Muslim perspectives, is it complicit in silencing Shia and Ahmadi voices? On the other hand, while minority communities focus on marginalized voices that are buried under these grander narratives, they also dismiss overarching issues such as sexism and racism that still arise within these smaller spaces. Yet at the same time, every so often I’ll hear or read, “YOU CANNOT BE PROGRESSIVE WITHOUT SUPPORTING _____.” The text is right — claiming to be a progressive can’t stop where discomfort begins. It can’t stop at what was preached to you at a Friday night khutba or who your parents told you were kafir. Muslim activism must push itself beyond the bounds of looking outwards. Sooner or later, our “one ummah,” one community, must begin looking inwards, where so frequently, we commit the same acts of abhorrent oppression against each other that we lament are inflicted onto us.

This brings me to the tragedy of Aya Hachem that occurred in the spring of 2020. In what was likely to have been a hate crime, Aya was shot in the chest and died at only 19 years old, only one year into law school. Immediately, graphics were sprawled throughout social media and donation links were shared once news of the event travelled. Then, a halt. In a series of anxiety-riddled tweets, Twitter user @humbleakh1 wrote, “I didn’t know she was a Shia… no way do I want to be in a situation where all this cause could go against me on the Day of Judgement.” The online Muslim community had found out that Aya was not merely Muslim, but Shia Muslim, and that modifier changed everything. Donations were rescinded and fundraisers were frozen — the predominantly Sunni Muslims organizing and donating wanted to rid their hands of connections to the Shia rafidis, “rejectors.” After observing this discourse, I turned to hear the thoughts of my own Sunni friends, expecting a similar sense of the seething anger I had. In response, I got either radio silence or the occasional “Yeah, that really sucks.” It felt like screaming into an abyss that would awkwardly shuffle at my volume, uncomfortable probably more at its own complicity rather than the situation at hand. 

It’s an unspoken tenet that since Shias willingly and proudly differentiate themselves from the majority, we may look the part, but — in the eyes of the larger Sunni majority — fall short of the “it” factor that actually brings us into the fold. Thus, grasping for a sense of Muslim community always felt face-value because, at the end of the day, I wondered if my inclusion was despite my Shia identity, rather than regardless of it. I ran for president of the Muslim Student Association in my high school, and was later told underclassmen were discouraged from voting for me because I was Shia — a Shia on MSA board had never happened before. I’ve been given the look of “Why’d you make it awkward” when addressing a “joke” against my sect because “Eliya, it wasn’t that deep.” And I myself have internally debated if I should just turn the other cheek to prevent the discomfort that would occur if I didn’t just laugh and roll my eyes. Interestingly enough, my “otherness” persists one way or the other — in any social context, the minority group is always stigmatized and obfuscated, but the scale is what changes. Within the Muslim community, it’s the Shia identity that sets me apart, and among my peers at this university, the list of differentiators goes on.

I write this now because I feel something is different. Although in Michigan in Color for almost a year, I’ve never written a piece about my identity, or even about myself, for that matter. However, the slight cringe I’ve previously felt when writing about my experiences has been overtaken by being fed up. As I’ve become more inspired every passing day by the Muslim community coming together to advocate for Palestine, I want to take this moment to implore us to keep the same consistency when the oppression comes from within our religion, when we have to point the finger back at ourselves. As small as the scope of brotherhood and sisterhood is within Islam, within its minority sects, it gets even smaller. In reality, the oppression of Muslim minority sects in predominantly Sunni regions is a microcosm of the experience of Muslim oppression in larger contexts, yet this realization has either not dawned on the ummah, or fallen on deaf ears. It’s clear that we have the force and power to spur outward advocacy, but we must bring about introspection on the prejudices and violence committed within our own religion as well. Until then, the foundation of morality and advocacy for many Muslims remains shaky and inconsistent, teetering unsteadily as preconceived notions continue to be propelled at MSAs, and persist to be ignored at iftars. 

MiC Columnist Eliya Imtiaz can be contacted at eliyai@umich.edu

The post Living as the exception appeared first on The Michigan Daily.

