Space

WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY

POLITICAL

REVIEW

31.3 | November 2019 | wupr.org

Table of Contents Space

National

International

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The Internet: a Cybernetic Catastrophe Jaden Lanza

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Theme Art Reshad Hamauon

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Theme Art Haejin An

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Space and Power Grethe Andersen

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Mourning a Common Space Seinna Ruiz

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Our Stories, Our Voices, Our Choice Yanny Liang

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Theme Art Jessica Zepeda

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The Politics of Taking Up Space: An Interview with Naomi Savin of @ DietCultureSucks Hanna Khalil

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Space Invasion: An Ongoing Violation of Cultural Boundaries Faith Ngund

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On Discussing the Hong Kong Protests

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By Name and Story Elia/Longyu Zhang

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Theme Art Haejin An

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Stressful News: Keeping Mental Space for Headlines Elena Murray

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A Prespective on America's Healthcare System Jonathan Romero

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The Historical Implications of Impeachment for 2020 Rachel Olick-Gibson

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Justin from Canada Clare Grindinger

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A Plea for Uyghurs Jacob FInke

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Theme Art Haejin An

Editors' Note Executive Director Ishaan Shah Editors-in-Chief Hanna Khalil Sophie Attie Design Director Catherine Ju Staff Editors Max Lichtenstein Christian Monzon Jon Niewjik Rohan Palacios Features Editors Nick Massenburg Megan Orlanski Assistant Design Directors Leslie Liu Jinny Park Programming Director Liza Sivriver Treasurer Natalia Rodriguez Web Editor Adler Bowman Assistant Web Editor Yanny Liang

Dear Reader, On every scale, considerations of space can spark philosophical, political and personal debate. The exploration of our outermost galaxies, the physical boundaries we set with our bodies and the figurative space we take up with our voices are all considerations of space that challenge us to think critically about the world we live in and the one we want to create.

Space can be both material and intangible. It can be both a boundless area -- like the endless mental space we each harbor—or a confined zone—like the interior designs of our homes. No matter how you look at it, space is all around us.

In this issue of WUPR, our writers explored the choices we make in navigating the spaces we occupy, enter, and explore. In her feature, Sienna Ruiz reflects on the unique physical and social space cultivated by the Wash U Co-Op, looking at its past, present and future, as it undergoes a major transformation. Faith Ngundi tackles the issue of gentrification and the threat it poses to the spaces of resistance constructed over time by marginalized groups. Hanna Khall presents a discussion with founder of Instagram account @DietCultureSucks, Naomi Savin, on the topic of the space given to different bodies in society and on social media.

Other writers explored more amorphous manifestations of space. Yanny Liang discusses the necessity of giving marginalized people the choice to speak about their oppression, as opposed to being forced to share their insight. Elena Murray offers thoughtful consideration of the mental space needed for keeping up with the intense modern news-cycle. The question of the potential dangers of internet spaces is taken on by Jaden Lanza, as he explores their potential in shaping public opinion. And as always, we have writers covering national and international topics going beyond our theme. Clare Grindinger discusses what is at stake in Canada’s most recent election, and in the latest installment of her Race to the White House column, Rachel Olick-Gibson reflects on the implications of impeachment in 2020.

We hope that our writers and artists will allow for you to reflect on the spaces we take up, the spaces that surround us, and the spaces we have yet to discover.

Warmly,

Front Cover Avni Joshi, staff artist Theme Spread Thomas Fruhauf Feature Designs Catherine Ju Leslie Liu Jinny Park

Hanna Khalil and Sophie Attie Editors-in-Chief

WU Political Review

The Internet: a Cybernetic Catastrophe Jaden Lanza

S

ince the invention of internet in 1993, human communication will never again be the same. Adding to the promising yet pernicious effects of globalization in the latter half of the twentieth century, the internet is a new discursive space of unparalleled size and capability. While it contains unbelievable amounts of readily available knowledge, it has also become an unregulated space for misinformation and propaganda. A critical dilemma of twenty-first century policymakers will be how to properly manage the internet—a space that is increasingly portending worrisome effects.

The last decade saw vast increases in the volume of people using the internet daily, especially social media. The number of Facebook users from 2009 to 2019 increased twentyfold, rising to an astonishing 2.4 billion active users.

Unfortunately, this dramatic proliferation of internet users has increased the amount of people exposed to false, unvetted information presented as truth. The nature of online discourse allows for disparate and uncommon ideas to gain unexpected traction that are not only unsupported by the public at large but are bolstered by fabricated information conventionally known as “fake news.”

A useful way to understand how fake news is spread is through its most common medium: a meme. I refer not to the popular, funny image macros; coined by Richard Dawkins, a meme can also be “an idea, behavior, style, or usage that spreads from person to person within a culture.” Dawkins is talking about ideas. As a prominent evolutionary biologist, he compares the imitation and replication of memes to the way that Darwinian evolution operates in biology. The strongest memes survive and repetitiously reproduce. A meme is any unit of cultural transmission across time and space—meaning the most interesting, provocative ideas will dominate popular discourse regardless of the content of its information. This is not just a phenomenon of cyberspace—memes as a means of

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spreading information have always been attractive to human psychology but have nonetheless become much more advanced due to the cybernetic capabilities of the internet.

Memetics is useful for understanding how fake news spreads on the internet; it is able to exploit the most vulnerable aspects of human nature. We tend to believe either the first thing we read, information that confirms previous assumptions, or issues given more exposure on the news. What is new with the advent of the internet is anyone’s ability to publish their opinions detached from any context or accountability. Decentralized and unregulated free speech on popular social media websites like Facebook or Instagram, or forums like Reddit and 4chan, allows for extremely unorthodox groups to turn into massive communities—even if the movement’s core beliefs have little objective basis in truth. From fomenting support for terrorists, white supremacists, flat-earthers, anti-vaxxers, or even invaders of Area 51, the internet is a discursive space through which these movements gain mainstream attention.

Not only is dangerous misinformation—fake news—easily promulgated throughout the internet based on niche interests, but it is also a site of increasing cybercrime. Governments, independent hackers, and terrorists exploit digital vulnerabilities to gain access to critical and sensitive information around the world.

Cyberattacks affect both states and regular citizens alike—from the Stuxnet breach of nuclear facilities in Iran to the hacking of the US election to the Equifax data breach that cost American consumers at least $700 million in 2017.

Cybersecurity now has an elevated importance in international politics with governments fearful of future attacks with even larger consequences.

