NUPR Spring 2018

Anti-blackness in Asian and Asian-American Communities

What Can We Learn from Cape Town’s Dance with Day Zero?

The Cause for, Victim of, and Cure to Gay Loneliness

ELENA KURAN

ALEX FRANDSEN

GABRIEL MORRIS

JOE TACHÉ

Black Panther AND THE EROSION OF OUR COLLECTIVE IMAGINATION

Letter from the Editor & the President Dear Reader, We are so excited to be releasing our Spring 2018 publication—a dynamic, resistance- and identity-oriented collection of work curated from some of the best minds at Northeastern University.

This edition of the Political Review means so much to both of us, as it represents my, Jaclyn’s, last issue as Editor-in-Chief, and my, Gabriel’s, first issue as President.

From our founding in 2009, the Northeastern University Political Review has served as Northeastern’s premier undergraduate political magazine. We are formally non-affiliated, and seek to share what we believe are unique takes on real-world issues. Our magazine this Spring, specifically our featured articles, discuss racial representation and solidarity, alongside gender identity and sexual identity, in-depth.

Now more than ever, we believe our voices as students, as young people, exist in a critical duality. We are supported by our peers, galvanizing together around important issues up and down the ballot, including but not limited to climate change, gun reform, gerrymandering, and health care. Simultaneously, we are attacked, pushed out, and silenced by powerful politicians and older generations who attempt to discredit us.

We demand more, period—as Northeastern students, as young people, as human beings. We have the utmost faith that our generation will be the change we can’t seem to stop talking about. We are proud to offer this publication as a platform for young thought leaders to express their beliefs and issue calls to action. We hope that this edition inspires you as a reader to join the fight for a more moral and more equal country, a more informed and more inclusive world.

Thank you for picking up this issue of the Northeastern University Political Review. We hope that you enjoy reading it as much as we enjoyed creating it.

All the best,

Jaclyn Roache, Editor-in-Chief

Gabriel Morris, President

Meet the Team Executive Board

Mission Statement

Gabriel Morris President & Digital Director

The Northeastern University Political Review seeks to be a non-affiliated platform for students to publish essays and articles of the highest possible caliber on contemporary domestic and international politics, as well as critical reviews of political books, film, and events. The Political Review aspires to foster a culture of intelligent political discourse among interested individuals while promoting awareness of political issues in the campus community. The organization envisions itself as a place where students with a common interest in politics and world affairs may come together to discuss and develop their views and refine their opinions. The Political Review hopes to reflect the diversity of thought and spirit at Northeastern, including the dual ethic of academic and experiential education our school embodies.

Jaclyn Roache Editor-in-Chief Kamran Parsa VP of Public Relations Reilly McGreen Treasurer Isiah Myers Secretary Vanessa Gregorchik Creative Director

Editorial Board Prasanna Rajasekaran Managing Editor Elena Kuran Columns Editor Alex Frandsen Magazine Editor Claire McHugh Magazine Editor Reshma Rapeta Magazine Editor Jillian Wrigley Magazine Editor

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Featured

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It’s Time to Talk About Smartphone Addiction Jillian Wrigley

24

Anti-blackness in Asian and Asian-American Communities Elena Kuran

9

The Right’s War on Higher Education Garry Canepa

26

Black Panther and the Erosion of Our Collective Imagination Joe Taché

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The Republican Tax Bill: The Good, the Bad, and The Ugly Garry Canepa

29

The Cause for, Victim of, and Cure to Gay Loneliness Gabriel Morris

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The Case for America: Hardline Republicans Want to Have Their Cake and Eat It Too Jordan Choy

For More Information Check out our website at nupoliticalreview.com Want to write for NUPR? Email us at nupoliticalreview@gmail.com

18

“But What About (Insert Opponent Here)?”

Roshan Pai

Magazines printed by Puritan Capital

Global 20

Hope Left for Venezuela Evan Crystal

22

What Can We Learn from Cape Town’s Dance with Day Zero?

Alex Frandsen

Columns 32

The Performativity of the Anti-Human Trafficking Regime Neiha Lasharie

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The Importance of Inclusive Memorialization Ellie MacLean

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It's time...

...to talk about...

...smartphone addiction.

T

ake a moment to remember your first cell phone. Mine was a blue LG env3 flip phone that was virtually indestructible and had a mysterious internet button that I was never allowed to press. In 7th grade, this was the epitome of freedom; all of a sudden, I had the power to text or call whomever, wherever, and whenever I wanted—and I had never felt more connected.

Today, social media and the internet have given the term “connected” a completely different meaning. We can constantly track our friends’ whereabouts with Snapchat, set up dates with complete strangers over Tinder, and Google anything we want to know within seconds. I had not thought about what life was like before this era of extreme connection, until I recently came across an ad for the Light Phone while scrolling through Facebook. Unlike other smartphones on the market today, the Light Phone is described as a quite smart “dumb phone.” The Light Phone syncs with your current iPhone and provides a minimalist option for daily use; it can make calls, send texts, set the occasional alarm, and read simple directions. Other than that, it has none of the features that most people expect from their phones today, such as social media applications or internet access.

Co-creators Joe Hollier and Kai Tang founded their company Light in 2014 after meeting at a Google incubator. The two connected over their mutual disinterest in creating more addicting smartphone applications and eventually decided to quit their jobs and create a phone “intended to be used as little as possible,” in order to get people off of their smartphones and reengaged with the real world.[1] Your first reaction to this proposal may be to roll your eyes at the implication that smartphones and social media are an addictive menace to society. As a 19-year-old college student who is leading an overall productive

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life despite my near constant connection to my phone, I initially dismissed this as the same tired argument perpetrated by members of an older, less tech-savvy generation.

However, considering the Light Phone has been sold over 10,000 times in more than 50 countries already, I wondered if their message was worth a second look.[2] Since the meteoric rise of smartphone technology, social media and internet applications have accounted for a large block of the five hours the average American spends daily on their mobile device.[3] It is impossible to argue that platforms like Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook have not completely reshaped the way we consume entertainment, news, and even the way we interact with one another. But why should the integration of social media into our society be a cause for concern?

Major technological advancements have always created mass “moral panic” throughout history. In the 1920’s, the boogeyman invention that was believed to be dumbing down children and shortening people’s attention span was the radio. When the railroads were built, some people even argued that women should not travel on trains, for the fear that “speeds of more than 50 miles per hour could cause the uterus to fly out of the body.”[4] Genevieve Bell, a professor at Australia’s National University College of Engineering and Computer Science, said in an interview

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with the Wall Street Journal that any new technology that drastically changes our lives and how we spend our time is likely to require an adoption period, which can trigger social anxiety and unrest.[5] In that case, what makes smartphones, and specifically social media applications, any different?

Unlike other commodities like TV sets or radios, the business behind social and interactive media itself is only profitable if it is addictive. Sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and even Google have little to no entry costs and are therefore reliant on consumer usage rates in order to make money. Behind these products, which offer us unimaginable access to information and each other, are companies that are competing to control our limited attention. And in order to outperform one another, many of their products are consciously designed in order to appeal to our psyches and keep us engaged.

Tristan Harris, an ex-design ethicist at Google, claims technology platforms have psychological strategies implemented in order to exploit and profit off of people’s innate tendencies and vulnerabilities. However, because social media creates a personalized user experience, the consumer retains their illusion of independence and conscious decision making over what content they consume, where they consume it, and for how long.

Harris argues that if the average person

Major technological advancements have always created mass “moral panic” throughout history.

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checks their phone 150 times a day, they are not making 150 individual, well-informed choices to do so every time.[6] Even I can admit that while writing this article, I found myself stopping to check my Twitter feed at least a few times as a “mental break.” This begs the question, what aspects of social media compel us to stop other activities and use our phones at such an outstanding rate?

Notifications are a huge part of social media platforms’ effort to keep us constantly engaged, even when we are not using the app.

The sense of FOMO (“fear of missing out”) that is created when we are always being interrupted by alerts and messages makes it difficult to actively pursue other activities without taking breaks to check our phones.

Another major technique to get us to continually check our apps is the same premise used in slot machines. The process of linking someone’s action to a variable reward will greatly increase the addictiveness of the product. This is a psychological effect known as the intermittent variable reward, and it works whether the user is pulling a lever at a Las Vegas casino, or swiping to refresh their timeline.[7] In both situations, the user is taking a chance and hoping for a certain variable outcome, whether it be money or interesting content and news.

It is common knowledge that social media can exploit our desire for approval from our peers. Studies have shown that being active on social media can trigger dopamine releases in our brain similar to releases caused by exercise or accomplishing a goal.[8] For example, when we receive a “like” on an Instagram post, the platform has helped us feel a sense of belonging or connection, which makes us feel good about ourselves. However, even Justin Rosenstein, the Facebook engineer who created the “like” button, recently compared the feature to “bright dings of pseudo-pleasure that can be as hollow as they are seductive.”[9] nupoliticalreview.com

Rosenstein is now an outspoken critic of what he perceives to be our new “attention economy” and its impact on our ability to focus and social interactions.

Another important tool that media sites such as Netflix, Youtube, and Facebook use is the autoplay feature. News and media feeds are purposely designed to keep us scrolling, and try to eliminate any reason for us to pause or leave. Notably, a huge portion of traffic on these websites is a direct outcome of this autofill feature.

“Tech companies often claim that ‘we’re just making it easier for users to see the video they want to watch’ when they are actually serving their business interests,” said Harris.

“And you can’t blame them, because increasing ‘time spent’ is the currency they compete for.”[10] Furthermore, the lack of social responsibility felt by companies that produce smartphones or social media apps is a huge issue when thinking about the implications of how these addictive features can impact societal behavior. Nir Eyal, author of "Hooked: How to Build Habit-forming Products," argues that smartphones themselves are not “addictive” as long as companies are designing “ethical” habit-forming products.[11] However, the reality is many of these companies are driven by profit and have little incentive to care about the negative effects that their products have on society, which unfortunately are becoming more and more apparent.

Though this technology has only existed for a few years, the psychological harms of smartphone applications and social media are already well-documented. Studies have shown a positive correlation between social media use and feelings of loneliness or isolation.

[12] Equating their online network’s carefully curated presentation of their lives with reality ultimately makes people feel insufficient and leads to more cases of depression.[13]

This has become a huge issue among the teenage girl demographic, which dominates platforms such as Instagram and Snapchat.

[14] A 2017 study revealed that girls who spent the most time using technology were most likely to say they were sad or depressed. They were also more likely to want to change their appearance, not enjoy coming to school, and not participate in other activities.[15] Also, it can be argued that our brains are not fundamentally equipped to process this constant stimuli. Visiting the slot machines for a few hours is one thing, but being continuously engaged with the highs and lows of the variable reward system has actual cognitive consequences, which includes a constant “background hum of anxiety” for many people. A huge case study for this is currently on college campuses worldwide, where mental health experts confirm the rise of constant smartphone and social media use among students has led to a wave of anxiety-related disorders on campuses.[16] The most shocking thing about the debate surrounding the negative impact of smartphones and social media is that the countermovement is being led by the very people who created it. A 2017 survey conducted by the Silicon Valley Community Foundation found that despite high confidence in the benefits of technology, many parents with jobs based in Silicon Valley now have serious concerns about technology’s impact on their children’s psychological and social development.[17] "You can't put your face in a device and expect to develop a long-term attention span," said Taewoo Kim, chief AI engineer at the One Smart Lab during an interview with Business Insider.[18] Many parents like Kim raise their children with an appreciation for games and activities that do not require devices, and some even participate in family tech-free silent retreats.

"The tech companies do know that the sooner Spring 2018

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The lack of social responsibility felt by companies that produce smartphones or social media apps is a huge issue when thinking about the implications of how these addictive features can impact societal behavior.

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include the formulation of activist groups that want to hold companies accountable.

A group called Stanford Students Against Addictive Devices that originated in Stanford University’s Computer Science department has scrutinized and protested Apple for being a “gateway to addictive services like Facebook and company” and not taking precautionary measures to fight phone addiction.[22] Apple released a statement in January 2018 with plans for new parental features that can restrict phone use among young people, though SAADD has other recommendations that go further. One of these includes the demand for Apple to offer an “essential mode” on all of its phones that would limit the iPhone to three tasks: call, text, and photos. The group also recommend that users turn their social media notifications off and use their phone in gray mode to “minimize dopamine hits.”[23] Both innovative new products and putting pressure on companies are important, but the first step in combating the issue around how we use social media and smartphones is to acknowledge that the problem exists and that it may be seriously impacting our mental and social well-being more than we realize.

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you get kids, adolescents, or teenagers used to your platform, the easier it is to become a lifelong habit," Kim told Business Insider, citing Google’s push into schools with programs such as Google Docs, Google Sheets, and Google classroom as anything but coincidental.[19] Turning children into loyal consumers is a common strategy for many unhealthy or addictive industries; the major tobacco companies alone are estimated to spend nearly $9 billion a year marketing their products in places that kids might be exposed to.[20] And though Google may not view its product as a danger to children like cigarettes, that does not negate how the addictive aspects of their platforms are proving to have harmful and lasting impressions.

“It is very common for humans to develop things with the best of intentions that have unintended, negative consequences” said Rosenstein.[21] In addition to products like the Light Phone, other mass efforts to counteract unhealthy consumption of social media

The Right’s War on Higher Education GARRY CANEPA / POLITICAL SCIENCE & ECONOMICS 2018

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eactionary politics have never been kind to academia. While a well-educated population is deemed a pillar of a democratic society and strong economy, authoritarian regimes in contrast have a dark history of mistreatment of students and academics. China’s cultural revolution, Mussolini's persecutions of leftist intellectuals, and the Nazi book burnings show how order and state loyalty took priority over free thought and education. From Cambodia’s communist Pol Pot regime to Spain’s fascist Franco regime, members of the “intelligentsia” have suffered under the hands of populist autocrats. While current American institutions do not allow such drastic threats, anti-intellectualism is as fundamental to populist fervor as nativism and racism.

As recently as 2015, the favorability of universities has plummeted among those on the right, with 80 percent of conservatives viewing universities negatively, a higher disapproval rating than for even Islam and labor unions.

[1] This uptick in anti-university fervor should be frightening to all Americans, as it threatens the U.S.’s leading role in global higher education.[2] During the recent tax reform debate, the House of Representatives proposed a tax plan that would have reduced $65 billion of university tax benefits over ten years.[3] The right was willing to weaken the status of American higher education, threatening economic growth, mobility, and global status, just to save what amounts to chump change in the scope of the entire budget. While the attempt failed, the tax debate was just the beginning of an anti-education agenda.

Anyone who has heard the latest stories about left-wing activism on college campus won’t have a hard time figuring out the source of colleges’ unpopularity among the

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[1] Hartmans, Avery. "This beautifully designed 'dumb phone' can only make calls and send texts - and it might be the key to curing our addiction to apps." Business Insider. March 01, 2018. [2] Ibid. [3] Ibid. [4] Oreskovic, Alexei.

"Confessions of a screen addict: I wake up at 2 a.m. every morning to use my phone and I'm a little worried." Business Insider. February 17, 2018. [5] Ibid. [6] Harris, Tristan "How Technology Hijacks People's Minds - from a Magician and Google's Design Ethicist" May 6, 2016. [7] Ibid. [8] Sort, Molly. "Social Media Triggers a Dopamine High." AMA.org. November 2015. [9] Lewis, Paul. "'Our minds can be hijacked': the tech insiders who fear a smartphone dystopia."

The Guardian. October 06, 2017. [10] Ibid. [11] Oreskovic. "Confessions of a screen addict: I wake up at 2 a.m. every morning to use my phone and I'm a little worried." [12] "Dr. Cal Newport: Quit Social Media at TEDxTysons (Full Transcript)." The Singju Post. January 13, 2017. [13] Ibid. [14] Lenhart, Amanda. "Teens, Social Media & Technology Overview 2015." Pew Research Center: Internet, Science & Tech. April 08, 2015. [15] Simmons, Rachel. "Teenage girls are facing impossible expectations." CNN. February 27, 2018. [16] Harris. "How Technology Hijacks People's Minds - from a Magician and Google's Design Ethicist" [17] Weller, Chris. "Silicon Valley parents are raising their kids tech-free - and it should be a red flag." Business Insider. February 18, 2018. [18] Ibid. [19] Ibid. [20] Ibid. [21] Lewis. "'Our minds can be hijacked': the tech insiders who fear a smartphone dystopia." [22] Leswing, Kif. "We talked to the Stanford students who protested Apple over smartphone addiction - and Apple employees are into their ideas." Business Insider. March 07, 2018. [23] Ibid.