In today’s day and age, it may seem as though taking no stance amidst the frenzy of American politics is the best route. Especially in a college setting such as our own, some of us think a surefire method of not making friends is to be vocal about our political stances — the last thing we want to do is alienate ourselves by potentially alienating a group of others. William O’Neal exhibited a similar mindset preceding his infiltration into the Black Panther Party (BPP) in the late 1960s, as portrayed in the highly-anticipated Shaka King film “Judas and the Black Messiah.” O’Neal, played by Lakeith Stanfield, sets to wave his own criminal record by informing the Federal Bureau of Investigation on the proceedings of  one of the most influential Black revolutionaries of the 20th century — the BPP’s Chairman Fred Hampton played by Daniel Kaluuya. Though the film offers many lessons, one of its loudest is the eventual assured disintegration of apathy. What begins because of a sense of political indifference ends in the death of the Chairman by the hands of the United States government. What starts as no stance eventually teeters one way or the other, and in the case of O’Neale, slips too deep to the wrong end.

Throughout the unfortunate tragedy, the FBI wields O’Neal like a puppet, hanging his potential prison sentence over his head in an effort to keep him docile in his informancy. At one point, the agent working with O’Neal discusses his own thoughts on the Black Panther Party and likens them to the Ku Klux Klan, and O’Neal mumbles in neither agreement or disagreement — the neutrality persists. As the film progresses, the agent observes O’Neal at a rally during one of Chairman Hampton’s speeches, later remarking to him that it looked like he believed what the Chairman was saying. And here and there, it really did look so: O’Neal’s glass shield of apathy seems to chip as the crowd shouts in vigor “I am a revolutionary!” It makes sense why the American government would see Chairman Hampton as a threat: He wove together similarities in groups that would never have seen the commonality in their causes prior. With the Rainbow Coalition, Hampton created a multicultural coalition with the most unlikely participants at face value, the Young Patriots Organization. The film displays Chairman Hampton walking into their meeting, with him on one side and a group member speaking on the other, the Young Patriots Organization’s Confederate flag hanging proudly in the background. By the end of their discussion, members of the Young Patriot Organization realize the common goal that unites their interests with those of the BPP: minimizing and eventually ending poverty. In the same way, Chairman Hampton also joins forces with Young Lords, a predominantly Latinx based organization that, through his convincing, realize the same common goal. Following the creation of this organization, many of its subgroups advanced social programs like free breakfast programs, medical clinics and clothing drives. It seems as though the BPP isn’t as extreme as most media and historical recounts push us to perceive them as; it seems as though at the end of the day, their stances and programs were nowhere near extremist, rather increasingly applicable and greatly beneficial to a wide array of Americans from varying backgrounds. This may be why FBI director J. Edgar Hoover cited them as the country’s biggest threat — they, and as this film aptly displays, certainly Chairman Hampton, filled the void created by the American government in its disregard for and perpetuation of racial and economic injustice, by serving as the unifying, benefactory role that many would expect a just government to do.

But fear-mongering of the other unfortunately works too well, and combined with the FBI’s pressure on O’Neal, he undoubtedly was more of a pawn than a willful perpetrator. However, it’s important to note that O’Neil’s initially nonexistent stance became grossly misappropriated to serve another stance, a vested interest by the preservers of the status quo. Moreso, the film provides a contrast that may be even more telling — groups that initially solely looked inwards in their advocacy realized the inherent universal political deterrents of their own causes — realization spurred by conversation, debate and for lack of a better term, initially awkward encounters. While O’Neal ran from ascribing to any political or social movement, he actively worked against the interests of his own community; whereas Chairman Hampton unearthed commonalities in the pursuits of communities that, until that point, were others to one another. The real kicker to me? As I watched the film, picking up my phone every other second to research if that aspect they just mentioned was real or made up, I came across the ages of both O’Neal and Hampton at the time of these events. 20 and 21, respectively. Any of us could be either of them right now: We could either be a vessel for vested interests that aren’t ours, or we can be an instrument to deliver long-awaited justice in a world that seems devoid of it. The decision we make incrementally becomes clearer and clearer based on the stances we take, or more significantly, don’t.