If hackers breach nuclear weapons systems, for example, it could cause global nuclear catastrophe. If key defense systems or financial systems are turned offline, hundreds of millions could be affected.

The internet is often described as a harbinger of a new age; one of unlimited freedom of information and democratized speech. Unfortunately, however, the internet has been used to manipulate public opinion and introduce radical, destructive ideologies into the mainstream that have become particularly salient in the past few years. The world today faces growing cybersecurity threats that pose risk to everyday citizens and national security, but perhaps even more worrying is the perfidious power of fake news to spread information in ways that are believable to the average consumer but never checked for validity. Fake news is as much a byproduct of the totally unregulated nature of the internet as a space, as it is a sinister project by political actors to construct public narratives in their favor.

Sadly, the internet as it exists in the status quo might simply be a failed, volatile experiment in digital communication as truth itself unravels in its domain. The great tragedy of the Information Age is that we live in a world where near infinite quantities of knowledge are available at our very fingertips—yet we are becoming even more uninformed than before.

Jaden Lanza ‘23 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. He can be reached at jadenlanza@wustl. edu.

Space

Artwork by Reshad Hamauon

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WU Political Review

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Space and Power Grethe Andersen Artwork (left) by Haejin An, staff artist

M

y seventh-grade history teacher had a reputation for being the cool teacher.

He was ridiculously passionate about his class, which was on medieval English history, but, more importantly to us, he had swords in his classroom (fake, don’t worry) and fun review games. So when he switched the focus of the class halfway through the year to medieval architecture, my classmates and I were all disappointed. We could not care less about the characteristics of Romanesque and Gothic architecture, we wanted to hear more about the gory ends that medieval kings had met (see Edmund II’s death for a particularly funny one).

Yet that class turned out to be unpredictably valuable. Anyone who has taken a class on European history knows how dominant the Catholic Church was in all aspects of life, but if you know how to read a church or cathedral, you can see physical manifestations of the effort to achieve that aforementioned socio-political dominance. Romanesque churches do not tend to have much symbolism in them, apart from decorative elements (which I will try to stay away from, as the symbolism of numbers would require pages). The architectural technology was not as advanced yet, and so the walls had to be thick and the windows had to be small in order to maintain structural integrity. But the thickness of the walls and the relative lack of light helped to make churchgoers feel protected, which was especially important given the chaos that was characteristic of the Romanesque period. This feeling of protection helped to reinforce the power of the church, as people correlated that physical protection with the protection that they felt religion offered.

But Gothic architecture is where things get extremely interesting. Some key elements of Gothic architecture include ogive arches, large stained glass windows, and flying buttresses.

All of these elements focus a churchgoer’s attention upwards, towards the light and glory of heaven that the Catholic Church was always talking about. Decorative elements are also riddled with symbolism and subliminal messages.

Crenellations, which are defensive battlements

We should always think critically about the spaces that powerful institutions create, and to do this we need to think carefully about the symbolism and feelings that are created by even the most basic elements of a space. typically seen on castles, are often also found along the outside of Gothic churches. They have no practical reason to be there, especially given the acceptance of Catholicism at this time in England. However, they are there to invoke images of a castle or a stronghold, thereby helping churchgoers feel that they are safe within a fortress of God. I came out of that history class absolutely jampacked with knowledge on how to read a church, but, as I wasn’t planning on becoming a tour guide, I felt that I had wasted my time. How would this knowledge ever serve me later on? It wasn’t until years later that I realized the broader implications of what I had learned in that class.

We should always think critically about the spaces that powerful institutions create, and to do this we need to think carefully about the symbolism and feelings that are created by even the most basic elements of a space. For the Catholic Church in medieval England, the focus was on

creating a space in which churchgoers felt protected and reminded of God’s strength and light.

But what about spaces of power in the United States?

The Oval Office, especially in the Trump administration, is a perfect example. The Atlantic took a closer look at the decor in the Oval Office and realized that Trump had tripled the typical amount of flags that normally occupy the space. Typically, two flags sit behind the Oval Office desk: one with the presidential seal and one American Flag. Trump has not only three of each, but he also has both the Marine Corps’ flag and the Army’s flag right near his desk. This superfluous amount of flags and the presence of battle flags is a huge departure from presidential tradition. Most presidents in recent history (e.g., FDR, Eisenhower, JFK, George Bush, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama) all left battle flags out of the Oval Office. Yet Trump decided to bring them back, seemingly as a way to flex his power and remind everyone of his supposed legitimacy as commander in chief during a presidency when his qualifications are questioned (and rightfully so) nearly every day.

Powerful people and institutions often transform the space that they occupy as a way of reinforcing their values and influencing the people around them. When we pay attention to those spaces, we gain insight into institutions and learn to see the world a little differently.

Grethe Andersen ‘23 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. She can be reached at grethe.andersen@ wustl.edu.

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WU Political Review

Artwork by Leslie Liu, assistant design director

hen I first moved into the Co-op, Wash U’s intentional community dedicated to cultivating a safe and non-hierarchical space on campus, what struck me most was the living memory of the space.

Walls were painted lime green and canary yellow and deep blue, filled with names and quotes written in sharpie. We could never get the thin layer of grime off the floor made from years of student’s trekking dirt into the apartment.

Old paintings and uneven chairs gathered in living rooms, standing proudly in corners despite missing legs and chipped paint. A shoddy bunk bed had been built in my room by an unknown resident, the beams so precariously balanced that I did not dare to climb on it. Every time I walked down into our basement, I lost myself in the stacks of records and piles of books that always reassured me that no matter how lost I felt, someone had lived there and had been through this struggle before me.

The WashU Co-op was conceptualized between 2003 and 2005 by architecture students Chloe Byruck and Dan Koff, who during their sophomore year, proposed starting a residential Co-op on campus as part of their self-created Social Design major. In the fall of 2003 Chloe

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and Dan pitched their idea to university administration who loved the idea and gave them funding to renovate an intentional space that fostered tight-knit social relationships. By mid 2005 renovations were complete, and until spring 2019 various students have lived in and interacted with the Co-op as an event space and living community.

My time at the Co-op has made me critically reflect on the impersonal spaces that characterize my experience at this university. As an underclassman, I had been used to a cycle of dorm life wherein one has to erase all proof of their existence in the room at the end of every year. Every day, I walk past new glass buildings and have discussions in classrooms with antiseptic white walls, all indifferent to my presence. The Collegiate Gothic style of our brick buildings which is consistently reproduced in campus construction efforts implies a historical timeline that I will never have access to and campus planning entities over which I will never have influence.