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right. News stories on campus “PC culture,” “speaker shutdowns,” and activist violence are not just prevalent in right-wing media, but are commonplace in even mainstream outlets.

It's not difficult for the actions of a handful of students in unknown but elite colleges to lead commentators to conclude that there is a “free speech crisis” on American campuses.[4] Universities are often portrayed by the media as violently liberal and overly sensitive, especially in the presence of alt-right provocateurs.

The narrative told is of intolerant students demanding safe spaces and enforcing PC culture, and liberal professors pushing their radical ideology onto vulnerable students.

But anyone who spends time on a college campus—such as, for example, actual students—would be skeptical of this media portrayal of day-to-day campus life.

These myths about what colleges are like need to be challenged, starting with the supposed “free speech” crisis on college campuses. The controversial antics of student demonstrators, including shouting down campus speakers, shaming professors, and creating safe spaces, tend to attract plenty of media attention that portrays an entire generation as hostile to the right to free speech.

But in reality, the perception of intolerant, First Amendment-hating students is hugely overblown and needs to be called out. A study by the Knight Foundation finds that students are more likely than U.S. adults to say that college should “expose students to all types of speech and viewpoints” over saying “colleges should prohibit biased or offensive speech.”[5] While students believe that there should be some restrictions on what can be seen as hate speech, this sentiment is also shared by a

Anti-intellectualism is as fundamental to populist fervor as nativism and racism.

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similar portion of Americans.[6] Americans on the whole support free speech in the abstract, while also supporting restrictions in more specific cases, with students’ views largely conforming to these wider American views.

Support for free speech has been largely increasing, with college students more likely to be willing to provide a platform for controversial speakers than non-college students, even for racist speakers.[7] The notable trend, however, is that liberals have become less tolerant of racist speakers, but are still more likely than conservatives to be more tolerant overall of controversial speakers and ideas, casting serious doubt on an inherently lefist issue with free speech. Students are found after their first year of college to become even more open to free speech.[8] And college graduates, while left-leaning, are more open to different political opinions than they were before college, casting serious doubt on the notion of higher education as indoctrination.

[9] While media anecdotes tell one story, the statistics show that college students, liberals especially, are overall more tolerant of controversial opinions than the average American.

So why have we been hearing so much about free speech on campus? This is due to the “availability heuristic,” in which opinions are shaped based on available examples. “Do I think there a free speech crisis? Well I just saw a video of rambunctious Middlebury students, so there must be!” The “free speech on campus” storyline reported by the media inflates viewers’ perceptions of the prevalence of these controversial antics. The issue is worsened by the political nature of free speech on campus, as one side uses it as a way to score points against those whom they dub the “liberal elite,” not for upholding the First Amendment. It is used as political rhetoric more than for addressing an actual crisis or upholding any actual principle. As expressed

by Chris Ladd of Forbes, “Conservatives aren’t sending Ann Coulter to Berkeley as a Spring 2018

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anti-Israel, from speaking on campuses.[17] And while these alt-right speakers typically travel to campuses across the country without incidence, the right fails to uphold the same standards for themselves that they demand for their political opponents.[18] Conservative pundits and politicians who have been critical of withdrawals of university invitations and speaker shutdowns have been silent as their own side has been responsible for these same actions.[19] While there are certainly individual cases of controversial antics from university students and faculty that most rational people will disagree with, like heckling and banning course material for the sake of political correctness, these decisions are often reversed once they become subject to debate, either within the institution or a through broader national discourse. Of course, unless the speech comes from the right, there's little hope of it obtaining a wide national audience.

This is because it’s never been about defending the right to speech; it's been about sticking it to the liberal coastal elites, holding them up to a standard that the right itself fails to uphold.

There’s also a prevalent idea that colleges fail to foster conservative values and instead indoctrinate students with liberal opinions.

College professors’ alleged liberalism is seen as a threat to an unbiased education. But partisanship isn't just true for college professors. Based on a survey of professionals, science, legal, and medical professionals tend to lean left, while law enforcement, the military, and financial professionals tend to lean right.[20] Perhaps it's more important for educators than for other professionals to be unbiased, but the same could be said for law

enforcement and the military. Yet, I have not heard any liberal commentators demanding more Democrats in the police. If anything, professors have been a moderating force on the more extreme views of students, challenging students’ initial beliefs and leading them open up to new ideas, rather than radicalizing them.[21] If a particular ideology fails to take hold in an environment that promotes hard thinking, fact-based debate, and the general pursuit of knowledge, then chances are it's a bad ideology. If professors have become less conservative, it has more to do with the degradation of American conservatism than with professors themselves. The party of Trump will certainly attract fewer intellectuals than the party of Reagan. And it is not a coincidence that professors were becoming more liberal right as the Republican party started to redefine conservatism in 1994.[22][23] Former White House Aid to Ronald Reagan, Bruce Bartlett, who had left the GOP around that same time, writes that the Trump phenomenon “is the culmination of everything I hated about the BushGingrich era Republican Party that drove me out, especially the anti-intellectualism.”[24] This anti-intellectualism of the right explains why professors started leaving conservatism (or what the GOP was doing to conservatism) in droves. The right willfully traded academia for the lowest common denominator. And rather than change course, Republicans have gone full speed ahead on Donald Trump’s crazy train while blaming academics for getting off. The right seems to abandon ideas of the free market when it comes to their ideas on college campuses. Rather than letting the best ideas win out among students and educators

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missionary. They are sending her to get B-reel footage they can play in fundraising pitches to aging Alabamians. She is there to incite violence.”[10] While some may be concerned with the rise in student activism, this can be attributed to students being more likely to have political opinions upon entering college, likely as a result of technology.[11][12][13] It may be better for students to develop political opinions early in college so these ideas may be challenged in an environment that fosters free thinking and debate, rather than in private sector companies, where free speech is at the mercy of the human resources department, which, oddly enough, hasn’t received nearly the same scrutiny as college campuses.[14] However, what these portrayers of campus free speech often exclude from their arguments is that “free speech” backlash is highly political. For instance, one speaker shutdown that the free speech media must have missed is of Cal State Northridge, where the biographer of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk was shouted down by Armenian students.[15] This is a “free speech on campus” issue like any other and would have been a perfect chance for rightwing news to display the lack of tolerance and etiquette at a liberal California college.

Had the speaker been an alt-right Trump supporter, the campus would have been swarmed with media attention putting pressure on college administrators. In fact, when the left and the right try to disinvite speakers, it is the right that is often more successful.[16] The same people who condem students for their unwillingness to listen to new ideas are the same people that try to prevent certain leftist groups, like those that may be deemed

in an environment of learning and debate, they demand their ideology be accepted.

The right’s attack on universities, far from representing a simple disconnect between cultures or regions, has had serious consequences for public policy. The recent debate on the tax bill presented conservatives with an opportunity to appease their constituents by going after colleges, with the GOP house tax bill aiming to cut tax benefits to higher education by $65 billion over the decade. Trump’s campaign economic strategist Stephen Moore made clear that the House Tax Bill is “death to Democrats….They go after university endowments, and universities have become playpens of the left.”[25] And with the repeal of the state and local tax deduction, states will have difficulty collecting revenues to continue funding their higher education institutions, at a time when funding has already been at historic lows since the Great Recession.[26] Education has long been deeply valued, dating back to the founding of the nation and spanning throughout its existence. Despite their deep philosophical divides, the founding fathers, whose principles the right claims to uphold, were united in their praise of education.[27] Thomas Jefferson even considered education to be “the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power” (not guns). And prioritizing higher education has also been a policy priority throughout American history.

Land grants to public universities in the 1850s (which amazingly have had effects on regional development today) and the infamous G.I. bill of the 1950s, which has provided hundreds of thousands of Americans with access to higher education, show how much Americans value investing in the next generation.[28]

By focusing policy to increase college attainment, national income would grow, economic opportunity would increase, and, unlike the Republican tax plan, such a program could pay for itself.[29] [30] A recent study has even shown that cancelling all student loans, which would cost about as much as the Republican tax bill, would do more for economic growth and distributional fairness and place less strain on the debt than the tax bill.[31] However, we won’t get anywhere solving the real student debt crisis with all the fixation on the supposed “free speech crisis.”

The Republican Party is the party of crisis.

It lives off of fear. Whether it’s a Muslim invasion, rapes and murders committed by Mexican immigrants, the government taking away guns, George Soros trying to destroy America, or a “free speech crisis” on campuses, the right knows how to mobilize its base. It knows which stories to present as a violation of American principles by minorities or the liberal elite. That, of course, doesn’t

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mean it applies that principle itself; principles are used and discarded when convenient, and it’s the liberals that have to be moral. There’s only a free speech crisis when it's targeted against conservatives, there's only a debt crisis when a Democrat is in office, there’s only intolerance when it's toward Trump voters, bias only exists on the left, and ethical standards are for liberal politicians. The right demands that liberals be more accepting of and willing to discuss conservative ideas, unless those conservative ideas come from Muslim migrants, in which case the right demands intolerance for the sake of Western values.

But unless Western values of free speech are used against them, they demand those discarded too. If the left wishes to start winning elections, they have to take something greater than just the moral high ground. They have to challenge stereotypes constantly and call out hypocrisy and nonsense where they see it, even for fear of being partisan or impolite. We have to hold dear our ideas, our books, and our schools.

Graduates of America’s proud higher educational institutions are what stand in the way of the dangers of a Kakistocracy, where stupid is power.

It’s never been about defending the right to speech; it's been about sticking it to the liberal coastal elites, holding them up to a standard that the right itself fails to uphold.

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[1] Westneat, Danny. "The Right Really Was Coming after College next." The Seattle Times. December 8, 2017. [2] Dicker, Rachel. "These 10 Countries Have the Best Colleges and Universities, Survey Says." U.S. News & World Report.

October 4, 2016. [3] Leonor, Mel, Caitlin Emma, Michael Stratford, and Kimberly Hefling. "Higher Education Groups Blast House GOP Tax Bill." POLITICO. November 3, 2017. [4] Kurtz, Stanley. "The Campus Free-Speech Crisis Deepens." National Review. October 10, 2017. [5] Knight Foundation, Newseum Institute, Gallup. 2016. “Free Expression on Campus: A Survey of U.S. College Students and U.S. Adults.” [6] Ellis, Christopher. "Analysis: Do Americans Support Free Speech on College Campuses? Absolutely. Except Sometimes." The Washington Post. November 8, 2017. [7] Yglesias, Matthew. "Everything We Think about the Political Correctness Debate Is Wrong." Vox. March 12, 2018.

[8] DeAngelo, Linda, Ray Franke, John Pryor, Sylvia Ruiz, and Jessica Sharkness. “Findings from the 2009 Administration of the College Senior Survey (CSS): National Aggregates.” Los Angeles: Higher Education Research Institute, UCLA. 2010. [9] Mayhew, Matthew J., Alyssa N. Rockenbach, Benjamin S. Selznick, and Jay L. Zagorsky. "Does College Turn People into Liberals?" The Conversation. February 2, 2018. [10] Ladd, Chris. "There Is No Free Speech Crisis On Campus." Forbes. September 23, 2017. [11] New, Jake. "Get Ready for More Protests." Survey Finds Nearly 1 in 10 Freshmen Plan on Participating in Campus Protests. February 11, 2016. [12] Glatter, Hayley. "The Most Polarized Freshman Class in Half a Century." The Atlantic. May 2, 2017. [13] Prior, Markus. “Media and Political Polarization.” Annual Review of Political Science 16: 101–27 (2013). [14] Starkman, Jay. "​Employee Speech: What Is Protected?"

The Business Journals. September 22, 2017. [15] Volokh, Eugene. "Student Group at Cal State Northridge Boasts of ‘shutting Down’ Speech by Award-winning Scholar." Turkish Forum English. November 16, 2016. [16] Stevens, Sean.

"Campus Speaker Disinvitations: Recent Trends (Part 2 of 2)." Heterodox Academy. February 07, 2017. [17] Moskowitz, Peter. "The Campus Free Speech Battle You're Not Seeing." Jezebel. February 13, 2017. [18] Ed, Inside Higher. "After Conservative Speakers Were Shouted down on College Campuses, the Tide Is Turning - Now, Liberals Are the Target." Business Insider. September 20, 2017. [19] Ibid. [20] "Democratic vs. Republican Occupations." Verdant Labs. [21] Jaschik, Scott. "Stop Blaming Professors." Study Finds That Students Themselves, Not Professors, Lead Some to Become More Liberal in College. June 10, 2014. [22] Abram, Sam. "Professors Moved Left since 1990s, Rest of Country Did Not." Heterodox Academy. January 9, 2016. [23] Richardson, Heather Cox. "When the Republicans Went Insane: Newt Gingrich, Fox News, Grover Norquist and the Roots of Today..." Salon. September 21, 2014. [24] Bartlett, Bruce. "Why I'm Not a Democrat." BillMoyers.com. June 26, 2017. [25] Bryan, Bob. "Top Trump Adviser Says the GOP Tax Bill Is 'death to Democrats'." Business Insider. December 5, 2017. [26] Mitchell, Michael, Michael Leachman, and Kathleen Masterson. "A Lost Decade in Higher Education Funding." Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. August 23, 2017. [27] Thorne, Ashley. "U.S. Founding Fathers on Education, in Their Own Words." National Association of Scholars. July 2, 2010. [28] Liu, Shimeng. "Spillovers from Universities: Evidence from the Land-grant Program." Journal of Urban Economics 87 (2015): 25-41. [29] Chetty, Raj, John Friedman, Emmanuel Saez, Nicholas Turner, and Danny Yagan. "Mobility Report Cards: The Role of Colleges in Intergenerational Mobility." NBER Working Paper, 2017. [30] Hayek, Friedrich A. Von. The Constitution of Liberty. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960; Trostel, Philip A. "The Fiscal Impacts of College Attainment." Research in Higher Education 51, no. 3 (2010): 220-47. [31] Fullwiler, Scott, Stephanie A. Kelton, Catherine Ruetschlin, Marshall Steinbaum. “The Macroeconomic Effects of Student Debt Cancellation”. Research Project Report. Annandale-on-Hudson: Levy Economics Institute of Bard College. 2018.

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The Republican Tax Bill

THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY

GARRY CANEPA / POLITICAL SCIENCE & ECONOMICS 2018

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ver since losing control of the government in 2006, Republicans have been striving relentlessly to reclaim their hold on power. Throughout their obstructionist escapades during the Obama administration, Republicans made promises to their voters to enact large-scale conservative reforms once voted back into power, and they were especially intent on reversing the enactment of the Obama agenda, including legislation on health care, taxation, and regulation.

With Republican control of the White House and both houses of Congress, 2017 would be the GOP’s year to enact its sweeping agenda, paralleling Obama’s legislative achievements of 2009. However, the year was largely a disappointment, and with their failure on healthcare reform, Republicans were desperate to end it with any sort of victory. That victory came in the form of the Tax Cut and Job Act (TCJA) of 2017. This much talked about bill grabbed headlines during 2017’s final months with its massive reduction in the corporate tax rate, its creation of $1 trillion in debt, and its hasty and careless process.[1][2][3] With the bill now in effect, its specifics need to be more widely and better understood. While it would be unfair to label the bill as simply tax cuts for the rich, it cannot

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be considered comprehensive tax reform. The right has presented the TCJA as akin to the infamous bipartisan and technical Tax Reform Act of 1986, while the left has likened it more to the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003. The content of the bill is somewhere in between, having elements of praiseworthy reform along with significant tax cuts concentrated among high income earners. The bill also creates new problems in our tax code by adding distortions that will have consequences for our economy and tax collection.

The Good (Reform): Income Tax Reform, Lower Corporate Rate, Corporate AMT Repeal What makes tax reform objectively “good,” at least to lawyers and economists, is whether or not it tackles some of the inefficiencies within the tax code that inhibit growth, either through simplification or removing aspects that distort market incentives.