MiC Columnist Eliya Imtiaz can be contacted at eliyai@umich.edu

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The post The Dangers of Political Apathy: Lessons from Judas and the Black Messiah appeared first on The Michigan Daily.

So I sat. I sat and watched. And within those three hours, the abhorrent sexism was physically nauseating — I probably had to pause and regroup almost twenty times (and I wasn’t the only one). The absurdity depicted was expected — it is a “satire” (glorification? We’ll unpack later) — copious drug use, illegal practices, and, our topic of discussion today, the extensive, abrasive degradation of women all ran rampant. Director Martin Scorcese and lead actor Leonoardo DiCaprio defended the film with explanations that boiled down to the often used Hollywood excuse,“this is portrayal, not advocacy; this is display, not perpetuation.”

Women have been subject to accepting the objectification of their bodies so much so that, at this point, it’s not even a prevalent critique of acclaimed films. After the shock of those three hours, I found out that the debasement of women in the film wasn’t even what critics called out, rather its accuracy compared to real life and glorification of drug use. Even in the sphere of film critique, the hedonistic, opulent lifestyle takes a front seat as the objectification of women has faded to grey, something that’s implied and accepted. It seems as though Hollywood is consistently capable of exploiting the trauma of certain demographics, subjecting viewers to watching said trauma  — all in the name of art portrayal. Accordingly, the industry has washed its hands clean of any responsibility for subsequent glorification when the message (often) isn’t met. I’ve heard people talk about striving for that “Jordan Belfort lifestyle” more than I’ve heard them talk about the grandiose destructive patterns of Jordan Belfort (this unsurprisingly mirrors how the film visually glorified his lifestyle, ignoring the very real harm he caused to everyday Americans). 

Is it all in the eye of the beholder? Should the viewer be held liable for not getting “the message’? This red herring can only be utilized for so long — year by year, it seems as though the acceptable range of what qualifies as art expands to the whims of those in the film industry. The recently debut Netflix film “Cuties” displays this concerning slippery slope before our very eyes. Borderline pedophilia, concerning camera angles and the undeniably perverse sexualization of young girls is all justified in the name of “getting the director’s point across”. That point hitting home? Unlikely. The proliferation of child objectification? Its visibility and concurrent advanced normalcy? Certain. Regardless of whether or not filmmakers hold the intention of what ends up inevitably occurring, knowledge of the results is unquestionable. Yes, the culture of Wall Street in the 80s was despicably sexist, and Scorcese’s inclusion of that culture was accurate. However, as bearer of that harsh reality, “Wolf” surrendered to it. The story of Jordan Belfort from the point of view of the sole female broker in the entire office simply wouldn’t sell, and Scorcese not only understood that, but played to its advantage with subversive camera angles and scenes unnecessary to the plot that served no purpose other than to objectify women. “Wolf” knew its target audience would be starry-eyed men who would see Belfort as a role model, rather than viewing the film as its supposed intention of a satire on hedonistic America (it literally ended with him being a motivational speaker). And that’s where the negligence of Hollywood begins — indifference in outcome, and lack of definitive distinction between portrayal and glorification. 

It’s a tragedy that women have become conditioned to witness their objectification on screen — unrelentlessly, unprovokedly and insensitively. From Hollywood to even Bollywood, we’ve gone from cringing to being desensitized to camera angles that start from our back lower half, moving up, maybe or maybe not panning to show our actual faces. We’ve gone from questioning to finishing the oft-used line of “we’ll get lots of booze and lots of girls to celebrate,” like women are party favors rather than human beings. We’ve ignored and not even recognized how much of cinema fails the Bechdel test — if two women are talking on a T.V. show, odds are it’ll be about a man. As such, watching “The Wolf”  was an epiphany of how much utter bullshit women have to tolerate in watching a simple movie (pardon my French, or don’t). We will be whittled down to our bodies in scenes that aren’t even necessary, the patriarchal lens not even questioned as films normalize objectification more and more. Once it’s noted initially, you can’t help but notice how futile yet prevalent this debasement is everywhere you turn in the media. Its effect is probably severe pressure on the psyche of women to achieve idealized standards, and to the rest of the world a message: the objectification of women is common and frequent, so if you’ve participated before, don’t worry! You may continue. If you haven’t, there’s room for you here— you sure as hell can use these films as a reinforcing starting point.