Living somewhere with a tangible history, with a memory that I could touch, see, and feel all around me, profoundly impacted my well-being. In our building that centered around the renovated basement, I found a history I could actually participate in, and it gave me the agency to alter space in a way that I had never experienced before

Space

in my time at this university. At times I burnt the meals I cooked for Thursday potlucks and filled our communal kitchen with smoke, but that hardly mattered as I served my meals to community members.

In 3W, the apartment above mine whose residents made it their mission to decorate every wall with an ever-changing mural, I painted my favorite lines of Spanish poetry and patterns of triangles that spanned continents. I hung up framed prints in my room and tacked lights along the bunk bed I slept under and finally saw myself in the structures around me. I felt like I belonged and like I was not the only one disregarded by the university. I knew I could always return to the memory we created together and to this space and to find others who shared a commitment to the goals of our community.

We are a community persisting despite immense loss, and struggling to maintain this memory as Wash U forced us out of our building at the end of Spring semester 2019. In destroying our space, Wash U reinstated the power of institutional memory that endlessly repackages the commercialized university experience for incoming classes.

What the university chooses to memorialize are the events or developments that give it a more recognizable name: our sites for the 1904 World’s Fair, our top ranked dorms, our state-of-the-art labs. The never-ending cycle of construction perpetuates the feeling that every

graduating class or torn down building was only worth as much as it could contribute to Wash U’s quest for higher prestige. Our displacement from our building hurts not only the existence of the only official affordable housing option for students, but also a different mode of memory that empowers students to manifest their visions in university spaces.

We live together in an off-campus building and intend to live by the same values as before, but it is immensely hard to do so without a common space. In the absence of university support, the Co-op primarily exists now in our hopes and the actions we take towards each other. We eat and cook together in each other’s individual apartments, constantly redefining the meanings of personal boundaries.

We enter each other’s spaces, at times stumbling and mis-stepping through another person’s carefully constructed world. We address the hurt. We come together to enact solutions. We continue to move through spaces with the weight of a new memory, one formed in the recognition of another’s tender home that they create for themselves in the image of a common space found only in our shared dreams.

Sienna Ruiz ‘20 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. She can be reached at sienna.ruiz@wustl.edu.

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WU Political Review

Our Stories, Our Voices, Our Choice Yanny Liang, assistant web editor

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few months ago, I went to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City with a friend. Framed among a display of contemporary portraits was a quote by writer and activist Audre Lorde. The quote read, “Black and Third World people are expected to educate white people as to our humanity. Women are expected to educate men. Lesbians and gay men are expected to educate the heterosexual world. The oppressors maintain their position and evade responsibility for their own actions.”

This excerpt, from her essay “Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference,” has stuck with me to this day.

In the American milieu, marginalized people have long been expected—implicitly, but sometimes also explicitly—to explain our oppression to the privileged. And when we decide not to spend our efforts coddling the privileged’s understanding, we can be villainized, our response interpreted as an unwillingness to help people understand who we are. But there is a significant difference between sharing our stories freely and having the responsibility of being educators and activists forced upon us.

The existence of our respective identities does not automatically involve roles as spokespeople on behalf of those identities.

We have the right to choose not to share our experiences. We don’t owe our oppressors anything. Should we decide to tell our stories, we reserve the right to tell them without explaining every minute detail that falls outside the privileged’s understanding of our existence.

Marginalized people can tell stories, and none of those stories need to make the oppressors feel included. They are the stories of our experiences, which may not center around the dominant group at all, so they need not include a glossary of information to make oppressors feel more comfortable at our expense.

Furthermore, the emotional labor that is involved with sharing our deeply personal experiences can be draining. As Lorde wrote, “There is a constant drain of energy which might be better used in redefining ourselves and devising realistic scenarios for altering the present and

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We have the right to choose not to share our experiences.

We don’t owe our oppressors anything. constructing the future.” Time spent explaining the situations and social dynamics that led us to our present condition is time not spent engaging in the projects and passions that could drive us forward into a better future.

Oppressors will never truly understand the oppression marginalized people have experienced because they have not lived through it. However, they can recognize their privilege and utilize it to uplift the stories that are told by minorities. Those who are privileged can be allies by listening when those who are oppressed speak up. There are a myriad of ways in which those with privilege can educate themselves if they have a genuine curiosity and truly want to be allies to the marginalized communities. Placing the responsibility for one’s ignorance on the marginalized individual is simply a way for the oppressor to evade accountability for his actions. Meanwhile, actively seeking out resources and opportunities to learn about the history and consequences of oppression demonstrates a desire and willingness to empathize and understand the roots of the oppression. It forces the oppressor to directly face the reality outside their bubble of privilege.

To be sure, it is imperative that marginalized people access the opportunities to share our experiences if we so desire. These stories, when shared willingly and openly, are what lead to discourse and generate deeper understanding of the issues at hand. They are what help those who truly want to learn. In these circumstances, marginalized people are in control of what, when, and how much of their story they would like to share. This agency provides protection

from any potentially exhausting emotional labor but still generates an environment for productive and compassionate dialogue that illuminates the privileged’s contribution to the oppression of minorities.

While this discussion is vital, it is also crucial that minorities have the opportunities to tell stories that aren’t only about their experiences with oppression. We have stories and beliefs about experiences that concern issues relating predominantly to minority communities, but our voices also need to be valued in spaces that cisgender white men have historically dominated and continue to dominate. We have interests outside of the constrains of our identities that we would like to explore. It is our experiences that imbue mainstream stories with the depth that resonate with our communities and makes us feel seen without placing our social identities at the center of the story. Representation can empower us and show us that we have the potential to thrive in spaces occupied by the majority, that we are not limited to the places where we have historically been delineated.

It is important for those who are privileged to learn about the oppression experienced by minorities. And it is even more important to use that understanding to be allies in order to help make the necessary changes to improve society.

However, the choice of whether to share our experiences belongs solely to the oppressed.

Without such agency, our stories are reduced to a commodity whose sole purpose is to ease the privileged’s conscience.

Yanny Liang ‘23 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. She can be reached at liangyanfen@wustl. edu.

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Artwork by Jessica Zepeda

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WU Political Review

Hanna Khalil, editor-in-chief Design by Jinny Park, assistant design director o r most young women, searching the #bopo tag on Instagram would transport them into a different world of images and words than on their screens a minute before.