On the individual side, the bill reduces some loopholes in the income tax, which economists have widely criticized as inefficient and unfair.[4] When filing income taxes, households can either itemize their deductions or use the standard deduction. Itemizing allows a household to take advantage of special tax

deductions to reduce its tax burdens, such as deducting its mortgage interest, state and local tax (SALT) payments, and charitable contributions from its taxable income. On the other hand, filers who utilize the standard deduction simply deduct a lump sum from their taxable income. Since itemizers also tend to have higher incomes than standard deduction filers, the benefits of itemized deductions are more heavily skewed toward top earners.[5] These are the “loopholes” the rich exploit to reduce their tax burdens, which the tax bill reforms. The TCJA would double the standard deduction, leaving only 10 percent as opposed to 30 percent of households in 2017 to itemize, thus reducing the value of these itemized deductions.[6] Doubling the standard deduction would be met with eliminating personal exemptions, simplifying the tax code somewhat, and providing some net tax relief to the middle class, at least until the new inflation measure wipes it out.[7][8] The GOP bill would also cap these special deductions at certain levels, including the SALT deduction (capped at $10,000) and mortgage interest deduction (capped for homes worth $750,000), whose benefits have been skewed primarily to high income taxpayers. And with far fewer itemizers, other special

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Rather than fixing distortions, this bill creates distortions in need of fixing.

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loopholes, including charitable contributions, would be reduced in value.[9] While the SALT deduction is more controversial since it is utilized more heavily in higher tax blue states, limiting the value of mortgage interest deduction and charitable contributions is a noteworthy reform. While their goals are commendable (encouraging homeownership and charitable donations, respectively) there is very little evidence that they succeed in even these tasks.[10] And along with reducing the tax burdens on the very wealthy, they also have some perverse effects, such as raising home prices and creating tax avoidance opportunities, respectively.[11][12] Reducing the value of tax loopholes that go mostly to the rich is an accomplishment both sides can commend.

On the business side, which is what the nupoliticalreview.com

The Bad (Fairness): Lower Corporate Rate, Estate Tax Reform, Individual Mandate Repeal While some Americans may be more concerned with fairness and equity than others, legislation that benefits top earners while neglecting or even burdening those in the middle and at the bottom is rightly viewed by most as unfair. Americans typically desire a progressive tax system, which assigns tax burdens based on the ability to pay, or “vertical equity,” the principle of treating unequals unequally. The reduction in progressivity is seen by many as “the bad” of the bill.

Most Americans recognize that the TCJA’s benefits will primarily be concentrated among “the rich.”[18] While the vast majority of American households may experience some benefit from the tax bill, most of these provisions are set to expire by 2025, with tens of millions of Americans facing tax increases afterwards.[19] By 2027, meaningful tax cuts will be experienced nearly exclusively by the wealthiest households.[20] Although the Trump administration has stated that the corporate tax reduction will primarily benefit American workers, this statement is unsupported by evidence.[21] Most economists agree that the burden of the corporate tax falls primarily on capital owners, or shareholders, as opposed

to workers (about 75 percent-25 percent respectively), making the corporate tax, while admittedly not the best way to tax the rich, progressive.[22][23] One-third of the tax relief for capital owners won’t even benefit American investors, but rather foreign investors who own American stock.[24] Overall, the corporate tax reduction would be primarily a windfall to investors, both foreign and domestic, along with high-earning employees.[25] The average worker won’t see much from the corporate tax cut, except if they’ll be paying for the deficits it generates.[26] Next is the estate tax, which, while being exclusively paid by the top 0.2 percent of estates in 2017, will be paid by less than 0.1 percent this year.[27]. This would be through an increased exemption of estates subject to the tax from about $5 billion (about $11 billion for married couples) to $10 billion (about $22 billion for married couples).[28] Despite the unpopularity of the estate tax, it is the most progressive part of the tax code and good policy whose reduction would likely perpetuate wealth inequality and serve as a giveaway to the nation’s wealthiest heirs.[29][30][31] Then there is the repeal of the individual mandate of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the requirement that individuals without insurance must purchase health insurance through state exchanges, for which the penalty will be $0 by 2019. The repeal of the mandate would reduce spending since it would reduce the amount of people with federally subsidized health insurance. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that as a result of its repeal, 13 million fewer people will have health insurance in the next decade, comprised of individuals who have been priced out of the market or who have forgone purchasing insurance.[32] This would result from premiums increasing by 10 percent annually for most of the decade for those who purchase insurance on the individual market (as opposed to government- or employer-provided insurance).

Despite being the most unpopular aspect of the ACA, the mandate has been necessary to help insurance companies stay solvent in the face of their inability to discriminate based on preexisting conditions.[33] With the mandate repeal, the more popular parts of the bill will be difficult for insurance companies to comply with, requiring either a windfall of federal subsidies or high premiums to keep them afloat. The spike in premiums created by the repeal would price out many middle-income households who need, but struggle to afford, health insurance.[34] While the healthy and wealthy will be less affected by the mandate repeal, as they are more likely to be provided health insurance through their employer, poorer and less healthy individuals will face greater difficulty obtaining and keeping insurance.[35] These new provisions would make the tax code less progressive and less fair for most Americans.

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TCJA is really focused on, the tax rate on corporate profits has been reduced from 35 percent to 21 percent. The corporate income tax has many problems; with its high rate and Swiss cheese-like loopholes, it creates inefficient economic distortions, thus leading both Democrats and Republicans alike to call for its reform. During his time in office, Obama proposed a 28 percent corporate tax rate along with reductions in special corporate loopholes to make the rate reduction “revenue neutral.”[13] This is formally known as “base-broadening,” since the revenue lost from a lower rate would be compensated by making more income subject to taxation, or a broader tax base. Under new law, with a lower corporate rate and expanded investment incentives, including accelerated depreciation and expensing, proponents argue that this would encourage more investment, make the U.S. more competitive internationally, bring back overseas wealth, and lead to faster growth.[14] However, if other countries respond by cutting their own corporate rates, the U.S. would lose whatever competitive edge it gained, and any growth effects from the TCJA are predicted to be temporary and modest.[15] [16] But overall, the corporate tax cut has been long overdue, making it a noteworthy reform.

The bill also adds simplicity for corporations through the repeal of the corporate alternative minimum tax (AMT), which, while raising little revenue and contributing little to fairness, imposes heavy compliance costs and distorts investment decisions.[17]

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While not all Americans are as concerned with fairness as others, all would agree (as would economists) that a tax system shouldn’t needlessly waste resources through distorted incentives. Thus, provisions of the tax bill that do create waste should be considered the “ugly” parts. The principle of “horizontal equity,” or taxing equals equally, has been established as a fundamental tenet of good tax policy.[36] Whether it affects real activity decisions, legal classification, or just timing, violating horizontal equity leads to inefficiencies. This is why tax experts typically view a broader tax base and lower rates as objectively good tax reform, taxing everything a bit and ideally at the same rate. And although Republicans have portrayed themselves as defenders of this principle, viewing loopholes in the tax code as government-manufactured waste, distortion, and complication, this bill would create some ugly loopholes that would produce all three.

A group of tax law professors even came out with a paper titled “The Games They Will Play” outlining the myriad of tax planning

opportunities individuals and businesses may exploit to get the best deal out of their tax obligations from the TCJA, making the new tax legislation even more expensive than the deficits it’s predicted to create.[37] This isn’t what good policy is supposed to do. They write, “The most serious structural problems with the bill are unavoidable outcomes of Congress’s choice to preference certain taxpayers and activities while disfavoring others—and for no discernible policy rationale. These haphazard lines are fundamentally unfair and inefficient, and invite tax planning by sophisticated taxpayers to get within the preferred categories.”

What many view to be the worst part of the TCJA is the new special treatment of pass-through entities.[38] Pass-through entities make up about 95 percent of all business, which include sole proprietorships, partnerships, and

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S-corporations (anything but C-corporations).

[39] And pass-throughs vary in size, ranging from your local mom-and-pop shop to large multinational law and accounting firms.

Their name derives from the business income being “passed through” to the owner’s individual income taxes so that when the business income is distributed, it’s only subject to the owner’s income tax. Business owners and

If Democrats are to retake Congress in 2018 and the White House in 2020, a comprehensive tax reform plan must be made that addresses the many flaws in the TJCA along with real reform aimed at enhancing simplicity, fairness, and revenue collection.

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workers are thus treated the same, taxwise.

Business owners who rely on pass-through income will experience a windfall from the

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The Ugly (Distortions): Special Passthrough Treatment, Lower Corporate Rate

new tax laws, taking the form of a special 20 percent deduction for pass-through income.

[40]

What’s important to note for this special pass-through treatment is that those who do the exact same work but are classified differently are treated differently. Patricia Cohen of the New York Times explains this well: “Consider two chefs working side by side for the same catering company, doing the same job, for the same hours and the same money.

The only difference is that one is an employee, the other an independent contractor. Under the Republican plans, one gets a tax break and the other doesn’t.”[41] While special treatment for businesses may sound nice, without a proper definition of what constitutes a business, it would encourage more people to expend resources to also get special treatment. While the tax plan has “guardrails” in place to try preventing this reclassification, they are rather vague and complex, requiring

new rules and regulations to be put in place, posing a problem for the underfunded IRS. [42][43][44] The new tax bill creates real problems for economic incentives. Workers can change their legal classification (like becoming a pass-through entity) ,and businesses can change real activities (like moving production overseas to benefit from the new “territorial” tax system), not because it’s most efficient, but because the tax rates are preferable.[45][46] And while the reduction of the corporate tax rate was needed, it has gone too far, creating a large difference between the top pass-through tax rate (top rate at 37 percent) and the corporate rate (top rate at 21 percent), which would incentivize income sheltering through corporations.[47] Jobs would be created not for middle-class workers, but for lawyers and accountants, purposed not for production and expansion, but for deal seeking.

While Republicans have likened their bill to the infamous and comprehensive Tax Reform

Act of 1986, the 1986 bill addressed horizontal equity concerns by taxing capital gains and ordinary income at the same top rate (28 percent), while this bill violates horizontal equity.

Rather than fixing distortions, this bill creates distortions in need of fixing.

This review also doesn’t take into account the nearly $1.5 trillion debt the TCJA would create, which can inhibit growth, burden lowand middle-income families, and threaten fiscal sustainability.[48][49][50] With the rushed problems presented in the bill, its technical glitches will require some serious fixing from both sides of the political aisle.[51] If Democrats are to retake Congress in 2018 and the White House in 2020, a comprehensive tax reform plan must be made that addresses the many flaws in the TJCA along with real reform aimed at enhancing simplicity, fairness, and revenue collection.

[1] Dam, Andrew Van. "Analysis | The essential tradeoff in the Republican tax bill, in one chart." The Washington Post. December 16, 2017. [2] Patel, Jugal K., and Alicia Parlapiano. "The Senate's Official Scorekeeper Says the Republican Tax Plan Would Add $1 Trillion to the Deficit." The New York Times. November 28, 2017. [3] "Senator's tax rant goes viral - CNN Video." CNN. December 02, 2017. [4] Gershon, Livia. "Economists Hate Them! Why We're Stuck with These Tax Loopholes." Vice. April 11, 2017. [5] Greenberg, Scott. "Who Itemizes Deductions?" Tax Foundation. January 16, 2017. [6] "T18-0001 - Impact on the Number of Itemizers of H.R.1, The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), By Expanded Cash Income Level, 2018." Tax Policy Center. January 11, 2018. [7] Steuerle, C. Eugene. "Why Tax Reform Flounders: The Case Of Doubling The Standard Deduction." Tax Policy Center. November 01, 2017. [8] Zarroli, Jim. "The Tax Law's New Way Of Measuring Inflation Could Take A Toll On Taxpayers." NPR. December 27, 2017. [9] "How do the standard deduction and itemized deductions compare?" Tax Policy Center: Briefing Book. [10] Brangan, Liz Scheltens and Mallory. "How tax breaks help the rich." Vox. November 15, 2017. [11] Margery Austin Turner, Eric Toder, Rolf Pendall, and Claudia Sharygin, “How Would Reforming the Mortgage Interest Deduction Affect the Housing Market?”. Urban Institute. March 2013. [12] Carter, Ellis. “Abuse of Charitable Organizations and Deductions included in 2010 Dirty Dozen Tax Scams.” CharityLawyer, 24 May 2017. [13] Sorkin, Andrew Ross. “Trump's Take on Corporate Tax Rate Could Look Very Much Like Obama's.” The New York Times, March 27, 2017. [14] Leubsdorf, Ben. "Economists See GOP Tax Plan Producing Growth Spurt, But Split Over Long-Term Effect." The Wall Street Journal.

October 12, 2017. [15] Gale, William G., and Leonard E. Burman. "Congress missed an opportunity to reform the corporate tax." Tax Policy Center. December 26, 2017. [16] Page, Benjamin R. "The Senate's Tax Cut Would Generate Little New Long-Run Economic Growth." Tax Policy Center. December 11, 2017. [17] Chorvat, Terrence R. and Knoll, Michael S., "The Case for Repealing the Corporate Alternative Minimum Tax" .Faculty Scholarship. 2013. Paper 1145. [18] Calfas, Jennifer. "Tax Reform Poll: Americans Thinks Bill Benefits Rich." Time. December 19, 2017. [19] Gleckman, Howard. "The TCJA Would Cut Taxes By An Average of $1,600 in 2018, With Most Benefits Going To Those Making $300,000-Plus." Tax Policy Center. December 18, 2017. [20] Wilson, Mark. "New GOP Tax-Cut Plan Raises Taxes on Virtually Everyone by 2027." Daily Intelligencer. November 15, 2017. [21] "Sec. Mnuchin talks cutting off North Korea economically." Fox News. September 3, 2017. [22] Gleckman, Howard. "Would Workers Benefit From A Corporate Tax Cut? Not Much." Tax Policy Center. September 8, 2017. [23] "The Distribution of Household Income and Federal Taxes, 2013." Congressional Budget Office. June 8, 2016. [24] Krugman, Paul. "Incidence and Welfare Effects of Corporate Tax Cuts (Extremely Wonkish)." The New York Times. November 28, 2017. [25] "Corporate Tax Cuts Mainly Benefit Shareholders and CEOs, Not Workers." Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. October 23, 2017. [26] Gale, William G. "Who Will Pay for the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act?" Tax Policy Center. January 2, 2018. [27] Gleckman, Howard.

"Only 1,700 Estates Would Owe Estate Tax in 2018 Under the TCJA." Tax Policy Center. December 6, 2017. [28] Ebeling, Ashlea. "Final Tax Bill Includes Huge Estate Tax Win For The Rich: The $22.4 Million Exemption." Forbes. January 03, 2018. [29] Thorndike, Joseph J. "Face It: Americans Just Don't Like the Estate Tax." Tax Analysts. March 28, 2016. [30] Graetz, Michael J. "It's Fair, and We Need the Revenue." The Wall Street Journal. September 20, 2010. [31] Smith, Noah. "The 'Death Tax' Deserves to Live." Bloomberg.com. February 24, 2017. [32] "Repealing the Individual Health Insurance Mandate: An Updated Estimate." Congressional Budget Office. November 13, 2017. [33] Bialik, Kristen, and Abigail Geiger. "Republicans, Democrats find common ground on many provisions of health care law." Pew Research Center. December 8, 2016. [34] Gee, Sam Berger and Emily. "The Senate Tax Bill Threatens Access to Health Care." Center for American Progress. November 16, 2017. [35] Long, Michelle, Matthew Rae, Gary Claxton, and Anthony Damico. "Trends in Employer-Sponsored Insurance Offer and Coverage Rates, 1999-2014." The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. March 29, 2016. [36] David Elkins. “Horizontal Equity as a Principle of Tax Theory”. Yale Law & Policy Review: Vol. 24: Iss. 1, Article 3. 2006. [37] Kamin, David and Gamage, David and Glogower, Ari D. and Kysar, Rebecca M. and Shanske, Darien and Avi-Yonah, Reuven S. and Batchelder, Lily L. and Fleming, J. Clifton and Hemel, Daniel Jacob and Kane, Mitchell and Miller, David S. and Shaviro, Daniel and Viswanathan, Manoj. “The Games They Will Play: Tax Games, Roadblocks, and Glitches Under the New Legislation.” December 7, 2017. [38] Avi-Yonah, Reuven S. “How Terrible Is the New Tax Law? Reflections on TRA17”. University of Michigan Law & Econ Research Paper No. 18-002; U of Michigan Public Law Research Paper No. 586. January 2, 2018. [39] Krupkin, Aaron, and Adam Looney. "9 facts about pass-through businesses." Brookings. May 15, 2017. [40] Berry, Ken. "2018 Tax Reform: Pass-Through Income Deduction More Complex Than Thought." CPA Practice Advisor. January 8, 2018. [41] Cohen, Patricia. "Tax Plans May Give Your Co-Worker a Better Deal Than You." The New York Times. December 9, 2017. [42] Steuerle, C. Eugene. "The TCJA Will Create More Complexity For Taxpayers Than It Claims." Tax Policy Center. January 5, 2018. [43] Sullivan, Martin A. "Joe the Plumber Meets the Corker Kickback." Tax Analysts. December 18, 2017. [44] Cohen, Patricia. "Have You Ever Felt Sorry for the I.R.S.? Now Might Be the Time." The New York Times. December 18, 2017. [45] Mercado, Darla. "Pass-throughs save under GOP tax reform: Here's how to join their ranks."