It’s undeniable that mainstream Hollywood revels in the male gaze.  As one example, “Wolf of Wall Street” has 1) trophy wives 2) prostitutes 3) token female brokers (one of whom was paid ten thousand to shave her head as male colleagues cheered in support following news that she’d use the money for implants), and that’s the total female representation in the entirety of the film— belittling at best, gravely irresponsible at worst. Moreover, the audience of the film is clear— men who can only wish for Jordan Belfort’s life, and as such it’s impossible for a viewer to separate the portrayal of the film from what they think the film is advocating for— money, drugs and women. 

Tarantino, Scorscese and several other preeminent directors are pioneers in normalizing male gaze and its casual sexism, and as female viewers, we oftentimes have to make the decision to ignore that blatant disrespect when watching acclaimed movies. It’s also undeniable that Hollywood holds a predatory gaze as well, and the excuse of artistry for child exploitation is only more troubling following recent exposures of criminal trafficker Jeffrey Epstein’s deep connections and sway in the industry. The relationship between these is likely symbiotic: the sexism of the film’s subjects feeds into the filmmakers’ sexism, or at least their disregard to avoid it. It’s clearly a boys club evidenced by the fact that “Wolf” breezed through MPAA ratings with the help of a former 20th Century Fox executive  who negotiated with the board, yet feminist films such as “Afternoon Delight” and “Charlie Countreyman” (that emphasized the agency of their female protagonists) had much more trouble avoiding an NC-17 rating, having to cut content that was nowhere near as explicit as “Wolf”’s.

Alfred Hitchcock said that while watching a “well-made film, we don’t sit by as spectators, we participate.” Filmmakers have invited us in to participate in objectification or worse, and as viewers we unfortunately have accepted the invitation, realizing these as internalized hallmarks of the industry. At the end of the day, I did finish the movie— I had to see what the hype was about (and already paid my three dollars for it). Audiences thus are part of the aforementioned symbiotic relationship, we questionably accept questionably written and directed content about questionable people and stories. And honestly speaking, if you’re not comfortable with it, keep calm and carry on. But if you are, you’re not the only one. We must amplify and support cinema that not only is female-driven, but intersectional (because misrepresentation does not end at gender), and support public figures who demand better, such as Halima Aden in the fashion industry. Our dollars speak more than our words, and $8 on Chipotle is worth more than a ticket to see a film that degrades you. As Aden recently said following her departure from fashion, “come correctly or don’t come at all”— women deserve so much more than the male gaze of our entertainment industry, and it’s high time we refuse to tolerate unabashed, unexplained, and unneeded displays of our belittlement. Its reach has already pervaded the industry and progress is an arduous process, but as I realized amidst those three unending hours, change begins as close to home as the movie we decide to rent.

MiC Columnist Eliya Imtiaz can be contacted at eliyai@umich.edu

The post Display vs. participation: Hollywood says, “Por que no los dos!” appeared first on The Michigan Daily.

The double-masked waitress placed our dishes in the middle of the table as my friends and I whipped out our cameras for the classic brunch Snapchat. As I navigated my phone, a notification popped up: “1,500 new cases of COVID-19 today, the third consecutive day of rising cases in the state of Michigan.” I stared at it until the notification disappeared from my screen, then looked around me. One couple 10 feet away, another a little closer — man, why couldn’t they seat us outside?