Here, linked together by the hash-tagged abbreviation of “Body Positivity,” is a space centering bodies and discourses sidelined within a world dominated by airbrushed models, endless promotion of weight loss strategies and demonstrations of intense work-out regimens. But beyond representation, this digital space has cultivated critical conversations advocating for respect for all bodies–in media representation, healthcare, and our everyday culture. Its users share personal stories helping people practice self-compassion after a binge, model the principles of Intuitive Eating, and use professional expertise to debunk the myth that weight is synonymous with health. Through various voices, they challenge the way society normalizes the idea that only certain bodies are allowed to take up space.

speaks to over 14,000 followers. As part of WUPR’s Space Issue, I sat down with Naomi to discuss the space given to different bodies in our society, the political nature of the body acceptance movement, and the space of healing and education she has cultivated on her account.

Among these voices is Naomi Savin, a 2019 Wash U alum and founder of @DietCultureSucks, an eating disorder recovery and body acceptance Instagram account. When she was 15, Naomi developed an eating disorder, but due to the intervention of her family and doctor, she regained the weight she had lost. Years later as a WashU student, she realized that despite having considered herself “recovered,” many of the underlying issues that had caused her eating disorder persisted and continued to define her relationship to food, exercise, and her body. In March 2018, she started @DietCultureSucks as a place to share her experiences and thoughts surrounding eating disorder recovery, intuitive eating, body acceptance, and combatting diet culture and fatphobia. Today, her platform

We are saturated with diet culture, to the point where overexercise and dieting—literally depriving ourselves of life-sustaining nourishment—is really normalized. We need to recognize that eating disorders do not occur in a vacuum. Rather, we live in a culture that sets people up to demonize their bodies, and to have really troubled relationships with food and exercise—we live in diet culture.

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Hanna Khalil: To start off, I wanted to know what is your definition of “Diet Culture?” What does that mean to you and how do you define it?

Naomi Savin: For me, Diet Culture as a system of beliefs that encourages thinness at all costs and upholds a body hierarchy whereby certain bodies are valued and others are devalued or discriminated against. Diet Culture is how we’re taught to “make up for” the calories we eat by exercising. It’s how we grow up thinking that it’s normal to want to be the smallest version of ourselves. It’s how we assign morality to eating food—“I’m good for eating X, or bad for eating Y.”

HK: You mentioned that fatphobia is so rampant in our society. Could you talk about how diet culture impacts not just individual people, but everyone on a societal level?

NS: I do think this is a cultural problem. All around us, people are moralizing food, glorifying

the pursuit of thinness, and making character judgments about people based on their body size. We’re taught to be really afraid of fat--as if being being fat is the worst thing a person can be. There’s a survey where over half of the girls they talked to between 18 and 25 would rather be run over by a truck than be fat [Council on Size and Weight Discrimination]. Fatphobia— discrimination against someone solely because of their body size—is a huge part of diet culture.

Weight stigma, a consequence of fatphobia, contributes to a plethora of negative physical and mental health outcomes--so it’s ironic that people think they can shame others into better health. The thing to understand is that fatphobia hurts all of us. People in larger bodies are treated worse than people in smaller bodies, and people in smaller bodies still live in fear of gaining weight, knowing full well that our society does not look kindly upon those in larger bodies. I feel like so many people are “woke” in terms of their

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Hanna Feature Photo by Carly Hanna. She can be reached at https://carlysurfcr.wixsite.com/mysite

so much more control over our body size than we do in reality. People think that being fat is a choice and that people who are fat are necessarily unhealthy--this isn’t true. Likewise, thinner people are assumed to have the body size they do because they eat a certain way and exercise a certain way. In reality, genetics are the primary determinant of weight, alongside income, stigma, stress, access to food or lack thereof, and other

Podcast Recommendations Food Psych, Christy Harrison

awareness surrounding, for example, how racism and sexism operate to marginalize groups of people. But there is not the same awareness around fatphobia, “woke” people often are at the front lines of defending diet culture and engaging in fat-shaming behavior. I think part of the reason fatphobia and weight stigma is not taken as seriously as other forms of discrimination is that there is a misconception that we have

Fearless Rebelle Radio, Summer Innanen She’s All Fat, Sophie Carter-Khan and April Quioh

Don’t Salt My Game, Laura Thomas, PhD Love Your Bod Bod, Cara Cifelli

factors we don’t have that much control over.

HK: That’s really well said and I think that transitions well into my next question. Do you feel that the body positivity movement is a political movement? In what ways have you seen that evolve with time?

NS: I do think the body positivity movement is a political movement. And I try to be deliberate about the terms that I use describing my account—I don’t call my account a “body positivity account,” rather, it’s an eating disorder recovery and body acceptance account. Body positivity is a political movement, started by black women, rooted in the idea that all bodies should be valued equally.

The people at the forefront of that movement should be those whose bodies historically have been devalued. Despite the weight I’ve gained since recovering from an eating disorder, I’m still a thin white girl. So I don’t want to be taking up space in a movement that’s meant for bodies far more marginalized than mine. This being said, to me body positivity is about doing away with the systems that cause so many people to be dissatisfied with their bodies and to engage in behaviors like dieting

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WU Political Review it didn’t do wonders for my mental health. But because there is this great network of healthcare professionals, student activists, models, and people who are involved in the eating disorder recovery space and knowledgeable about Health At Every Size and body positivity, you can create a very positive and healing space for yourself on Instagram. I love my little platform because I get to hear from people from all over the world who are different in so many ways but who are experiencing these really visceral, emotional, big things together.

Book Recommemdations Health at Every Size by Linda Bacon, PHd Body Positive Power by Megan Crabbe You Have the Right to Remain Fat, by Virgie Tovar

The F*ck It Diet, by Caroline Dooney

and excessive exercise, that limit our happiness and our potential to invest in the things that matter. It’s beyond individuals’ recovery and exit from diet culture--we need to change the culture so that these patterns don’t keep repeating themselves in subsequent generations.

HK: Your account, @DietCultureSucks was kind of a gateway for me to realizing that there was this whole online space of people talking about body positivity in different ways. I would like to hear your take on using Instagram as a platform for spreading awareness on this issue and the opportunities and pitfalls that come along with it?

NS: Instagram can definitely be an echo chamber, so you have to be deliberate about what messages you want echoing in that chamber!

I used to follow a ton of fitness models and healthy eating gurus and you can imagine that

Instagram Recommendations @Bodyposipanda @bodyimage_therapist

@scarrednotscared @lvernon200

@ditch_the_diet @wholly_healed @allisonkimmey @chr1syharrison @jennifer rollin

@drjoshuawolrich

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Eating disorders are very isolating, so it’s powerful to realize that there are thousands of other people who are right there with us in our struggles and in our recovery. Instagram is a great tool, but I want to be clear that it can’t be the only thing pushing someone towards recovery.