CNBC. December 5, 2017. [46] Sperling, Gene B. "How the Tax Plan Will Send Jobs Overseas." The Atlantic. December 8, 2017. [47] Looney, Adam. "The next tax shelter for wealthy Americans: C-corporations." Brookings. December 5, 2017. [48] "Economists Agree: Trump-GOP Tax Plan Will Not Substantially Boost Economy." Americans For Tax Fairness. January 25, 2018. [49] Ibid. [50] "New Senate Tax Bill Hides Over $500 Billion of Gimmicks." Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. December 5, 2017. [51] Smith, Noah. "The Next Step in Tax Reform Is Tax Repair." Bloomberg. December 28, 2017.

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National

The Case for America: Hardline Republicans Want to Have Their Cake and Eat It Too JORDAN CHOY / HISTORY 2018

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o the surprise of many long-time political watchers, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell kept his word in negotiations with his Democratic counterpart and allowed a week of free-flowing debate on the Senate floor to discuss immigration policy.[1] Rather unsurprisingly, however, the GOP-controlled chamber failed to perform its duties and pass any substantive legislation.

Instead of taking leadership on the issue by trying to pass moderate and politically popular legislation, the president chose to spread falsehoods and demand severe cuts to legal immigration.[2] By moving the goalposts far beyond what any reasonable Republicans support, the president is attempting to bully the legislature into supporting anti-American policies that are harmful to the nation and its economy.[3] The pillars of immigration reform that were outlined in the State of the Union were framed as a generous olive branch aimed at enticing bipartisan cooperation, yet instead were met with bipartisan condemnation.[4] The White House presented a false choice between a policy that the majority of Americans (including the president himself) support, and hardline anti-immigrant policies that will tear families apart and reduce racial diversity. Egged on by zealots in Congress and his staff, the president wants to cut legal immigration for reasons that are fundamentally at odds with the values and will of the American people. White House adviser Stephen Miller and his allies have used the opportunity created by the president’s self-imposed crisis with DACA to tack significant legal immigration restrictions onto two policies that the president already supports.

The first two pillars of immigration reform proposed by the president are protecting DACA recipients and allocating billions of dollars in funds to build a border wall with Mexico. On their own, these proposals would be a fair policy deal that Democrats and key Republicans

could support (despite the fact that the proposal of building a border wall is considered bad policy by most objective analysts).[5] Protecting Dreamers is an overwhelmingly popular policy that the president has repeatedly expressed support for, and building the border wall is a campaign promise.[6] On this and many other policy issues, the GOP is obstructing progress on issues that the majority of Americans support, which is an impressive feat for a party that controls all three branches of the federal government.

The last two pillars will lead to drastic cuts of up to 40 percent in legal immigration by ending both the diversity lottery and family reunification. It should surprise no one that the effects of such dramatic reductions would devastate the American economy, as 1,500 economists noted in a letter to Trump.

[7] Additionally, such cuts would also damage our national security, depriving the military of much-needed recruits.[8] By taking very real threats like ISIS and MS-13 and reducing them to attacks on immigrants from nonwhite countries, the right is undermining the severity of our national security efforts as well

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By moving the goalposts far beyond what any reasonable Republicans support, the president is attempting to bully the legislature into supporting antiAmerican policies that are harmful to the nation and its economy.

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as inadvertently helping these criminal organizations.[9] The arguments for cuts to legal immigration, which is already subject to incredibly strict regulation, are built upon a long history of legitimizing discriminatory policies. The president’s comments about “shithole countries,” his preference for Norwegians, and his travel ban show his discriminatory intentions and reflect his racial views.[10] The points that are now made about Islam’s incompatibility with American democracy echo previous sentiments about Catholic immigrants.[11] The White House, which tweeted out an image of an immigrant bringing in dozens of family members through “chain migration,” failed to mention that processing a visa through family sponsorship can take years, even decades.[12] [13] The proposals are built on a long history of assumptions that have been used to justify extremist immigration policies that have targeted aspiring Americans in the past. The same impulses that rationalized keeping Irish and Italian Catholic immigrants, Chinese laborers, and Jewish refugees fleeing fascism away from American shores can be witnessed in rhetoric like Stephen Miller’s “cosmopolitan bias” comment.[14] These garish displays of hostility to immigration have no place in a liberal democracy.

Immigrant labor built America’s greatest cities, immigrant-founded businesses are the lifeblood of the American economy, and immigrant patriots fight and die in America’s armed forces. I urge readers to honor their memory and the countless people who are affected by the extremist policies being floated to fight for liberty and American values. Call your representatives to ensure that they do not enable extremism; if they are on the wrong side and will not fight for justice, support candidates who will. Show the GOP what real American values look like this November. Knock on doors, make calls, and vote. Make the case for America.

[1] Elana Schlor and Burgess Everett, ‘Senate immigration debate ends in failure.” Politico. February 15, 2018. [2] Allison Graves, Jon Greenberg, Louis Jacobson, John Kruzel, Katie Sanders, Amy Sherman, Manuela Tobias, Miriam Valverde. “ Fact-checking Donald Trump’s 2018 State of the Union speech.” Politifact. January 30, 2018. [3] Jacob Parmuk, “GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham rips into White House for Trump’s change on immigration deal.” CNBC. January 19, 2018. [4] Seung Min Kim, “Republicans balk at Trump’s cuts to legal immigration.” Politico. January 30, 2018. [5] Andrew Taylor and Alicia Caldwell, “Analysis: Trump’s border wall faces a reality check.” AP News. January 26, 2018. [6] Max Greenwood, “Poll: Nearly 9 in 10 want DACA recipients to stay in US.” The Hill. January 18, 2018. [7] Octavio Blanco, “1,500 economists to Trump: Immigrants are good for the US economy.” CNN Money. April 12, 2017.

[8] Jeff Mason, “Immigrants in the Military: A History of Service.” Bipartisan Policy Center. August 16, 2017. [9] Bethan McKernan, “Isis hails Donald Trump’s Muslim immigration restrictions as a ‘blessed ban’.” The Independent.

January 30, 2017. [10] Emily Swanson and Russell Contreras, “More Than Half of Americans Think Donald Trump is Racist.” Time. March 1, 2018. [11] Julie Byrne, “Roman Catholics and Immigration in Nineteenth-Century America.” Dept of Religion, Duke University. [12] The White House. “It's Time to End Chain Migration,” Twitter, 18 Dec. 2017. [13] US State Department. ‘Visa Bulletin for February 2018.” [14] Nolan McCaskill, “White House aide blasts CNN reporter for ‘cosmopolitan bias.’” Politico. August 2, 2017.

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T O PPO NEN T H ERE ] BUSINESS

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ROSHAN PAI / ADMINISTRATION, FINANCE 2020

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merica’s partisan divide is growing.

Nowadays, tension within the political atmosphere has made many Americans loathe discussing politics with each other. According to a Pew Research report in October of 2017, “divisions between Republicans and Democrats on fundamental political values reached record levels during Barack Obama’s presidency. In Donald Trump’s first year as president, these gaps have grown even larger.”[1] An unexpected byproduct of this division is the rebirth of a logical fallacy known as “whataboutism.”

According to the Oxford Dictionary, whataboutism is defined as “the technique of responding to an accusation or difficult question by making a counter-accusation or raising a different issue.”[2] Essentially, whataboutism means that one who is accused of wrongdoing will simply deflect and attack the accuser of being a hypocrite by comparing the current accusation to a past or current wrongdoing of the accuser. On the surface, this may seem like a cheap tactic used by politicians to try to save face when accused of wrongdoing, but the consequences of whataboutism extend beyond the dysfunction in Washington; it has stymied meaningful debate and sidelined political accountability.

American political debate has become vitriolic people fighting over political values instead of policies, and debates have devolved into senseless name-calling and conceited one-upping.[3] Whataboutism is the perfect tool for one who wants to tear down those who disagree with them by focusing the debate on the negative aspects of their opponent’s party, ideology, or character. The primary reason for the use of whataboutism is that people tend to care more about ensuring a “loss” for those they disagree with than about securing a “win” for their own side. This political

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vanity can make people feel joy at their political opponents’ expense. In reality, it worsens American political debate because loyalty to truth takes a backseat to personal attacks.

As a result, meaningful conversations about political ideology or policy do not take place within political discussions. This is incredibly detrimental to American society, as it means that voters are not exposed to the kind of facts and ideas that result in pragmatic solutions to larger problems. Instead, Americans are taught new strategies to demean their political opponents. This doesn’t result in a more educated and informed public, but rather a large elementary school playground filled with overgrown children beating their chests, trying to establish their own dominance.

A frequent controversial debate topic that nearly always employs whataboutism is terrorism. In these debates, right-wing supporters frequently cite numerous examples of ISIS or Al-Qaeda related attacks, firmly stating that Islamic terrorism should be the focus of counter-terrorism discussions. Usually this argument is linked to Islam as a whole, typically implying that religion itself is the primary factor motivating these attacks. But rather than directly argue with that claim, it’s more common for left-wing supporters to deflect and point out the right-wing hypocrisy for focusing on Islam-related attacks when there have been multiple right-wing terrorists (“but what about Dylann Roof, James Fields, or Timothy McVeigh?”). And, of course, if the debate veers into the left-wing slamming the right-wing over terrorism, the right-wing usually deflects and accuses the left-wing of hypocrisy, claiming they turn a blind eye to Islam-related attacks (“but what about radical Islamic extremism?”). Here’s the thing: Both sides have a point.[4] It can be argued that the right-wing doesn’t devote enough attention to

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weeding out and expelling right-wing extremists and that the left-wing’s fight against bigotry toward Muslims sometimes results in downplaying the relevance of religion as a motivation of ISIS attacks. But simply pointing out the hypocrisy of the other side prevents a real debate about how to prevent both right-wing terrorism and Islamic extremist terrorism. When the desire for superiority over political opponents is stripped away, most Americans would agree that terrorism should be prevented regardless of who commits it. But when both sides resort to accusing the other of being hypocritical, the task of coming up with solutions to tackle all forms of terrorism is sidelined.

The goal of obtaining political superiority goes further than just stifling debate; it prevents political parties and politicians from being held accountable for their actions.

Since political parties are constantly trying to establish their dominance, they are less likely to admit any faults on their own side and will use whataboutism as a shield from their opponents. For example, when President Trump was accused of sexual assault by numerous women, one of the primary tactics used by him and his supporters was to deflect by raising the assault allegations made against former President Bill Clinton. Trump even brought multiple women who have levied sexual assault accusations against the former president to the second presidential debate in 2016.[5] Since Trump and his supporters heavily engaged in whataboutism to shield him, these sexual assault accusations were ignored, and there have been virtually no repercussions to the president’s standing as a political figure in American politics.[6] Since both sides are so determined to gain political superiority, they don’t want to devote any attention to dealing with the wrongdoings of

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The problem at the heart of whataboutism is the desire to tear down and anger the other side rather than engage in open-minded debate.

their own politicians. And in order to prevent the other side from exploiting a weakness, such as a sexual assault charge, whataboutism is employed as a shield against criticisms from the other side. As a result, no one is willing to accept the flaws of their own side and no one is being held accountable for their actions.

Accountability matters not only because it builds trust in political institutions, but also because it forces parties and politicians to be held to a set of common standards and to act in accordance with those standards.

While whataboutism has serious drawbacks, this isn’t to say that pointing out double standards or hypocrisy is inherently wrong.

As Fred Bauer from the National Review puts it, “[Whataboutism] is a way of insisting that both sides be held to the same standards” and that penalties for wrong actions “should apply regardless of faction.”[7] The main problem with whataboutism arises when pointing out double standards becomes the only argument. Simply explaining why one side is wrong doesn’t mean the other side is right. It is possible for both sides to have flaws within their parties or ideologies, and supporters of

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each party should recognize this. A more measured right-wing response to the aforementioned terrorism argument could be, “While there have been terrorists with right-wing viewpoints, and these individuals are reprehensible and heinous, Islamic extremism is more relevant in today’s society given the multiplicity of ISIS and other extremist group attacks that span across the globe.” This argument acknowledges that the other side has a valid point, while simultaneously forming an independent argument that doesn’t leech off of the hypocrisy of the other side. And this form of debate is actually the solution to whataboutism. If there is debate over a controversial topic, the best course of action is for supporters on both sides to form arguments independent of perceived hypocrisy from the other side. And if there are double standards at play, point them out. This also applies to accusations; if one party is credibly accused of some wrongdoing, that party should

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acknowledge the guilt and then, if there is evidence of it, point out the double standards of the other party.

This way, debate can return to focusing on ideas, and politicians can be held accountable for their actions.

Unless both sides are willing to acknowledge that they aren’t perfect, whataboutism will flourish within American political discourse, which is a recipe for a deeply divided country and an unethical government that isn’t held accountable by its electorate.

The problem at the heart of whataboutism is the desire to tear down and anger the other side rather than engage in open-minded debate. This deep resentment toward political rivals has led to truth being sidelined and has allowed accountability to take a back seat to ego-driven contests. Both sides must learn to return to properly debating ideas with an open mind and recognize that no side is perfect.

So long as whataboutism is used as a tool to facilitate division and prevent accountability, American polarization will only intensify.

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[INSERT OPP ONENT HERE]

[1] “The Partisan Divide on Political Values Grows Even Wider.” Pew Research Center. October 5, 2017. [2] “Whataboutism.” Oxford Dictionaries. [3] Justin Reedy and Christopher Wells, “Political Values Are Dividing Us Over Basic Facts, Not Just Policy Choices.” HuffPost. November 30, 2014. [4] Stav Ziv, “Right-Wing and ‘Radical Islamic’ Terror in the U.S. Are Equally Serious Threats: ADL Report (Exclusive).” Newsweek. May 20, 2017. [5] Daniella Diaz and Jeff Zeleny, “Trump appears with Bill Clinton accusers before debate.” CNN. October 10, 2016.

[6] Robin Abcarian, “Will Trump ever have to answer to the women who say he harassed and assaulted them.” Los Angeles Times. November 28, 2017. [7] Fred Bauer, “‘Whataboutism’: What of It?” National Review. July 14, 2017.

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EVAN CRYSTAL / INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS 2020

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very day, around 25,000 Venezuelans cross the border, fleeing the economic and political instability of their home country.[1] Jeferson José Gutierres is a Venezuelan who lives with his wife and three children under the stone “C” of a sculpture in the center of the border city, Cucúta, Colombia. The Gutierres family fled instability in Venezuela, where triple-digit inflation has rendered their savings useless in neighboring Colombia, forcing their homelessness.

Yet, Gutierres insists that life in Colombia is better, and he will only "return [to Venezuela] when Maduro goes.”[2] Venezuela’s descent into fragility is not only an issue for Venezuelans. Fragile states destabilize neighboring countries, including Colombia, which has only recently established tenuous peace with the FARC rebel group after a long civil war. If Venezuela continues to deteriorate, non-state actors in the region like the FARC or powerful cartels would be able to establish themselves within the country. Additionally, as the second largest oil exporter in the Western Hemisphere, Venezuela’s fragility is dangerous for those who depend on Venezuelan oil imports to fuel their economies (the three largest markets being China, India, and the United States), giving the crisis a global impact.[3][4] The roots of this crisis reach back to 1999, when Hugo Chávez was elected president.