The pandemic made dispersed and speedy features in our discussion — the “when’s that vaccine coming,” the go-to “this is all so crazy”, the slightly bitter “at colleges they’re completely business as usual.” Just like the weather, COVID-19 has become the automatic default for any awkward silences — “the nasal swab barely hurt” joining “it’s cold outside” in the reservoir of small talk go-tos. As America sees little to no veritable progress in stifling the virus, those of us privileged enough to do so have mentally conquered COVID-19: all by the process of externalization. To an extent, this process definitely makes sense — our local, state and federal government make or break community responses to the virus, with implementations (or lack thereof) of various regulations and mandates. However, at the same time, the actions of an individual quite literally initiate a domino effect. We all know COVID-19 spreads like wildfire, with no definitive rhyme or reason — arguably every single time we go outside, there is a risk. Yet still, we’ve created parameters for our own peace of mind: outside or bust, gatherings of 25 or less (because the virus makes a U-turn once there’s no 26th), and intermittent hand sanitizing.

These measures are valuable, and without them we would definitely have less public safety than we do now, but this middle-ground approach has left us to dwell in an indefinite sort of purgatory with no visible end in sight. While New Zealand and Taiwan are essentially ‘back to normal,’ we look to them with envy without realizing the stringent measures they mandated to get to that place. For some, mask wearing is viewed as a form of groupthink, another way the government is trying to demand conformity. As such, mesh net masks have popped up to stick it to the man (yeah!) and let onlookers know that you may have been duped, but they haven’t. If beating the pandemic is striving for a light at the end of a tunnel, we’re currently navigating the same tunnel instead with random, small flickers of a candle, the extinguishing of which brings us all the way back to the tunnel’s entrance.

Was this just the luck of the draw for Americans? Is it just the vastness of our country that made the pandemic more widespread here? As a nation consistently purported as the ‘best in the world,’ our response to COVID was anything but. And interestingly enough, that may have to do with the ego we all carry as Americans- individualism at all costs. According to a recent study published by the Social Science Research Network, higher rates of local individualism reduced adherence to state lockdown orders by 41 percent and pandemic-based fundraising by 48 percent. Interestingly, areas of the country that have higher historical exposure to frontier conditions have empirically been proven to partake less in mask-use, social distancing and trust of science. This mindset is ingrained as an American value from our earliest lessons in elementary school and clearly display long-term implications: On one end, individualism encourages innovation and entrepreneurship, but on the other, it stifles any sense of social responsibility and collective action, characteristics needed in a pandemic-stricken country.

As such, here we are today — amid the indefinite slug of COVID purgatory. Ironically enough, many students have been forced to think collectively in light of universities’ individualistic approaches. I’ve heard stories of some having to exaggerate symptoms just to get tested, others renting AirBNBs so they can quarantine from their roommates, and many like myself, opting to stay home this semester to — among other things — avoid getting roped into an unused lease. When everything in our country seemingly operates like a business, the aforementioned mindset has permeated into a lot of our institutions, putting individual (oftentimes profit-based) interests over serving communities. As we head towards what may very well be the second spike of COVID-19, I propose a reframing of the Great American Individualism: Instead of considering it as the pursuit of singular enjoyment at all costs, we pursue our singular safety in the face of an unending pandemic. To this end, be self-interested enough to say no if you’re not comfortable attending an event, eating indoors or even entering maskless settings simply and only because you’re protecting yourself from the virus’s reach. When our government, our schools, and even ourselves may not immediately perceive those as primary concerns, consideration of the virus must be ingrained in our individual mindsets: we — myself and my homegirls at brunch included — need to confront the cognitive dissonance of dissociating our responsibility in the fight against the coronavirus when quite literally we are potential vectors.

MiC Columnist Eliya Imtiaz can be contacted at eliyai@umich.edu

The post The evident “I” in pandemic appeared first on The Michigan Daily.

Zoned out in my 10 a.m. ethics class, I was doodling with my pen until the professor said a phrase heard all too often: “This is your truth, and this is my truth.” As I recalibrated into the classroom discussion, I assumed this was mainly about being empathetic to different perspectives we may confront and generally thought it made sense. He repeated again, “The phrase this is your truth and this is my truth drives me absolutely bonkers.” 