Sometimes people want my account, or the ten accounts that they follow, to literally fix their eating disorder—that’s not going to happen.

I’m always pushing people towards resources like books and podcasts, because no matter how helpful the few words I can fit into an instagram post may be, recovery involves more.

Instagram can’t be the only tool in your toolkit.

HK: As the body positivity movement becomes bigger and some would say more mainstream, what direction would you like to see the movement go in? Or is there something not being talked about that you wish could be centered more?

NS: I wouldn’t want to speak for the movement, but personally I’m of the opinion that the more voices speaking up on these topics, the better.

We need more people raising awareness about the harms of diet culture and sharing their experiences, and you don’t need an online platform to do that! Your platform is your friends and your family, the clubs you’re in, and the conversations you’re a part of each day. I ultimately just want people to have the tools to bring these conversations into their everyday lives.

What’s most rewarding to me is when I’m able to take the things that I’ve learned on these online spaces and bring them into real-life conversations. To speak compassionately with people who approach me about these topics, to organize people for NEDA walks, to be really involved in the growth of Reflections (a body-positivity and eating disorder awareness club at WashU) and create space for really substantive discussions there. Being a resource in real life is

Intuitive Eating, by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch

the most rewarding thing--and we all have the ability to show up powerfully in that capacity.

I want something else to be clear: I’m not here to judge people for engaging in diet culture.

I get it—I did it for years! I’m just here to say that I’ve been there, and it really made my life worse. It put a damper on my energy and spirit and ability to have an impact, and I’m so much happier with those concerns no longer taking up my energy and brain space. And honestly, I didn’t even know this life was possible, that it was possible to not stress about the food you eat, the late-night snacks you consume, when you’re going to exercise and what size clothing you’re fitting into. I just want people to know there’s a way to live--happily, vibrantly--away from diet culture. And I’m here to talk about it.

If you are struggling with an eating disorder, one first step towards healing can be calling the NEDA helpline at 800-931-2237.

Naomi Savin currently lives in Washington, D.C. and can be found on Instagram at @DietCultureSucks or reached via email at dietculturesucks@gmail.com.

Hanna Khalil '20 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. She can be reached at hannakhalil@wustl.edu.

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Space Invasion: An Ongoing Violation of Cultural Boundaries Faith Ngundi Artwork by Mingyi Suo

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n a moving world committed to societal advancement, the international community and the United States have increasingly relied on integration: the collaboration of ideas, beliefs, cultures, and colors to build an inclusive world representative of those that live in it. And while the country that so boldly prides itself on being “the land of the free” and “the home of the brave” has undertaken great steps to stimulate multi-layered environments, from diversity and inclusion offices and positions to recent equality and human rights acts, there are still deep cultural divisions. These divisions force us to question whether these recent progressive efforts have shifted the mindset from “respecting boundaries” to breaking them, without consequence.

Over the course of American history, institutions of power have placed barriers hindering the social, economic, and professional development in minority groups. More specifically, and more prominently, the white-black narrative has always produced tension, whether it be passive aggressive comments or an outright war. Slavery was the long-running emotional, social, mental, and physical torture of African Americans that enabled white executives to both profit economically and establish their social supremacy.

The horrors of slavery, unjust labor, beatings and rape are constantly emphasized to exemplify the magnitude of such a relentlessly violent institutional practice. What is overlooked and arguably more lingering than physical exploitation is the divide it created. Slavery was a wall-builder, a border-definer, an institution that sealed the seemingly unbreakable, infrangible line between master and slave, owner and property. Yet, amidst this oppression, or even because of it, slaves converted these exclusionary walls into a defined space, in which to strive for their own profits and explore their own supremacy.

Slavery was a producer. It produced the confounds in which black individuals could establish

a cultural space characterized by rice-embedded cornrows, jazz-infused plantation chants, and most remarkably, the deep-rooted sense of brotherhood. Over time, these elements of the Black slave experience morphed into sentiments held strongly by the black community: colloquialisms, hair, mannerisms, and values were transformed by Black Americans, so that within the community, their designated space, they carried new weight and possessed completely different definitions. The shift was clear: if institutional walls were to be placed to limited black progression, blacks would use that space to cultivate their own success, freely express their thoughts and reclaim their identity.

The invasion of that space takes form in the evolution of black neighborhoods, transformed to fit the standards and preferences of an incoming middle-class group, a process commonly known as gentrification. Gentrification represents a force of economic and social change in community life, and due to its undeniable effect of cultural displacement, it has become an increasingly prevalent issue when discussing race in America. While it often occurs in big cities and aims to increase the value of properties in areas lacking economic stability, it naturally causes high rent prices, mortgage rates, and most notably, social displacement of ethnic minorities. As these rising costs diminish the supply of once affordable housing, there is an inevitable decrease in the purchasing power of blacks and Hispanics, who notably make up an alarmingly high percentage of low-income residents in America. Ironically, the amenities intended to boost community discourse end up dismantling the community in its entirety. As such, there is a movement: the same movement that forced Native Americans into reservations, the same movement that restricted Hispanics to Southern American states, the same movement that births these neighborhoods, these communal, cultural spaces yet simultaneously violates them. It is a cycle: the oppressors push

and confine the oppressed, from one space to another, until there is no space left.

From an external perspective, the issue of gentrification is private and persisting in specific communities with specific people. But what this physical interference does is open the door for cultural violations. The use of the n-word, the wearing of braids/cornrows and even the articulation of black problems have been violated, and subsequently undertaken by those who forced their foot in the door and stopped it from closing. There is a blatant disregard for the purpose of that community: to take our distinct experiences, derived from our shared history, and even under discriminatory authority, make something amazing, something better.

The space is needed. As author Kelsey Blackwell noted: “When people of color are together, there can be healing. We can redefine ourselves and support one another in embracing who we are.”

Not only does the space produce a unique yet shared culture that subverts oppressive power, but it allows to step back, to process and evaluate the world. Space gives us room to breathe. It enables us to take time from a structured society and decompress, to find power within ourselves, a power that is necessary in this fight for a collaborative, inclusive world.

Faith Ngundi ‘23 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. She can be reached at faithngundi@wustl. edu.

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WU Political Review

On Discussing the Hong Kong Protests E

ight months ago, a Google search of Hong Kong brings up articles about Edward Snowden, exotic turtles, and rising costs of living in the city of 7.4 million people. From that point on, a controversial extradition bill sent this bustling economic hub into civil unrest.