Chávez rejected the neoliberal model of constrained government regulation around the economy. As a socialist, he believed that neoliberalism had been introduced by a capitalist United States in order to exploit Venezuelan natural resources.[5] Chávez nationalized Venezuelan oil, steel, and telecommunications industries, greatly involving the government in its economy. Chávez called this hybrid of capitalism and Soviet socialism “21st century socialism.”[6] After Chávez’s death, Maduro (his successor within the Socialist party) assumed power.

During that time, the international oil market was collapsing due to a variety of factors:

The United States had greatly reduced its oil imports, the world was shifting toward alternative energy sources, and several countries were still recovering from the great recession of the late 2000s, reducing oil demand. This was catastrophic for Venezuela, as 95 percent of its total export revenue comes from oil.

Without oil revenue, the government could not support the massive social safety net it had constructed.[7] As the welfare system collapsed, tens of thousands of Venezuelans took to the street to protest Maduro, who unleashed the military and police in order to quell the protests, killing over 130 people in the months of April and July of 2017.[8] Maduro did not stop with the protesters, also cracking down on his opposition, whose leader, Antonio Ledezma of the Allianza Bravo Pueblo (Fearless People’s Alliance), recently escaped house arrest and fled to Colombia.[9] The inability to deliver promised government services, coupled with the use of violence against its own citizens, significantly decreased the internal legitimacy of the Maduro government. The chain reaction sparked by Venezuela’s economic failures has caused serious societal instability due to government mismanagement of the situation.

Today, the economy is in shambles, and the government is in turmoil. After the opposition party won a majority, President Nicolás Maduro consolidated power for himself in an anti-democratic move, stripping the National Congress of its legislative capacity and triggering massive countrywide protests.[10] Maduro’s insistence on retaining power has only served to further exacerbate tensions, adding a political component to what had previously been a solely economic crisis.

To stabilize its economy, Venezuela must identify an economic strategy for decreasing inflation and rebuilding with the goal of longterm prosperity. Neoliberalism and dependency theory are two established theories that provide blueprints for restructuring a failing economy. Taking into account the history and current global standing of Venezuela,

however, it is dependency theory that provides a superior avenue to sustainable success.

However, neoliberalism cannot be completely discounted, as it also outlines necessary steps for economic resuscitation.

In order to bring wealth into Venezuela, neoliberal economists would immediately open it up to foreign investment, while simultaneously cutting down on government welfare programs. Liberals believe that with its special interests and biases, government only hampers or unnaturally shapes growth, as opposed to the market, which “generate[s] a new and more efficient modus operandi for economic activity.”[11] Without government interrupting the economy and protecting local businesses, foreign investors would be more willing to enter a country. Foreign investment allows Venezuela’s abundant natural resources to be used in a way that enriches the country.[12] This process was pioneered in Bolivia in 1985, when economists forced the government into a “clean break” with past fiscal policy, shifting the country almost all the way into laissez-faire economics. At the time, Bolivia’s economy was facing an inflation rate over 24,000 percent per year, and this “shock therapy” stabilized the economy. This prevented Bolivia from spiraling into what would have been an unprecedented economic crisis.[13] Dependency theorists would dispute these liberal arguments, claiming that by allowing more developed western countries to extract resources from the periphery, this perpetuates the cycle of dependency.[14] Foreign investment could introduce competition and tax dollars into the Venezuelan economy, and privatizing industries that were nationalized under Hugo Chávez would reduce national debt; however, dependency theorists argue that neoliberalism creates a system of labor exploitation that benefits rich countries at the expense of the poor, and opening up an economy is conducive to exploitation rather than growth.[15][16] Adrián Sotelo Valencia, a scholar at the National Autonomous University of

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Maduro’s insistence on retaining power has only served to further exacerbate tensions, adding a political component to what had previously been a solely economic crisis.

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be the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), where a last-minute push by the United States to change regulations around sugar plantations gave American farmers significant advantages over their Mexican counterparts—a classic example of a more powerful country “winning” the trade deal.

This was accomplished by forcing Mexico to adopt stricter agricultural regulations. The enforcement of regulations by the U.S. and

Canada completely negated the few advantages still held by the small-scale, impoverished farmers that formed the backbone of the Mexican agricultural industry.[18] Despite the failures of liberalism, dependency theorists cannot completely reject it.

Import substitution industrialization (replacing imported goods with heavily subsidized domestic equivalents) is not an economically viable concept due to problems with obtaining materials and limited market size.[19]

Nationalizing industries is also not an effective solution, as it caused Venezuela’s original problems.

Understanding a country’s position in the international system is also important, so each case must be examined independently.

S. M. Shafaeddin, an economist at Oxford University, believes in an alternative to neoliberalism that avoids the peril of completely closing off an economy. He stresses the need for development-oriented trade, which protects and promotes growth while simultaneously opening up the economy at a slower pace than the one suggested by neoliberalism.

[20] Additionally, foreign direct investment (FDI) should be limited and used “selectively as a tool of industrialization and export expansion.”[21] By slowing the flow of investment, states can control their own growth instead of submitting themselves to the world market.

Sotelo Valencia expands on this alternative by advocating for regionalism—trade agreements (similar to the EU) that place regional affairs above global affairs. A Latin market would be large enough to sustain itself in a way that single countries cannot, avoiding the dangers of import substitution industrialization.[22] Regionalism protects small markets from the more powerful markets that control the global system. This is an alluring prospect to dependency theorists, who wish to keep Venezuela out of the hands of core states like the U.S.[23] Latin America does not have that sort of regional intergovernmental organization in place yet, but it has held important summits between regional heads of state to discuss diplomacy and foreign policy.[24] Dependency theorists would advocate for building stronger regional agreements out of these summits while they rebuild the Venezuelan economy.

By strengthening regional bodies instead of immediately joining the international system, Venezuela can work to avoid falling into a cycle of dependency by strengthening regional bodies instead of immediately joining the international system.

If Venezuela cannot find a way out of its crisis, it will continue its devolution into a failed state. The crisis has opened a policy window for economic overhaul, but the policy must be smart. Dependency theory explains the failures of liberalism far better than liberalism itself. When looking to the future, it avoids past mistakes and offers a concrete, measured way forward, easing Venezuela onto the path toward economic strength.

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Mexico, suggests that liberal policies may also lead to authoritarian regimes in peripheral states. Such developments would hurt workers even more. Under an authoritarian regime, in addition to low wages, workers’ rights can be taken away at any moment.[17] Dependency theorists argue that even in situations of perceived equality, the larger, more developed (typically Western) country often wins anyway. An example of this would

[1] Malika-Henderson, Nia. “White men are 31 percent of the American population. They hold 65 percent of all elected offices.” The Washington Post. October 8, 2014. [2] Politico Staff, “Full Transcript: Third Presidential Debate.”

Politico, October 20, 2016. [3] Templeton, Amelia. “Militia Occupying Federal Land: ‘We are not Hurting Anyone.’ Oregon Public Broadcasting. January 3, 2016. [4] Zaitz, Les. “FBI agents under investigation for possible misconduct in LaVoy Finicum shooting.” The Oregonian. March 8, 2016. [5] “Presidential Debates 2016,” The American Presidency Project. [6] Sotile, Leah. “Jury Acquits Ammon Bundy, six others for standoff at Oregon wildlife refuge.” The Oregonian. October 27, 2016. [7] Goodman, Amy. “Standing Rock: Police Arrest 120+ Water Protectors as Dakota Access Speeds Up Pipeline Construction.” Democracy Now. October 24, 2016. [8] Sacchetti, Maria. “Possible Hoax Explored After Police Standoff in Revere: Police Release 911 Call that Led to Raid.” The Boston Globe. October 18, 2016.

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Cape Town's Dance

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ALEX FRANDSEN / JOURNALISM 2019

with Day Zero?

lying into Cape Town, the city’s water crisis becomes apparent even before the plane’s wheels touch down. As the sprawling coastal hub comes into view below, framed by craggy mountains on one side and the Indian and Atlantic Oceans on the other, the pilot’s voice crackles over the intercom to welcome passengers to “the Mother City,” where the weather is beautiful and the dams are running dry.

“I would like to remind you that Cape Town is experiencing a severe drought, so during your time here please do your part in conserving water,” he says. “Enjoy your stay!”

Walking through the airport to the baggage claim, enormous signs and banners drive the point home. “Don’t waste a drop! Cape Town is drought stricken,” states one. “Together We Can Avoid Day Zero,” suggests another, alluding to the day on which the city’s water supply will be turned off.

The ride from the airport travels along highways divided by medians of brown grass.

If you talk to locals (or read the numerous flyers posted throughout the city) a common set of guidelines emerges: Keep your showers under two minutes. Don’t run your tap while washing dishes or brushing teeth. Only one toilet flush per day. Overall, try to keep daily water consumption under 50 liters—an amount that’s about 16 percent of what the average American uses per day.[1] If everyone follows these rules, maybe, just maybe, Day Zero can be averted.

If that term, Day Zero, sounds apocalyptic, that’s because it sort of is. Cape Town would be the first major city in the world to run out of water, and if it got to that point, citizens would be required to collect their daily ration of 25 liters from guarded checkpoints. It’s unclear what the social fallout would be, but in a city with high crime rates and staggering inequality, it’s safe to predict that things would boil over in some capacity.

So how did a city of nearly four million get to this point? Climate change is almost certainly partly to blame, but just as guilty is another culprit: politics. Cape Town has been failed due to governmental incompetence, corruption, and extreme partisanship. If Day Zero comes, it will be just as much the politicians’ fault as Mother Nature’s. And if it does come, it will undoubtedly impact the poor more than the rich. Today, this is Cape Town’s problem. But in the future this could very well become a reality for cities around the globe.

The world needs to understand what has gone Spring 2018

wrong in Cape Town so that it can avoid a string of repeated failures in the future, failures that would serve to further expose global wealth disparities and further punish the vulnerable.

If we are to use the trouble in Cape Town as a case study, then a full understanding of the situation is required. For one, it should be noted that drought is not exactly a new phenomenon in the Western Cape, the province of which Cape Town is the capital. Thanks to an extremely variable climate, the region sees a strong fluctuation in rainfall levels from year to year.[2] That means that in some years, like 2014, the rainy winters bring more than enough water to fill up the city’s dams. But in others, almost no rain falls at all. Most of the time those dry years are nothing more than a momentary scare, with water restrictions and eventual timely rains staving off any real danger.

Last year, though, was different. 2017 had the lowest measurable rainfall of any year in recorded Cape Town history, and given that the previous two years were notably dry as well, it compounded to form an unprecedented three-year stretch of drought.[3] We can’t be totally sure, but human-created climate change is likely the main cause for such an anomalous event. Dr. Piotr Wolski, a hydrologist stationed at the University of Cape Town, noted as much in a March interview with The Independent. “Droughts are a natural phenomenon in the Western Cape and the effect of climate changes is that it magnifies all weather events—both drought and flooding—and makes them less easy to predict,” said Wolski.[4] So even for Cape Town, a city relatively accustomed to dealing with drought, the playing field has changed. The harsh reality of climate change means that the current crisis will almost surely not be a one-time event.

According to Mayor Patricia de Lille, the area is now operating under a “New Normal,” meaning the city “will not bank on the drought ending but rather actively plan as if it will continue indefinitely.” Water restrictions may become a way of life as opposed to being a temporary inconvenience.[5] Cities around the world are poised to deal with similar challenges in coming years. In Mexico City, home to more than 21 million people, it is estimated that roughly 20 percent of the population already can’t rely on water coming out of their taps on a daily basis.

Ramón Aguirre Díaz, director of the Water

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WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM

System of Mexico City, was pessimistic about the immediate future in a 2017 New York Times article. “Climate change is expected to have two effects,” he said. “We expect heavier, more intense rains, which means more floods, but also more and longer droughts.” If Mexico City were to be hit with an extreme drought?

“We’re facing a potential disaster,” he said.

“There is no way we can provide enough trucks of water to deal with that scenario.”[6] The Brazilian city of São Paulo is dealing with a water crisis of its own already and is anticipating further issues in the future. In a 2015 Time article, Marussia Whately, coordinator of an alliance of 30 NGOs assembled to address the city’s water problem, was frank about the city’s future in the new era of climate change. “Either we change, or São Paulo will continue to face these kinds of problems for years to come,” she said.[7] The list of vulnerable cities goes on: Jakarta, Melbourne, Lima, Amman, and Los Angeles are just a few of the metropolises at major risk. And all will be looking at the South African government response to see how to best cope. Unfortunately, they won’t learn much. While climate change certainly caused the core of the problem, political bungles exacerbated the issue.

The responsibility of water management in South Africa is hard to pin down, as the local, provincial, and national level all harbor some level of involvement. The national government, however, is in charge of agricultural allocations, a hugely important role given how much water is sucked up by farms and growers.

And unfortunately, there is strong evidence to show that the national government failed in monitoring these allocations appropriately.

Despite a dry 2015, the Department of Water Services (DWS) did nothing to curtail industry water usage, setting aside well over a third of the Western Cape’s water allowance for the agricultural sector.[8] Such an amount certainly isn’t unheard of, but given the risk of drought, both present and future, more judicious water distribution is critical. Cape Town had a safety buffer of 28,000 megaliters at the time and nearly all of it was rerouted to agriculture, leaving the city in a precarious state.[9] This was not a one-off mistake either; a report released last November by the South African Water Caucus found that the DWS was plagued by “irregular, fruitless and wasteful expenditure, poor revenue collection, and corruption allegations.”[10] The Western Cape leaders asked the nupoliticalreview.com

national government for additional water management funding back in 2015, with the hopes that they could build boreholes and enhance water recycling efforts. The request, however, was denied. The national government did declare some Western Cape areas as drought zones in 2016, but Cape Town was notably excluded, despite more than enough evidence warranting its conclusion. In fact, it took until the last several months for the national government to assist in any meaningful way.[11] Why the delay in providing help? Some point to simple incompetency, which could very well be true. But a more nefarious reason likely played a role as well: political partisanship. South Africa is dominated by the African National Congress (ANC), the party of Nelson Mandela that dragged the nation out of Apartheid in 1994 and has ruled the country ever since. The Western Cape, though, is controlled by the Democratic Alliance, the main opposition party in South Africa and the greatest direct threat to the ANC’s reign.

Tensions between the two parties are high, especially in the wake of ex-President Jacob Zuma’s long and controversial term as leader of the country.

The water crisis provided a perfect platform for those tensions to boil over. In late January, the DA announced that it was considering legal action against the ANC. “The Western Cape as a whole needs the national government to play its legally mandated role to ensure greater water security,” said party leader Mmusi Maimane. “This is not a finger pointing exercise, it is about ensuring that the Constitution is given effect to and that the rights of citizens and ratepayers are fought for and protected.”[12] The ANC was quick to point the blame arrow the other way. "The ANC still sees [ex-mayor and current Western Cape leader] Helen Zille as the root cause for the problems Cape Town now encounters,” said Khaya Magaxa, the provincial leader of the party.[13] Clearly, the water crisis was made more onerous by political bickering. But it also has served to highlight the incredible inequality present in the city. Cape Town is home to some of the richest of the rich and the poorest of the poor, and the fallout from a brush with Day

Zero (or even a realization of it) would impact both vastly differently.[14] In a world where water goes from public resource to valuable commodity, the wealthy can mitigate the harm felt. Personal boreholes can be drilled, bottled water can be stocked up on, and if it comes down to it, fleeing the city is always an option.

No such luck for Capetonians living in townships like Gugulethu and Khayelitsha.

Unemployment is rampant in those areas, meaning cash can’t be spared for luxuries like water stockpiles. Existing problems like crime and sanitation would only be exacerbated, creating ideal conditions for chaos.[15] That’s why Zille asked, in a column published on The Daily Maverick, “When Day-Zero arrives, how do we...prevent anarchy?”[16] A drought of this scale in any city would be a disaster. A drought in a city like Cape Town could send the whole place up in flames.

To rub salt in the wound, the ones who would be most at risk if Day Zero were to come are also those using the least water.

In Khayelitsha, home to roughly 400,000, plumbing is far from a given, with entire blocks using one set of shared toilets. Many households have to travel 200 meters or more to access water, meaning they can only use as much water as they can carry. Informal settlements make up 14 percent of the city’s population, yet use less than four percent of the water.[17][18] All of this just a 30-minute drive away from Camps Bay, where the rich were topping off their private pools. This capitalist pattern of the poor being punished for the greed of the wealthy is no new concept, but the drought has emphasized just how twisted the dynamic really is.