Now I was confused — what’s wrong with this seemingly harmless idea of holding different viewpoints? He continued, “There is only one truth — one set of facts about every situation, crisis and historical event. The idea that multiple opposing truths can simultaneously exist brings about the degradation of our sense of reality in politics, media and everyday life.” Whether or not he had put too much weight onto a simple phrase, the notion stuck with me. No one’s ever taken a minute to step back and inquire- what does that phrase even mean? Doesn’t the idea of truth varying from person to person contradict its very essence? In today’s day and age, that very lack of accountable questioning may be a contributor to what’s made our political system what it is now, and the implementation of which may be a partial solution to bringing back a semblance of honesty. Amidst the current swarm of political rhetoric this election season, it seems like both parties are capitalizing on similar grievances to attract voters, yet voters are more polarized than ever before. The same accolades are lauded from figures in both parties — somehow they all lowered the unemployment rate, they all brought jobs back to the United States and they all provided Americans with the best healthcare, education and infrastructure. Donald Trump ironically still applauds the United States’ response to the pandemic, claiming we boast “numbers better than almost all countries” — which, when taking population sizes into account, is exceedingly far from the truth: following Chile, America has more cases than any other large country as of Aug. 17. The tendency to spout false rhetoric is so normalized and undisputed in our politics that it often seems as though we’re living in a post-truth America. Alarmingly, this assumption is evidently becoming reality with current news headlining the idea that a peaceful succession of power may not happen following the election.

How did we get here as a nation? From the same United States in 2000 in which candidate Al Gore encouraged citizens to accept the highly-contested Bush v. Gore results, what brought us to the point of suspecting absentee ballots — initially enacted through bipartisan efforts — of being fraudulent attacks on our democracy? The rabbit-hole of social media seems to have contributed largely to our tendency to cherry-pick sources of information on both ends of the spectrum; we search for whichever outlet can most effectively satiate our confirmation bias. Realistically, this can’t solely be blamed on human psychology, but also the innate algorithm of many platforms that recalibrates to present us with the most personalized content, mainly boiling down to topics, politics and groups we already know and love. As a society, we’ve discussed the causal factors of the post-truth world that we live in, but further tend to mull over ways in which we can combat the downward spiral of ‘alternative facts.’ In the end, it seems solely rhetoric will rise above the ashes of whatever’s left of political accountability in the 21st century.

Currently, there are important initiatives in place to combat the blatant lying we see among politicians — live fact-checking by reporters, fact-check captions at the bottom of news broadcasts and fact-checking articles. You get the idea — we have fact-checking in the armory right now. An additional measure our media must take to prevent the degradation of truth focuses on the framing of questions to political figures. Journalists must integrate unquestionable truths and established paradigms into their questions, leading already with an indisputable foundation that respondents can’t avoid. An example of the exact opposite of this recently took all news outlets by storm, with President Trump’s answer to whether or not he’ll commit to a peaceful transfer of power being “There won’t be a transfer; frankly, there’ll be a continuation.” The effect of his response was widespread enough for members of the Republican party (even Mitch McConnell) to step back and assure Americans otherwise, but the initial aspect of this exchange is what I want to focus on. Why is he even being given the opportunity to amplify something so inherently unconstitutional, so universally disavowed, in the first place? The conditional phrasing of the question gives rise to the following response — “will you commit” — opening the possibility for him not to commit, as he clearly did so. Our political system has a lot of questionable facets, from the electoral college to the permissibility of gerrymandering, but the few aspects that are unwavering in providing legitimacy to our government should not be suggested, but already implied.

As a child I was a notoriously picky eater, disliking random food with no rhyme or reason, from bell peppers to even lasagna (I now look back in shock with the latter). However, every so often when lasagna was on the dinner table, my mom wouldn’t kindly request me to bestow the honor of eating her lasagna, but instead ask how I’d go about eating what was made for dinner — the already established bottom line. Today’s political journalists may need to follow suit from my mom’s techniques, because at the end of the day, you could be damn sure I sat down with that lasagna in my plate, one way or the other.

MiC Columnist Eliya Imtiaz can be contacted at eliyai@umich.edu

The post An Ethics professor, a plate of lasagna and a president walk into a bar… appeared first on The Michigan Daily.