Protestors took to the streets in the hundreds of thousands, exceeding estimates from the 2014 Umbrella Movement protests. Police presence increased in number and intensity as clashes turned violent. By September, the city’s metro system and airport were shut down; metro stations were set on fire, tear gas and rubber bullets exchanged with petrol bombs, and injuries sustained on all sides.

How did one of the economic gems of the AsiaPacific become embroiled in what analysts have described as a “combat zone”?

To start, I’ll give a little crash course on Hong Kong history.

Hong Kong was previously a British colony, lent in its entirety by China to the United Kingdom in 1898 for 99 years. While British colonization has been looked down upon by the global community for multiple reasons, the role of this European power proved beneficial, especially in aiding Hong Kong’s recovery after Japanese occupation in World War II. As the global economy expanded, Hong Kong became the economic trading hub of eastern Asia; the combination of its vastly developing modern skyline and showcase of traditional culture drew the attention of businesses and tourists, embracing its role as a city of the 21st century.

As the 20th century drew to a close, so did the U.K.’s jurisdiction over Hong Kong, leading to the 1997 handover of Hong Kong to China. The joint deal between the two countries led to the Hong Kong Basic Law guaranteeing a “One Country, Two Systems” policy for the next fifty years.

This means that Hong Kong would keep its government structure and policies until 2047, and

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The fact that the protests were not mentioned during the October Democratic Debate may as well atone to the limited room for discussion on their stage.

China would allow a “high degree of autonomy” for the region.

However, the handover gave Beijing the responsibility of interpreting the Basic Law, which Hong Kong advocates have argued has kept the city from certain conditions of the Basic Law, including universal suffrage. The Legislative Council, the region’s acting legislative body, and the Chief Executive, the head of government, are elected through closed elections by other representative bodies. The government proposed a reform for the Chief Executive elections that allowed for universal suffrage, but the candidates for elected positions are still vetted by Beijing. This election procedure sparked the Umbrella Movement in 2014, where protesters held mass rallies to convince the Legislative Council to reject the proposed reform.

The political atmosphere in Hong Kong sparked alive again at the end of March, where the government proposed a bill that would allow arrested individuals to be extradited to a different court in China on a case-by-case basis. This bill was meant to fix an apparent loophole in the judicial system; the case highlighting the issue

included a Taiwanese man admitting to killing his girlfriend, but the Hong Kong court could not process the case because the crime was committed in Taiwan, which was outside the court’s legal jurisdiction.

Hong Kongers were deeply concerned by the bill because it meant that individuals may be transferred to mainland China to stand trial under a different legal system. Protestors of the extradition bill reached into the hundreds of thousands during March and April, requesting the withdrawal of the bill. When Chief Executive Carrie Lam voiced the government’s intent not to retract the bill, the protests grew in number and intensity. By June, a rally of over one million protestors lined the streets of Hong Kong Island, occupying government complexes in Admiralty, the financial hub in Central, and the shopping district in Causeway Bay. At this point, the protests have grown beyond the removal of the extradition bill, as pro-democracy activists coordinated efforts to call for universal suffrage and free elections.

Beijing criticized the local government and police for its relatively lax reaction to the growing protests, leading the police force to increase its efforts to dispel unauthorized rallies; this is when the violence escalated. Multiple hot spots formed across the region as pro-democracy protestors clashed with both the Hong Kong Police and pro-Beijing counter-protestors. The August protests incited more violence and vandalism, as protesters targeted government buildings and the city’s metro system (MTR) with petrol bombs. Protestors were able to occupy the international airport and shut it down, barricading entrances and voicing their “five demands” for Hong Kong: 1. Withdrawal of the Extradition Bill 2. A commission to inquire alleged police brutality 3. Retracting the declaration of protestors as “rioters”

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4. Amnesty for arrested protestors 5. Universal suffrage for both Legislative Council and Chief Executive Elections While the first demand was met in September when Chief Executive Lam formally withdrew the bill, the situation between protestors, the police, and the government has reached a persisting standstill. The government attempted to discourage protestors from assembling early October by passing an emergency ban on face masks, activating a colonial-era executive privilege that outraged members of the city.

Currently, over two thousand protestors have been arrested and over two thousand protest-related injuries were reported. Just recently, a group of unidentified individuals attacked Jimmy Sham, one of the leaders of the pro-democracy movement, sending him to the hospital.

The violence and police presence have become the norm for Hong Kongers. The often-bustling designer-brand stores in Causeway Bay now close early on nights and weekends to avoid damage. To put into perspective, Causeway Bay is similar to New York’s Fifth Avenue or Chicago’s Magnificent Mile, an icon of Hong Kong tourism and night-life. Local businesses have been especially hurt by the ongoing protests with sales dropping by as much as one-half over the summer. Chinese commerce buildings and businesses originating from mainland China were also the target of protestors. The damage inflicted on MTR stations have impacted the nearly five million passengers who use the MTR daily.

In response to the violence, the police have employed several controversial tactics, including using water cannons with blue dye to mark protestors and storming occupied MTR stations.

Several officers have also gone undercover, dressed in the same black clothing before arresting unsuspecting protestors. At this point these thoughts are speculative, but the tension among these groups makes any claim about either side

extremely sensitive.

The effects of the protests are not limited to the Asia Pacific.

On October 4th, the NBA found itself under pressure after the Houston Rockets General Manager Daryl Morey tweeted an image of the slogan “Fight for Freedom, Stand with Hong Kong,” which protesters have been using during their demonstrations. Beijing immediately began cutting ties with the basketball organization and requested the firing of Morey. China is the NBA’s second-largest market, so the organization took steps to amend the situation, angering fans.

LeBron James took some heat from fellow players and fans when he defended the organization and suggested that Morey should have received a consequence.

On October 5th, Blizzard Entertainment, known for developing games like Warcraft, StarCraft, Diablo, and Overwatch, suspended a professional Hearthstone player for voicing support for the Hong Kong protests during a stream. Two weeks later, three more players were banned under the same pretense. In the following weeks, Apple and Google both pulled apps from their app stores that supported the protests.