Cape Town might get lucky this time. The winter months are close, and it is predicted that they’ll bring substantially more rain than past years.

But this threat isn’t going away, not for Cape Town and not for the rest of the world

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either. Climate change’s impacts are real and permanent, and governments will need to create plans to proactively address them. And while the situation in South Africa may have been severely mishandled, at least it can be used as a cautionary tale. Plus, if there is one bright side to all this, it’s that people really are capable of adapting their behavior to suit the common good. As the drought worsened in Cape Town, citizens stepped up to do their part, no matter how small. Unwashed hair is a sign of commitment. Catching water from the shower and using it to flush the toilet has become common practice.[19] South Africans widely believe in the Ubuntu philosophy. It says, in a nutshell, that we’re all in this together. A person’s humanity is tied to the wellbeing and care of others as much as themselves. If governments nationwide can adopt that same policy in regards to water conservation, repeats of the Cape Town crisis might be lessened. If not, Day Zero won’t just be an ominous threat. It will be the new normal.

The world needs to understand what has gone wrong in Cape Town so that it can avoid a string of repeated failures in the future, failures that would serve to further expose global wealth disparities and further punish the vulnerable.

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[1] “Water Questions & Answers: How much water does the average person use at home per day?,” USGS, December 2, 2016. [2] “How severe is the drought? An analysis of the latest data,” GroundUp, January 18, 2018. [3] Ibid. [4] “Cape Town is approaching drought ‘Day Zero’ and climate change could be to blame,” The Independent, March 3, 2018. [5] “Cape Town looks to desalination as an option to relieve crisis,” The Cape Messenger, August 17, 2017. [6] “Mexico, Parched and Sinking, Faces a Water Crisis,” The New York Times, February 17, 2017. [7] “A Megacity Without Water: São Paulo’s Drought,” Time, October 13, 2015. [8] “Cape Town’s water crisis: driven by politics more than drought,” The Conversation, December 12, 2017. [9] “Damning report reveals Department of Water and Sanitation in crisis, and SA’s water security under serious threat,” Environmental Monitoring Group, November 27, 2017. [10] Ibid. [11] “Cape Town’s water crisis: driven by politics more than drought,” The Conversation, December 12, 2017. [12] “DA blames ANC govt for Cape Town water crisis,” The Citizen, January 25, 2018. [13] “ANC wants urgent legislature sitting to remove Zille over water crisis,” News24, January 28, 2018. [14] “Report lifts lid on inequality in Cape Town,” IOL, June 22, 2016. [15] “Poor sanitation and lousy maps contribute to Khayelitsha’s crime problems,” GroundUp, November 11, 2014. [16] “From the Inside: The Countdown to Day Zero,” The Daily Maverick, January 22, 2018. [17] “Do formal residents use 65% of Cape Town’s water, with half going to gardens & pools?” Africa Check, August 21, 2017. [18] “Cape Town's water woes nothing new for Khayelitsha, Dunoon residents,” News24, November 6, 2017. [19] “‘I only shower every third day,’ says proudly oily Zille,” Sunday Times, September 20, 2017.

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n an increasingly divided America, there is a greater need for solidarity and coalition building between communities of color. Yet, I am increasingly frustrated.

I was frustrated in high school when I had to explain, more than once, why my Asian friends couldn’t use anti-black slurs—no, ending it with an “a” doesn’t change the fact that this slur will never, in any context, be yours to reclaim. I was frustrated again when the largest wave of Asian-American activism in recent history was inspired by completely misplaced outrage, outrage that Peter Liang, a Chinese-American police officer, would be held accountable for killing Akai Gurley, an unarmed African-American man.[1] I’m frustrated now, seeing Asians and Asian Americans continue to appropriate and profit off of black culture without receiving nearly as much reproach as their white counterparts.[2] I’m frustrated with the Asian-American community, my community, for doing too little too slowly to address its deeply ingrained anti-blackness.

To understand the anti-blackness in Asian-American communities, we need to begin by looking at the historical role played by white supremacy in its creation. One of the earliest cases of pitting Asian Americans against African Americans was during the post Civil War era, when Southern plantation owners replaced former slaves with Chinese laborers in an attempt to create competition. Plantation owners argued that the Chinese laborers were “docile, submissive and hard-working, unlike African Americans.”[3] Moon-Ho Jung, associate professor of history at the University of Washington, explains that this hardly reflected the reality of what was happening, but nevertheless, the rhetoric was pushed—at the expense of two minority groups, and for the benefit of exploitative white plantation owners.

The next major tool of division was crafted in the post-WWII era: the “model minority” myth, which persists today. Asian Americans have been designated to be the example for other racial groups of how not only to overcome discrimination, but also to achieve success, through their “solid two-parent family structures,” strong and supportive social networks, and complete dedication to education.

[4] This kind of generalizing rhetoric inevitably pits Asian Americans against other racial minorities by “making a flawed comparison between Asian Americans and other groups, particularly Black Americans, to argue that racism, including more than two centuries of black enslavement, can be overcome by hard work and strong family values."[5]

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The Asian-American community is by no means the homogenous, seamless group it is often portrayed as, so it’s crucial to note who exactly this minority myth applies to and who is excluded. The myth is mainly applicable to newly immigrated Indian and East Asians, the predominant groups associated with high household incomes and academic success, and also the groups that dominate popular perceptions of Asian Americans.[6] Filipino, Vietnamese, and other South and Southeast Asians on the other hand, although making up an equal proportion of the Asian population in America, often face exclusion and discrimination from and within the community.

They have expressed sentiments that they don’t feel “welcomed and included” by the community dominated by light-skinned East Asian Americans.[7] E.J.R. David, a Filipino American and professor of psychology at the

increasing in India, Japan, and China, and the global market for skin lightening creams is estimated to reach $19.8 billion this year.[11] Jones, a professor at Duke University School of Law, also draws upon the work of Joanne Rondilla and Paul Spickard, who interestingly point out that “Asians are not necessarily seeking to become White. Rather, [Rondilla and Spickard] report ‘[t]he yearning to be light is a desire to look like rich Asians, not like Whites.’”[12] Regardless of whether the goal is to achieve whiteness or to be perceived as a rich Asian, the way of getting there is the same: a rejection of dark skin.

The model minority myth is a complex myth indeed, one that was initially created to maintain white supremacist structures and undoubtedly compounds the pre-existing colorism in Asian communities. However, the idea that the myth continues to be entirely imposed upon passive (Indian and East) Asian Americans is not only wrong, but also dangerous. To Asian Americans did not suddenly assume that those Asian Americans start succeeding because they do not benefit or in some instances studied for eight hours every day— perpetrate the myth and the “honorary whiteness” that it entails would they succeeded because they were exonerate them of any blame and allowed to succeed, post-1945, when imply that the myth is sustained it was politically and economically wholly by white power structures.

As a result of being the model beneficial for white Americans. minority, Asian Americans have access to wealth-building means that University of Alaska-Anchorage, explains other racial minority groups do not. They are that “Filipinos and other non-East Asians less likely to face housing discrimination.[13] get pulled into the Asian-American umbrella They are significantly less likely to go to jail when [they are] needed.”[8] or be targeted by police.[14][15] This should serve David argues that the divide is in part as a clear indication that the success experidue to the differences in wealth between enced by Asian Americans isn’t entirely due to the countries themselves. Many South and the cultural values mentioned previously. Yes, Southeast Asian countries are relatively a supportive family and commitment to acapoorer than China, Korea, and Japan, and as demics will increase your chances of success, a result, immigrants and their children are but it’s going to be difficult to utilize those stereotyped negatively, “often perceived as things if you’re contending with immense mail-order brides or domestic workers.”[9] institutionalized barriers on a daily basis.[16] In The internal divide is also due to the col- short, Asian Americans did not suddenly start orism that’s present in the Asian-American succeeding because they studied for eight community, which has roots tracing back hours every day—they succeeded because to Asia. In The Significance of Skin Color in they were allowed to succeed, post-1945, when Asian and Asian American Communities: it was politically and economically beneficial Initial Reflections, Trina Jones writes that the for white Americans. The structural barriers preference for ivory skin “has historical roots were lifted, honorary whiteness was granted, dating at least to the mid-nineteenth century and the “image of the hard-working Asian when upper-class Japanese men and women became an extremely convenient way to deny donned white-lead powder makeup to indi- the demands of African Americans,” especate their elite status.”[10] The belief that pale cially in the 1960s.[17] skin is a symbol of beauty and an indication of I’ve been focusing a lot on the success of socioeconomic status is still deeply ingrained Asian Americans and how they do not face in the psyche of many Asians and Asian the same structural barriers as other racial Americans. The demand for skin lightening minorities. I want to make very clear that I creams for both men and women has been am not claiming that Asian Americans do

ELENA KURAN / INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS 2020 not experience racism. As a mixed East Asian woman who attends a private university in Boston, I am aware of my privilege and try my best to check it often. Yet, it isn’t white privilege, and it will never fully protect me against the fetishization I’ve been subjected to since middle school, or near daily microaggressions reminding me that I belong to the “other.”

The model minority myth leaves little room for mistakes and as a result, Asian Americans “are less than half as likely than our non-Asian counterparts to report mental illness to their friends and/or to seek treatment.”[18] In entertainment, Asian Americans continue to be both under- and misrepresented.

It is important to recognize that Asian Americans, like all racial minority groups, experience racism in some form. However, it is equally important to recognize that the racism experienced by each group varies greatly, depending on historical, institutional, and societal factors. As Claire Jean Kim, a professor at UC Irvine points out, “Asians have been barred from entering the U.S. and gaining citizenship and have been sent to incarceration camps...but all that is different than the segregation, police brutality and discrimination that African-Americans have endured.”[19] That’s why phrases such as “we’re all people of color” while technically true, are problematic in that they erase important differences and try to equate experiences of all communities

of color. As a result, interethnic racism can be written off.

Recognizing these differences in experiences won’t lead to further division. Rather, it’s an important early step to effective coalition building. Chang Lee, a Korean American who was in LA during the Rodney King riots of 1992 and witnessed firsthand what tensions between communities of color could result in, argues that “[n]ow it's time for minority ethnic groups to talk to each other, stay bound together, understand and support each other."[20] Some activists have been about this coalition building, and we can look to them as brilliant examples. A personal favorite of mine is a photograph from Oakland, CA, 1969.

At a rally in support of Black Panther Party co-founder Huey Newton, an Asian man is holding a sign that reads, YELLOW PERIL SUPPORTS BLACK POWER. This is the sign that protesters should have been holding up after the murder of Akai Gurley, rather than the signs demanding justice for Liang. #Asians4BlackLives is another good example of how Asian Americans can stop being complicit in the systematic and institutionalized killing of black Americans. They’re a Bay Area based group that have established principles and protocols for how best to stand in solidarity with #BlackLivesMatter. Bolded on their “Who We Are” page: “We understand that our liberation depends on the liberation

of Black people.”[21] And they’re right—liberation from white supremacy is a collective struggle shared between every community of color.

So I call upon my community, a community I am proud to be a part of and want to see do better, to recognize the anti-blackness it perpetuates both internally and externally.

We are not perfect; we have been influenced by dominant racist institutions, but there’s also no excuse for complicity. It’s time to build mutual understanding through discussion, and to help each other unlearn beliefs that were instilled without our consent but nevertheless held by our complicity. We have an important role as the racial middle on the black/white binary paradigm of race that dominates mainstream understandings of race in America. As Mari Matsuda said in her speech to the Asian Law Caucus in 1990, “The middle can dismantle white supremacy if it refuses to be the middle, if it refuses to buy into racial hierarchy, and if it refuses to abandon communities of black and brown people, choosing instead to forge alliances with them.”[22] We must be vigilant not to become the “racial bourgeoise” and exploit our position at the expense of fellow people of color.[23] Rather, we must commit to using our unique position as the racial middle to contribute to the work black people have been doing for years on behalf of all people of color.

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ANTI-BLACKNESS IN ASIAN AND ASIAN-AMERICAN COMMUNITIES

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[1] Shyong, Frank. “Why this cop’s conviction brought thousands of Asian Americans into New York’s streets.” Los Angeles Times. April 13, 2016. [2] Lee, Chris. “Why We Need to Take Responsibility for Anti-Black Racism in K-Pop.” BDG. February 19, 2016. [3] Huang, Christine. “The Toll of Historically Pitting Asians Against Blacks.” HuffPost. March 29, 2017. [4] Chow, Kat. “‘Model Minority’ Myth Again Used as a Racial Wedge Between Asians and Blacks.” NPR. April 19, 2017. [5] Ibid. [6] Edlagan, Christian and Kavya Vaghul. “How data disaggregation matters for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.” Washington Center for Equitable Growth. December 14, 2016. [7] Schiavenza, Matt. “Why Some ‘Brown Asians’ Feel Left Out of the Asian American Conversation.” Asia Society. October 19th, 2016. [8] Ibid. [9] Ibid. [10] Jones, Trina. “The Significance of Skin Color in Asian and Asian American Communities: Initial Reflections.” UC Irvine Law Review Vol. 3:1105. December 2013. Pg. 1115. [11] Pe, Roger. “Yes, Asia is obsessed with white skin.” Inquirer Net. October 1, 2016. [12] Jones, Trina. “The Significance of Skin Color in Asian and Asian American Communities: Initial Reflections.” Pg. 1116. [13] Hoenig, Chris. “Housing Discrimination More Subtle, But Still Absurdly High.” DiversityInc. July 1, 2013. [14] Federal Bureau of Prisons. Inmate Race. Updated February 24, 2018. [15] Lo Wang, Hansi. “On Police Treatment, Asian-Americans Show Ethnic, Generational Splits.” NPR. April 18, 2017. [16] Tseng-Putterman, Mark (@tsengputterman). “My biggest peeve with the "model minority" is not that it's false, but that it locates (conditional) Asian American access to capital and social mobility in "cultural values" rather than systems of antiblackness, selective immigration, and Cold War imperialism.” March 13, 2018. Tweet. [17] Guo, Jeff. “The real reasons the U.S. became less racist toward Asian Americans.” Washington Post. November 29, 2016. [18] Reappropriate. “Mental Health Awareness Week: Top 10 Myths About Asian Americans and Mental Health.” October 11, 2013. [19] Chow, Kat. “‘Model Minority’ Myth Again Used as a Racial Wedge Between Asians and Blacks.” [20] Lah, Kyung. “The LA riots were a rude awakening for Korean-Americans.” CNN. April 29, 2017. [21] #Asians4BlackLives.

“Who We Are.” [22] Matsuda, Mari. “Where is Your Body? And Other Essays on Race, Gender, and the Law.” Beacon Press: Boston, MA. 1996. Pg. 150. [23] Ibid.

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JOE TACHÉ / ENTREPRENEURSHIP 2018

Black Panther AND THE EROSION OF OUR COLLECTIVE IMAGINATION

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n the weeks since I watched Black Panther, the film that, to many, reflects the magnitude of recent gains made in advancing Black representation in U.S. popular culture, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about loss in the African diaspora. About what has been gone, stolen, for centuries—to different degrees and in different ways throughout history, but uniformly stolen.

To be clear, I’m not referring to “what we’ve lost” in the hotep sense of the term. I don’t mean an ancient lineage of queens and kings. I don’t even mean the bountiful natural wealth of Africa (though, of course, that plunder has been continuous since colonizers first set foot on the continent). I’m talking about the ways in which we act in relation to one another and to the planet we live on—how we organize our communities.

Everywhere on this earth, European imperialism has corroded people of color’s historic notions of personhood, altering—if not replacing them—with isolating conceptions of race, patriarchal and transactional conceptions of love, restrictive definitions of gender and sexuality, and brutal understandings of

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justice. These dynamics present a significant challenge to those of us seeking to change society for the better. We not only have to dismantle the systems of oppression that dominate our world, but replace them with something better. Typically, we don’t learn about that “something better” in school, through mainstream media, or even from the majority of our personal experiences, which all ultimately tend to reflect the broken values of society at-large.

It’s incredibly difficult to embrace ideas that fundamentally challenge everything you’ve been socialized to believe about how society is and should be organized, but the ability to do so is one of the most captivating aspects about the history of our struggle: the Black radical imagination. When Angela Davis speaks of prison abolition, she speaks of a world she’s never lived in. When the real Black Panthers struggled for an “end to the robbery by the capitalists of our Black and oppressed communities,” many died (and many are still imprisoned) for the vision of a world diametrically opposed to anything they had ever experienced.

Through the Black radical imagination, we can disregard what our oppressors tell us about what we should value and what they deem feasible, and fully embrace a separate ideology more suitable to the needs of our people. We can run toward struggle with the belief that though we’ve never lived in the world we desire, we have the power to manifest it.

Presumably, this is why representation is powerful. Presumably, it helps us imagine a world where any Black kid can realistically dream to be Oprah or Barack Obama, or a world where Africans can thrive in an independent nation with technology superior to that of any western power. However, ultimately, what we deem “representation” today casts aside the Black radical imagination, in favor of adopting society’s predominant ideologies.

That’s why in Black Panther, T’Challa and the old guard of Wakanda had to win. The old guard reinforces the legitimacy of hierarchies (a royal family) and patriarchal power structures (the king dies and his son takes takes the throne, rather than his wife, for example), as well as a very European conception of nupoliticalreview.com

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While it’s natural for us to feel a rush of emotion when we see Black people represented in ways we’ve been denied for so long, we need to ask if this is what we really want.

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statehood (Wakandans only care to look after those who live within the country’s arbitrary borders). The old guard makes a hero out of a CIA agent—the agency that has caused catastrophic harm to Africa over the course of the past fifty years—while displaying no semblance of solidarity with the Black victims of white supremacy and imperialism all over the world.[1] Even when T’Challa tries to rectify the ills of Wakanda’s non-engagement policy, his two solutions are 1) opening a community center (asking Nakia to put her dreams on the backburner in the process) and 2) working with the UNITED NATIONS![2] T’Challa has nothing to say about mass incarceration, police brutality, U.S. imperialism, or chronic poverty. He has nothing to say about the ways in which capitalists continue to exploit Black communities in every part of the world.

The character who has the most to say about those issues was, of course, the movie’s main villain. The construction of Killmonger’s character might even tell us more about the film than that of T’Challa’s. The reason so many people are drawn to Killmonger is because he provides the most fiery (though not the only—shoutout to Nakia) interpretation of Black people’s global oppression, and the most pointed critique of Wakanda’s isolationist politics. With those ideas forming the backbone of Killmonger’s character, Black Panther would have to try very hard to portray him as a villain. So that’s what they did.

Killmonger inexplicably pairs his revolutionary ideas with nothing but contradictory

actions. He brags about his role in killing the people of Iraq and Afghanistan and destabilizing their governments on behalf of the U.S. Army, he collaborates with a white supremacist South African, and he shows a complete disregard for the humanity of the Black people who he says his heart aches for, with a particular disregard for Black women (shooting his romantic partner in cold blood and choking out a got damn old lady!). It could be argued that these contradictions simply indicate Killmonger’s fatal flaw, that he is consumed by a drive for personal revenge against the homeland that abandoned him.

Yet, Killmonger isn’t satisfied when he “kills” T’Challa and takes the throne. He actually takes steps to initiate his global revolution, which indicates that his contradictions are rooted in something more than simply a self-consuming need for personal vengeance.

Of course, Killmonger’s revolutionary plan is just as nonsensical as the rest of his actions: sending weapons to London, New York, and Hong Kong with no mention of building political consciousness, popular support, or anything of the like within actual Black communities. Just sending weapons. To unspecified groups of people. And who knew that the Black liberation struggle would build its base in Hong Kong?

Really, Killmonger is an incoherently written character with a handful of awesome lines.

That’s the way it had to be in order for him to function as a villain. And Marvel (owned by Disney, one of the biggest companies in the Spring 2018

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grown significantly in the past fifty-ish years, but simultaneously, the gap between rich and not rich is widening, and the median wealth of Black families has actually decreased over the past 30 years.[3] Black elites, who tend to favor reformist if not conservative politics, have joined the ranks of the few who benefit off the backs of the many. Somehow we consider this representation “progress” compared to a time when the most well-known Black Americans were those who participated in widespread international struggle against the ills of capitalism, white supremacy, imperialism, and other systems of oppression.

Black Panther is a continuation of this trend toward the idolization of representation in “elite” spheres. A small number of people profit from the movie, the messaging of which reinforces a backward political paradigm, all with the blessing of a huge swath of our community. Black Panther is the pinnacle of our contemporary understanding of representation and a manifestation of the limits of this approach.

At the end of the day, we’ve assigned Black Panther such cultural significance because it

captures our collective imagination. It does so because so many of us have been unwittingly conditioned to move away from our radical tradition and adopt the broken values of American society. Conditioned to view the existence of Black faces in high places as a sign of progress, as if those high places aren’t anti-Black at their core. So we have a choice: to be content seeking out places where we can fit into this fundamentally broken society, or to reignite our radical imagination, to define real ways to improve our people’s collective standing in this world, and to struggle toward that vision. The latter will be more difficult, of course, but that’s the tradition we come from.

Glorifying elites and seeking validation in the current system? We can let the colonizers keep that.

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world) damn sure wasn’t going to release a movie in which a revolutionary was the hero.

So then what is the message of Black Panther?

That a select few Black people can be kings and queens? That the CIA and the United Nations are our friends? That radicals are irrational and bloodthirsty? That a Fortune 500 company making hundreds of millions of dollars by commodifying Blackness is somehow a win for our communities?

We need to be critical of what we mean when we speak about the value of representation. While it’s natural for us to feel a rush of emotion when we see Black people represented in ways we’ve been denied for so long, we need to ask if this is what we really want.

Do we want to assimilate into a society that we know is fundamentally broken? If it seems as though I’m assigning too much significance to a comic book movie, Black American political development in the years since the decline of widespread radical activity says otherwise.

We have more Black academics, politicians, celebrities, and businesspeople than at any other point in U.S. history. The number of Black Americans in the “economic elite” has

THE CAUSE FOR,

VICTIM OF,

Note: For obvious reasons, I centered the experiences of Black people in this piece, but because the allure of capitalistic individualism is seemingly ubiquitous, I truly believe these ideas apply to all colonized people.

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GABRIEL MORRIS / POLITICS, PHILOSOPHY, AND ECONOMICS & COMMUNICATION STUDIES 2021

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or five years of my life, I lived openly and unapologetically as a gay man. Twelve years old and gay as all hell, I was not a typical middle-school student you would find in 2012, even in my hometown of Long Beach in Southern California. And when the world didn’t end that December, I thought, “Shit, now I really gotta figure this out.”

After downloading Grindr at thirteen, I was exposed early to hyper-sexualization, fat-phobia, transphobia, and every phobia or insult you could find under the sun. Even with all of these faceless torsos and all of the budding promise of promiscuity and connection, I felt empty; I was lonely. Loneliness, typically internalized from community, was something I felt almost leap from within me to fill every corner of my burnt orange bedroom. Where was this coming from? Why did I feel so alone?

The Oxford English Dictionary defines loneliness as “the quality of being unfrequented and remote; isolat[ed].”[1] This definition is too basic for my standards because loneliness, at least as it stands in the gay

community, can be found almost everywhere: at the gay bar, at the club, in the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies classroom, or in a bed, shared. The cause of this distinct loneliness, however, is not a direct result of being attracted to people of the same gender, but the disparate nature that comes along with being a gay man—an otherness that is only perpetuated by existing and functioning within the predetermined hyper-masculine spheres made by and for straight men.

This deep feeling of inadequacy and isolation that is felt by gay men has come from our failure to define our own spheres and spaces. For many gay men, it can feel like masculinity is presented on a binary spectrum, with hyper masculine norms and queer identity lying on opposite ends. This loneliness is a product of existing in the “no man's land” between these two worlds. Unfortunately, I find that this rigid structure in many spaces

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Loneliness, at least as it stands in the gay community, can be found almost everywhere: at the gay bar, at the club, in the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies classroom, or in a bed, shared.

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[1] “Four more ways the CIA has meddled in Africa,” BBC, May 17, 2016. [2] Morley, Daniel, “The United Nations: a tool of imperialism,” In Defence of Marxism, February 26, 2016. [3] Dedrick Asante-Muhammed, Chuck Collins, Josh Hoxie, and Emanuel Nieves, “The Ever-Growing Gap,” August 2016.

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with gay loneliness, the real epidemic, is that gay people are trying to be something that they are not—straight. More specifically, they are trying to model their relationships after straight ones and are ultimately trying to fit hyper-masculine norms as men. Shrugging off the “Who’s the man, and who’s the woman?” commentary that comes with the disclosure of many homosexual relationships halts any space for fruitful discussion on the topic.

“Well, Susan, we are both men. That’s kind of the point.”

There’s a toxic idea that gay male bodies are “up for negotiation” or “purchase,” as Kris Kidd recently recounted in his column #ELSEWHERE, and this all ties back to heteronormative maleness.[5] “Don’t wanna have sex? Maybe just oral.” Hard no’s are seldom listened to. Gay male bodies are tied to female bodies in their supposed femininity, with femininity seen as weakness seen as prey.

Predator and prey models are not the foundations of any good relationship.

But isn’t this an intra-community issue?

No. This heteronormative and homogenous performance of queerness is largely projected onto the LGBTQIAP+ community by straight peers, family, friends, and even self-proclaimed allies. It is an important issue today not only because of the risk that queer people

are at in the U.S. under the Trump administration, but also because of the recent human rights abuses against gay men globally, who are now being sought out and tortured in concentration camps in Chechnya.[6] Gay people, their identities, their lives, their fundamentality, and even their existence, are under attack.

The gay community should be a place of warmth and acceptance in this time of emergency, but for many, it remains isolating.

The first line of action in fixing this epidemic starts with the recognition of gay men as people with different sets of needs, and as people deserving of human rights and recognition much the same. It then continues with liberation for and from ourselves and these harmful ways of thinking. It is not about further othering, but about further introspection and recognition. This performance, the performance of trying to fit circles into square-shaped holes, is not at all unique to the gay community, but one that is learned from different historically othered communities in society.

The minority stress model, while maybe not fully applicable to gay men, hinges on societal domination. This model’s effect can be seen taking its insidious toll on different groups of minorities and can affect everything from their physical health to their emotional

For many gay men, it can feel like masculinity is presented on a binary spectrum, with hyper masculine norms and queer identity lying on opposite ends.

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is both suffocating and near impossible to dismantle.

Gay people statistically are two to ten times more likely to commit suicide than their nonLGBTQIAP+ counterparts.[2] According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), negative attitudes toward gay men from the notion of straightness as “regular” and “right,” “add to poor mental health and poor coping skills, such as substance abuse, risky sexual behaviors, and suicide attempts” of gay men.[3] I can relate to all of the aforementioned.

The opaqueness of this issue, however, is less known. This sweeping epidemic of gay loneliness has awful outcomes, but the source of it is left for discussion and much disagreement.

Some, like Michael Hobbes, who initially turned me on to this topic in his long-form essay “Together Alone,” hypothesize that the loneliness epidemic comes from the gay community itself, a product of inbred fighting and cattiness that leaves everyone worse off.

[4] I recognize this conflict as an issue, but I do not think that this explanation gets to the root of the problem. I find the take that the gay community is either too weak or malicious to participate in conflict resolution to be doused with internalized homophobia. The real issue

and psychological well-being. While not a largely studied phenomenon, it is one whose outcomes are impossible to ignore.

For example, the otherness felt by black women and the burden they have been endowed with by society as non-male and non-white severely affects something that may not be expected: their likelihood of cancer. African-American women are, shockingly, at twice the risk of cervical cancer when compared to white women according to a study from the Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute.[7] It is impossible to unlink the effects that otherness in society can have on us, on our bodies, and on our wellbeing. Similarly, gayness is also dominated by straightness institutionally, practically, and politically.

What this means for the gay community is that actions need to be taken and taken now.

We need to recognize, react to, and reconcile with the issues we have. We, as a gay community, need to create our own script—our own set of norms, our own type of relationships, and legitimize those for ourselves. The straight institution and idea of marriage, family, baby, one man, one woman has not worked out even for those for whom it was made, with about 46.4 percent of marriages ending in divorce as of 2014 according to the CDC.[8] We need powerful ascriptions of commitment for gay men—boyfriends who have been together for

fifteen years, polyamorous gay couples who raised amazing and functional kids together— that may not be marriage. I do not find myself, a single gay queer person, in the position to decide what these should be.

What the gay community ultimately needs is self-determination. But as a group without much institutional power or backing, self-determination in the current sociopolitical climate is an uphill battle. Our gendered patterns need to be recognized more as patterns than prescriptions and actionable items, as they are by many in the field of gender research.[9] Scholars in the field of gender and communication do not see gender and the way human beings communicate our gender as much of a prescription anymore, something to be followed strictly and to a T. Rather, they see it much more as a hopscotch course, something we can hop through, inside and outside of as we explore, grow, and learn. Gender should not be a pill we take but an outfit we try on.

This is not to conflate gayness of sexuality to queerness of gender, though I believe the two to be correlated.

While I ultimately recognize the separation between gender identity and sexual orientation, I think the elixir to toxic masculinity comes with taking them as a package, gayness and maleness, when they exist concurrently.

When one takes a critical look at sexuality, a critical look at gender usually follows; it

did with my own gender identity, as shown through my experience coming out as non-binary at age seventeen, the result of an exploration I do not believe would’ve occurred sans my queering sexuality. This marked the end of my identity as a gay man, but nowhere near the end of my gay loneliness.

Gay men should not be the butt of jokes, nor should they be subject to “gayface.”[10] Their identity and privilege, while always subject to male privileges, is largely achieved through the discarding of many other identities they may hold. Any take on gayness and maleness must be intersectional to do the difficult cognitive work of understanding and empathizing.

The ability to define our own legal and casual relationships needs to be left in the hands of individuals, not systems, websites, or mobile applications. While having our community and a multitude of ways to engage with one another at our fingertips, it is imperative to edit our mode of usage. We must be critical consumers and use the tools we have for coalition building and to have an accessible, inclusive conversation. I believe the gay community can learn a lot from our foremothers of color, who used this mode of organizing to make powerful change and create fantastic and inclusive definitions.[11] At the end of the day, gay loneliness is not our fault, but it is our problem.

[1] “Loneliness.” English Oxford Living Dictionaries. [2] Hottes, Travis Salway, Ferlatte, Olivier, and Dulai, Joshun. “Preventing Suicide Among Gay and Bisexual Men: New Research & Perspectives.” Academia. September, 2016. [3] “Gay and Bisexual Men's Health.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. February 29, 2016. [4] Hobbes, Michael. “Together Alone: The Epidemic of Gay Loneliness.” Highline: The Huffington Post. March 02, 2017. [5] Kidd, Kris. "ASSHOLES." NAKID. April 10, 2017. [6] Eleftheriou-Smith, Loulla-Mae. “More than 100 gay men 'sent to prison camps' in Chechnya.” Independent Digital News & Media. April 11, 2017. [7] Hodge, Jacqueline. Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute. “African-American Women: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow.” July 1995. [8] “National Marriage and Divorce Rate Trends.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. November, 23, 2015. [9] Wood, Julia T., and Natalie Fixmer-Oraiz. Gendered Lives: Communication, Gender, & Culture, 12th Ed. Boston: Cengage Learning, 2016. [10] Crenshaw, Kimberle. "Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color." Stanford Law Review 43, no. 6 (1991): 1294.

[11] Hooks, Bell. feminism is for everybody: passionate politics. New York: Routledge, 2015.

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NEIHA LASHARIE / POLITICAL SCIENCE & INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS 2018

The Performativity of the AntiHuman Trafficking Regime I n my previous column, I touched upon the fraught history of the international counter-trafficking regime, including the rhetoric of white slavery, the Mann Act, and the Alien Act. This installment will focus on international legislative actions on human trafficking and the continued impact of moral panics and crusades on trafficking rhetoric.

Before I begin, I don’t want to seem as if I’m undervaluing the very real threat of trafficking faced by many people. Having grown up in Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates, I know intimately how easy it is for individuals to be lured into exploitative circumstances for labor or sex. But sensationalism does not serve any cause well, and even the best-intentioned among us can be misled by exaggeration and misinformation. I’m still in the process of unlearning much of what I have been socialized into accepting; I hope to pay that process forward.