One of the most disturbing stories I have found is the incidence of tension and threats on college campuses. Universities in the US and UK have reported incidents of threats toward students supporting or condemning the protests. Many student authors on campuses faced backlash and hateful comments, a consequence I anticipate for this very article. People have different views of the protests in Hong Kong, and through reasoning and evidence one can justifiably argue on either side. Supporters of the protests have a case for the excessive use of force by police and the determination to demand rights underlined by the Basic Law. Non-supporters have a case for police trying to limit the violence affecting non-protestors and damage to infrastructure

and businesses. When we are open to sharing these opinions, there is space for discussion; we learn more about the perspectives of the issue and become informed global citizens. This is a privilege that institutions, corporations, and governments may not have. Corporations are often tied to their bottom lines, which can be affected by large target markets. In the case of the NBA, where China is their second-largest market, the space to discuss is deflated. Governments have similar issues due to the large network of international relations and agreements often sensitive to ongoing political issues. With the current U.S.- China trade situation, politicians may face scrutiny over pressing on the Hong Kong situation. The fact that the protests were not mentioned during the October Democratic Debate may as well atone to the limited room for discussion on their stage.

We, as university students, have the opportunity to form our own perspective of the problem and have the chance to learn from those around us.

Disagreeing and listening are important parts of part of learning. Yet, the moment we stop listening to each other and let animosity take over, that space for discussion is gone. At that point, we are in no better position than the corporations and political bodies being criticized for their stances.

The Hong Kong Protests are not an easy topic to talk about, and sharing viewpoints can sometimes be uncomfortable. While it is cliché, being respectful to those not sharing their opinions as well as those who do share is a big step towards fostering our inclusive community.

The writer of this article, a Wash U student, requests to remain anonymous due to safety concerns for his family living in Hong Kong.

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WU Political Review

“We endeavor to know each student By Name a n d S t o r y , ” I hope our names w i l l n o l o n g e r b e our

Elia/Longyu Zhang Design by Catherine Ju, design director

M

y friends are not calling me by my name. They don’t know it, and I don’t want to let them know.

Coming from another part of the world, the first month of college is a crucial part of the adjusting process. Despite the warmth I received from Wash U faculty, classmates, floormates, and people in the clubs I participate in, I still could not get over the fact that all the new and fantastic people I was meeting here do not know me by my name.

I wrote “Elia” in the “preferred name” box on the class registration and activities RSVP, and allowed my professors, WUSAs, and others to refer to me this way. “This is a beautiful name,” a girl I met one day at a Classics Club activity told me. I felt flattered and happy, but also deeply embarrassed: I was not telling her my real name.

The most apparent reason for international students to choose a different name is simply the difficulty of letting native English speakers pronounce our real name. For example, after repeatedly hearing mispronunciation of her name, Hyunseo Roh began letting her friends calling her “Jennifer.”

“Well the biggest reason is that” said Roh, “they can’t call my name correct. I’m tired of teaching my name’s pronunciation.”

But the role of a name goes far beyond saying it. A name is deeply attached to one’s family and culture. A name with cultural meaning in a mother language cannot be replaced by a symbol of English letters.“The kind of language context cannot be translated into Romanized letters in another culture,” Shuyu Lin said. Having a name given by her parents in another culture, she felt the translation to be unnecessary because the meaning is lost. This is why, instead of having

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I guess every one has to try hard to reconcile with several internal identities that sometimes conflict with each other.

And maybe one day we will realize that the so-called “ i d e n t i t y ” is a social term

but not a personal term, because every person should stand for the self. As showcased by the change in names of international students in the cross-cultural transmission, our identities are

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Sophomore Adi Dugar said. Going to school in the US means adjusting and becoming flexible. “You want t o b e y o u ,

but you have to be a slightly different version

of you at times.”

The culture of US high institutions is dominated by the culture of English native speak a name represented in Romanized letters, she gave herself another name under another “cultural context.”

Even for those who are using the English representation of their names, there is still this sense of alienation, for this representation often appears to be weird and out of place. To avoid feeling “alienated,” international students would rather pick some Western name to be their preferred name.

Before using her preferred name, Lin used the Pinyin name (English letter represen-tation of Chinese name) when she first started going to a predominantly white high school in the US. But she could sense the alienation when seeing her name being juxtaposed between “tons of Sarahs, and Amelias, and Amys.”

“Everyone was not uncomfortable with it, but everyone just felt it was really strange and alienated,” she said.

Lin also pointed out the subtle difference between Chinese-American students and students who are both nationally and ethnically Chinese. According to her, most of the Chinese American students are second or third-generation Chinese who do not speak Mandarin nor have a Chinese name. She felt herself to be different from them, but she managed to reduce this difference by having a name similar to theirs. “[I]f I’m speaking like them, I’m still not part of them.” Lin said. “It’s really hard to explain what kind of feelings I had at that point, but I felt like, okay, if I had a preferred name this could be better.”

But how could a person who grew up in a completely distinct environment be the same as other people, simply because they look similar?

“I understand that eventually, whatever name I have, the fact that I’m a foreigner…is gonna stick with me. I’m trying to ameliorate this situation by putting myself into a preferred name. But I still understand that that kind of divergence is still there.”

So, what does personal identity finally mean? If we define it in terms of ethnicity, international students cannot be put into a fixed category; they spend their childhood in another distinct culture and become fully mature in America.

“I’m different from the majority of Indians in some ways, but I’m different from the majority of Americans in some ways.” Adi Dugar said.

Going to school in the US means adjusting and becoming flexible. “You want to be you, but you have to be a slightly different version of you at times.”

The culture of U.S. higher education institutions is dominated by the culture of English native speakers. To fit in to another culture means to give up a part of the culture of where you come from. This seems sad at first glance. However, if we pause and consider, which part of you is genuinely you? If a name is shaped by, like Lin said, “cultural context,” including how difficult it is to pronounce it, can you as a person be shaped by the culture that you are placed in, which is not something you can choose yourself? Can you as a person have an identity that stands on its own without being subject to your circumstances?

Dugar mentions how the in-between feeling of identity, although it cannot be eliminated, can become something that he feels “used to.”

“For better or worse, you get used to it,” he said.

“My first semester was one experience because I was just getting used to how things were in America…And then second semester I kind of had a little bit of an idea and…finally…enjoy

America. And now my fourth semester, things a lot more natural to me. I completely feel that I fit in, and I don't need to struggle.”

Surprisingly, this resonates with me. After the first two months of life in America, all of my friends and professors have known me by this “English” name. I do not know if I would want to let them call me another way, even if they try hard to pronounce it: this whitish name is already known to them and it is attached to a lively person, a person that is a part of me and is the American me. I wonder if this me named “Elia” will finally someday become me, that my identity, just like how my name needs to adjust to another cultural context, me as person also adjusts to America, and who I am is then shaped by where I am placed into.