While the League of Nations is largely considered a failure as an institution in mainstream international relations thought (and certainly, it did disappoint in many arenas), it was also a trailblazer in disease control, (social) epidemiology, labor rights, and—for better or for worse—many other social arenas.

The League of Nations also coincided nicely with the emergence of social interest groups, civil society, and the first wave of feminism.

Within this context, it makes sense that an Advisory Committee on Traffic in Women and Children (CTW) would be instituted and populated by burgeoning feminists—specifically, feminist abolitionists.[1] Abolitionism in the context of human trafficking and sex work refers to the bloc that sees sex work as necessarily exploitative of people and, as such, seeks the prohibition of sex work in all its forms. The foil to this camp is the sex work-as-labor or regulationist camp.

Increasingly, the regulationist camp has been lobbying hard to preserve the rights of sex workers and make a distinction between sex work and sex trafficking. Regardless, much of

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the early discourse on traffic and sex work was dominated by the abolitionist camp, which “sought emancipation for women through freedom from male sexual double standards.”[2] Abolitionism was avowedly a feminist ideal, but one that nonetheless upheld the tradition of controlling women’s bodies and actions along commonly held beliefs of purity, what Doezema and other commentators have called the madonna or virgin/whore dichotomy.[3] The CTW did indicate a move away from the rhetoric of white slavery and toward traffic, as the name of the committee itself implies, though scholars like Kozma posit that “[t]he CTW like the League [of Nations] as a whole, was mostly reproducing colonial and racial power relations.”[4] The 1933 International Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Women adopted the abolitionist agenda almost entirely, casting the question of consent and autonomy aside in any situation where a “third party” was privy. As archaic as this may seem, large states like Brazil uphold this definition of trafficking even today.[5][6][7] This act of lumping multiple offenses with trafficking—most notably, human smuggling and (“modern-day”) slavery—goes against the legal concept of fair labelling, and muddies paradigms of prosecution and victim-centricity. The concept of fair labelling and its relation to human trafficking will be discussed in the next installment of this column.

The 1949 Trafficking Convention was the first to be established under the auspices of the then-newly minted United Nations—and, as Gallagher points out, was the only instrument of the international counter-trafficking regime for about fifty years, until the current reign of the Palermo Protocols (2000).[8][9] Notably, the 1949 Convention focused specifically on sex trafficking and, although championed by abolitionists, did not mandate states to punish sex work—only to exert social and economic pressure to guide potential sex workers away

from potential exploitation within the illegitimate sex industry.[10] It also moved away from specifically gendered language; and while it did not address labor trafficking in any form, the acceptance that men are also vulnerable to sexual exploitation is notably progressive.

The advent of the Palermo Protocol after half a century of ebbs and flows in the counter-trafficking regime—and in the social and moral psyche of the cause’s champions—was monumental in its significance. It is also significant that the body within which the

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Prosecution is deeply necessary, but true justice— restorative, rehabilitative, life-affirming— must be victim-centered.

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Palermo Protocol was debated and instituted was none other than the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). As Janie Chuang argues, this puts the contemporary counter-trafficking regime first and foremost under the jurisdiction of criminal law rather than international human rights law.[11] And while the Palermo Protocol is certainly the most inclusive trafficking legislation to date, encompassing labor exploitation in addition to sexual exploitation, as well as traffic among all genders, its spirit was that of migration-management and border law enforcement. As such, scholars and human rights

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activists have been disappointed by the lack of victim-centricity in the Protocol’s provisions and prosecution mechanisms.[12][13] As Doezema points out, much of the language in the Palermo Protocol was taken from previous Conventions beholden to the supposedly dead rhetoric of white slavery and the still very much alive and kicking abolitionist movement. Not just that, but the abolitionist camp—branded as the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women (CATW)—was dominating negotiations behind the scenes against the regulationist camp, the Human Rights Caucus, more popularly known as the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women Just the names of both camps clues the reader into how gendered the conversation on traffic remains to this day, and how deeply the idea of moral and sexual purity is ingrained in our collective moral conscience.

The Directive 2011/36/EU (on preventing and combating trafficking in human beings and protecting its victims) similarly offers hollow hope for true justice. While the Directive emphasizes the importance of providing free legal assistance to victims of human trafficking and prohibits punishing victims for crimes committed under the duress of trafficking, it only mandates compensation to victims of trafficking within the existing restitution mechanisms of the member state in question. This begs the question: What if

the state doesn’t have an existing restitution mechanism?[14] How does this lend itself to treatment of victims? And what discrepancies are there in the compensation of victims of the various trafficking situations that can exist?

For example, a cursory look through KoK e.v.’s database of German case law regarding sex trafficking indicates that victims of sex trafficking are not compensated without proven bodily harm—and labor traffic victims not at all.[15] This is specific to the data examined, but the evidence is still extremely worrying.

This isn’t to undermine the ubiquity of gendered sexual violence and abuse, but to underscore how moral panics and the policing of femme bodies go hand in hand on a stage as varied and diverse as the United Nations.

It doesn’t take a lot of mental gymnastics to think that perhaps the performativity of the fight against trafficking is damaging. Between the commonly-cited 3 P’s of the fight against trafficking—prosecution, prevention, protection—“protection” is the hastily plugged-in nightlight to a child afraid of the monster under their bed, and the emphasis on “prosecution” is the fast-acting Nyquil to our moral outrage. Prosecution is deeply necessary, but

true justice—restorative, rehabilitative, life-affirming—must be victim-centered. If not, then what’s the point of our more-than-a-centuryold outrage? What of the many unsung, underrepresented victims of labor trafficking? It is telling that victims of labor trafficking in the United States are compensated under the label of “defrauding the United States” rather than the existing offense of labor trafficking. (This also coincides with the soon-to-be-discussed conversation on fair labelling).

If we truly mean and intend to situate victims at the center of the counter-trafficking movement, we need to reevaluate our relationship with and perceptions of human trafficking as a phenomenon, and unpack all that comes with the term “traffic in human beings.”

Whether that’s letting go of centuries-old views of purity and women’s protection, or understanding that men can be and are vulnerable to exploitation, or shifting toward truly restorative and reparative justice, one thing is clear: Understanding the hitherto trajectory of any justice movement is crucial for ensuring its efficacy.

[1] Kozma, Liat. Global Women, Colonial Ports: Prostitution in the Interwar Middle East. Albany: SUNY Press (State University of New York Press), 2017. [2] Doezema, Jo. Sex Slaves and Discourse Masters: The Construction of Trafficking. London ; New York : New York: Zed Books; Distributed in the USA exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. [3] Ibid. [4] Kozma, Liat. Global Women, Colonial Ports: Prostitution in the Interwar Middle East. Albany: SUNY Press (State University of New York Press), 2017. [5] Doezema, Jo. Sex Slaves and Discourse Masters: The Construction of Trafficking. London ; New York : New York: Zed Books; Distributed in the USA exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. [6] Gallagher, Anne. The International Law of Human Trafficking. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010. [7] Weitzer, Ronald. “Human Trafficking and Contemporary Slavery.” Annual Review of Sociology 41, no. 1 (August 14, 2015): 223–42. [8] Doezema, Jo. Sex Slaves and Discourse Masters: The Construction of Trafficking. London ; New York : New York: Zed Books; Distributed in the USA exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. [9] Gallagher, Anne.

The International Law of Human Trafficking. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010. [10] Ibid. [11] Chuang, Janie. “Exploitation Creep and the Unmaking of Human Trafficking Law.” The American Journal of International Law 108, no. 4 (October 2014): 609–49. [12] Ibid. [13] Doezema, Jo. Sex Slaves and Discourse Masters: The Construction of Trafficking. London ; New York : New York: Zed Books; Distributed in the USA exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. [14] Council Directive 2011/36/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 5 April 2011 on preventing and combating trafficking in human beings and protecting its victims, and replacing Council Framework Decision 2002/629/JHA. Official Journal of the European Communities L 101/1 15.4.2011. [15] KOK-Bundesweiter Koordinierungskreis gegen Menschenhandel e.V. “Database of Case Law.”

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Columns

ELLIE MACLEAN / JOURNALISM 2023

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his article is the initial report from a column that aims to explore politics, history, and culture, specifically as they pertain to race and gender. It will probe subjects such as gun violence, child marriage, domestic violence, and racial brutality. It will examine these ideas, and the issues that ensue, on both a local and global scale. Its goal is to directly and candidly address these matters in order to contribute to the conversation and deepen understanding of the topics at hand.

The city of Boston is well known for many reasons. People across the country know the capital of Massachusetts for its myriad of Dunkin’ Donuts locations, exceptional seafood, and fierce patriotism that can be traced all the way back to the early days of American colonialism. But perhaps the most notable facet of Boston is that it is home to 35 colleges and universities, marking the city as one that celebrates knowledge, progress, and higher education.[1] However, known to few, and in stark contrast to the values just listed, Boston ranks seventh on a list of the most racially segregated metropolitan areas in the United States.

[2] Despite the widespread notion that Boston is a liberal city, it has historically struggled

with mitigating—and ultimately obliterating—racial divides.

In examining its past, it becomes clear that Boston has maintained racially discriminatory practices since it was founded. Even within the last century, there exists a pattern of resistance to furthering racial equality.

For proof of this blatant hesitancy, look no further than one of America’s most beloved sports teams that calls Boston home. Under the supervision of Tom Yawkey, the Red Sox were the last Major League Baseball team to integrate, waiting until 1959 to accept AfricanAmerican players.

Though he never publicly shared his reasoning, one can assume that Yawkey’s decision not to sign Jackie Robinson when he tried out for the Red Sox in 1945 had much to do with race. In fact, Yawkey’s staunch refusal to sign on any African-American players over the course of 12 baseball seasons beginning in 1947, when every other team in America was integrating, says volumes in regards to his stance on the issue.

Even after integrating the majority of societal institutions, Boston’s current cultural focus still fails at recognizing people of color, specifically African Americans. One of the most compelling pieces of evidence

of this lies within a rather customary part of Massachusetts’ geography: street names.

Data from state directories reveals that several streets throughout Massachusetts are named after historical figures. For example, 191 streets are named after Adams, 193 are named in honor of Washington, and 220 pay homage to Lincoln.[3] In contrast, few streets are named after African-American leaders, and of the few that are, only a handful of them are placed in the center of Boston. Instead, the majority of streets named in the honor of African Americans are found in neighborhoods that are home to a larger population of Black residents.[4] Take for instance, Roxbury, Massachusetts, which the City of Boston website names “the heart of Black culture.”[5] It is here, where figures gathered as recently as 2015 indicate a population in which 61.3 percent of residents identify as Black, that one can easily find streets with names like Malcolm X Boulevard and M.L.K. Jr. Boulevard.[6][7] While seemingly only a detail in the grand scheme of things, something as simple as street names calls greater issues into consideration. City planners were quick to commemorate the lives of slave masters, yet made little progress in acknowledging key individuals who faced racial discrimination

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The Importance of Inclusive Memorialization: Boston’s Struggle with Racial Inequality

and fought back.

The reality is that keeping streets named after slaveholders—and other debatably racist individuals—in place instills a societal norm characterized by a casual dismissiveness of intolerance. Erasing these names from our streets would not obliterate the fact that brutal exploitation and oppressive tendencies were, and still are, a commonality in America, even among our most respected leaders.

Rather, taking them down would show that we actively denounce their reprehensible actions.

Though possible, renaming every street that celebrates a problematic leader is a daunting task. However, it would be a relatively easy act of reformism if the intersections of these streets were to be named after figures who dedicated the majority of their time to fighting the persistence of the aforementioned racial injustices. By juxtaposing these two categories of historical figures, Boston’s streets would, at long last, move toward becoming conclusively integrated.

Physical and public commemorations are instrumental, as they prompt us to discuss and recognize important moments and figures in history.

By placing the names of prominent African Americans in the center of life in Boston, citizens would be forced to recognize and familiarize themselves with the names of figures who have initiated progress in the realm of racial equality. While Yawkey Way is proudly regarded as one of Boston’s most important historic sights, it commemorates a racist figure in this city's history. Still, it is safe to assume that locals could more readily describe Yawkey’s legacy than that of most African-American leaders who actively fought segregation in America.

To offset this imbalance, street intersections should be named after leading members of the Civil Rights Movement. For example, the student nonviolent coordinating committee (SNCC), which was formed to give Black people a greater platform and stronger voice over the course of the Civil Rights Movement, deserves more open recognition. Their group promoted integration that took steps toward a social order of justice permeated by love.[8] Key figures in the movement like Ella Baker, who organized the conference that

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led to the foundation of SNCC, or Boston native Peggy Dammond, who worked with the movement in southwest Georgia, merit more recognition. It was their activism that successfully helped pave the road to increased racial equality across the country, and thus they deserve to be memorialized in the very structure of Boston’s streets. They were leaders in a movement whose effects echoed throughout the entire nation, including the state of Massachusetts. Baker and Dammond’s actions truly served to deepen the connection among civil rights activists in the North and South, particularly in Boston, where racial tension persisted.

Backlash against this decision would ostensibly arise, as people are often opposed to large-scale municipal changes. In fact, violent protests have erupted as a result of much smaller changes, such as during the removal of a statue depicting Confederate General Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville, Virginia,

argue that the remembrance of these figures need not be forced on passersby, and that the change is unnecessary.

On the contrary, it is imperative that more cities in America make tangible changes in order to commend the bravery and intensity with which African Americans fought during the Civil Rights Movement and otherwise.

Naming street intersections after these figures is a viable tactic to ensure that people recall the heroism of these influential individuals.

In memorializing these figures with street intersections named in their honor, Boston would summon a vision of America that is not only striving to achieve and maintain racial equality, but also one where all Americans are better educated on the history of AfricanAmerican oppression and justice.

Increased public education about history that is truthful and inclusive of African Americans is ever more imperative in a political climate that is steeped with ignorance.

When we are not taught about these topics, we are not encouraged to respect or admire the people they include. As a result, we may continue to foster the negative stereotypes that are prevalent in many media portrayals of African Americans.

Lack of cultural education leads to racial prejudices that have maintained the extents and frequency of injustices against Black people in America.

These range from police brutality to mass incarceration to microaggressions. By excluding Black history and continuing to celebrate racist individuals, America has effectively emboldened people to use the kind of hateful rhetoric that dominates the current presidential administration. Increasing the presence of inclusive memorials is a step towards a more diverse and in-depth education for America and the world at large.

Thousands of African Americans pursued change and equality tirelessly throughout the Civil Rights Movement and beyond. If Boston seeks to maintain its perceived status as a liberal city, it is time that we consider memorializing these figures, so that one day they might be as well known as our love for fast food coffee joints.

Despite the widespread notion that Boston is a liberal city, it has historically struggled with mitigating—and ultimately obliterating—racial divides. last August. Though relatively less controversial than Lee’s statue, Boston residents and business owners might have qualms with a sudden alteration to their street addresses.

Beyond complaints of mild inconveniences imposed on common citizens, however, these changes would most likely receive deeply adverse reactions from political extremists.

This is especially plausible when considering the fact that Massachusetts is home to more hate groups than any other state in the New England area. Of these, several are classified as neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups.[9] Indubitably, these organizations would find the memorialization of Black leaders infuriating. Being that they are united by their intolerance of racial equality, these factions would likely find the diversification of street names offensive and asinine. Members would

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[1] Meade, Peter. "Boston by the numbers Colleges and Universities." Boston Planning & Development Agency. January 2010. [2] Kent, Alexander, and Thomas C. Frohlich. “America’s Most Segregated Cities.” August 19, 2015. [3] Lefrak, Mikaela. “Most Common Street Names in Massachusetts.” Boston.com, The Boston Globe, June 20, 2014. [4] “City of Boston Streetbook,” City Works, July 2017. [5] "Roxbury." Boston.gov. October 11, 2017. [6] "Race and Ethnicity in Roxbury, Boston, Massachusetts (Neighborhood)." Race and Ethnicity in Roxbury, Boston, Massachusetts (Neighborhood) - Statistical Atlas. [7] "City of Boston Streetbook." April 26, 2016. [8] Constitution of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee Originally adopted spring 1960, Raleigh, North Carolina As revised 29 April 1962. [9] “Hate Map.” Southern Poverty Law Center, November 18, 2017.

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