I guess everyone has to try hard to reconcile with several internal identities that sometimes conflict with each other. And maybe one day we will realize that the so-called “identity” is a social term but not a personal term, because every person should stand for the self. As showcased by the change in names of international students in the cross-cultural transmission, our identities are subjects of our circumstances: “Elia” is me in an American context, while “Longyu” is me in a Chinese context. But neithr really represents me: both are shaped by the cultural and social constructs. Our real identity lies in our story: our experiences that can only be owned by our true selves. As Wash U claims to seek to “know each student by name and story,” I hope our names will no longer be our tags that mystifies who we are; I hope all of us can know each other beyond our superficial names and delve into our stories.

Elia/Longyu Zhang studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. She can be reached at eliazhang@wustl. edu.

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WU Political Review

Artwork by Haejin An, staff artist

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Stressful News: Keeping Mental Space for Headlines

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Elena Murray

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n an era involving impeachment proceedings, Brexit, war in the Middle East, presidential campaigns and debates, a supposedly impending financial crisis, pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, and countless other headline stories, it can be incredibly difficult to stay updated with every new development. As recently as a few months ago, the major stories of the day concerned the Mueller probe, crippling strikes on Saudi oil, a momentous Supreme Court ruling on gerrymandering, a United States victory in the Women’s FIFA World Cup, and President Trump’s visit with Kim Jong Un at the demilitarized zone. When headlines follow one other in such rapid and vivid manner, maintaining the mental capacity to realize and engage with each seems a daunting task. Despite the challenges it presents, keeping mental space for the headlines of tomorrow is an important aspect of citizenship, political discussion, and compromise.

Many politically engaged Americans realize the importance of staying updated on current events, seeking the latest stories through social media and news apps on their phones as well as cable news at home after work. But this engagement comes at a cost: a 2017 American Psychological Association poll found that, while 95% of adults say they follow the news regularly, 56% find that doing so results in personal stress. This may be indicative of a kind of negativity bias,

People’s very desire to be good, politicallyengaged citizens at the same time naturally causes them stress.

When we keep mental space for political issues and current events, we also increase the potential for communication and compromise. an evolutionarily-evolved psychological phenomenon through which negative events, which may be perceived as threats, have a greater impact on psychological processes than positive events of equal intensity. In other words, negative events in the news may have such a strong impact on stress because people naturally seek them out and are more affected by them than by more positive stories. It appears as though people’s very desire to be good, politically-engaged citizens at the same time naturally causes them stress, revealing what may be a contributing factor to the widespread mental health issues affecting a greater portion of society now than ever before. The very vibrancy of the news— which often involves vivid clips, harsh reactions, and polarized disagreement—simultaneously piques the interest of its consumers and repels them with its details.

But with the intense, sensationalist news cycle unlikely to deviate from its current mentally-taxing format, what can individuals do to mitigate that stress without cutting themselves off from the world around them? Evidence points toward meditation and frequent self-reflection as promising techniques. When reading an infuriating headline, seeing a horrific video or meme on Twitter, or hearing people around you speak in

a manner you strongly disagree with, internal reflection appears to be the strongest method to keep from becoming emotionally stressed.

Doing so is, of course, easier said than done. But through conscious practice, reading the news may become less of a chore along the lines of a “what will disappoint me today?” question and more like a willing choice resembling a “what should I be aware of?” question.

Without the association of the news with inevitable stress and anxiety, it is certainly possible that political discourse might become more open. If someone reads an article that elicits strong negative emotions, they may be less likely to share that piece with a peer in order to avoid re-activating the stress they previously felt—to avoid re-living the experience, in a sense. On the other hand, if someone has examined the news and practiced recommended activities such as self-reflection and emotion regulation, they may have a weaker (or altogether nonexistent) negative emotional reaction and thus be more willing to bring up current events with another person.

In short, if we feel less badly about the news, we might be more willing to talk about it, especially with people with whom we disagree politically.

Although staying updated on current events causes widespread stress and anxiety in the minds of readers, such reactions are unnecessary, unwanted, and unproductive for advancing political discussion. Rather than experiencing internal turmoil and externally railing against events one disagrees with, the benefits of viewing current developments within the context of broader perspective may go beyond reducing stress. When we keep mental space for political issues and current events, we also increase the potential for communication and compromise.

Elena Murray ‘22 studies in the College of Arts and Sciences. She can be reached at elenamurray@wustl. edu.

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WU Political Review

A Perspective on America’s Healthcare System Johnathan Romero

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he fundamental pursuit of any health care policy is achieving the optimal balance of affordability, access, and efficacy.

The public discourse surrounding American healthcare policy is predominantly marked by a struggle between two competing visions for the ideal system on opposite ends of a spectrum.

The left’s vision entails a single-payer apparatus in which the government bears the cost of medical care. The right’s vision glorifies a free-market system with private health insurance companies providing coverage for those who choose it. The current system under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) attempts to merge the best qualities of both visions while mitigating their flaws, yet fails in instructive ways.

Health care policymakers generally agree that the strength of a single-payer system is its affordability (at the consumer level), while the advantages of a privatized healthcare system are its relative quality and accessibility. The ACA seeks to provide the affordability of a single-payer system by subsidizing the physically and mentally ill as well as those unable to afford private healthcare who do not also qualify for Medicare or Medicaid. Yet by retaining the private health insurance market, it preserves the interplay of supply and demand in a free market between insurance companies and health care providers, as opposed to the government capping spending for medical care and forcing medical worker pay cuts to compensate for reduced revenue.

In the interest of persevering the spirit of the ACA’s ambition to meld the best aspects of single-payer and private health care systems, some modifications might salvage the continually besieged ACA by improving performance on the three pillars. An effective approach to increasing affordability while maintaining access (i.e. not generating longer waiting periods for medical services) would include creating a

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The above-mentioned reforms might seem unpalatable to those seeking more ambitious or transformative changes to the health care status quo, but they build on the best qualities of America’s health care system. supply and demand market equilibrium. While our current system better approximates this outcome than single-payer or universal health care systems by enabling a semblance of market forces to act, a major encumbrance to an equilibrium in our public-private health care hybrid is its widespread failure to convey price signals to patients. If someone in the United States has just moved and needs a new primary care physician, there is a marketplace in which he or she can compare the out-of-pocket costs of doctors in the area. If the federal government required physicians to provide up-front prices for standardized care such as routine check-ups, then primary care physicians would begin competing to reduce costs and thereby lower the prices of primary care visits throughout the country.

With prices coupled to patient ratings available on the Internet, consumers could choose their ideal ratio of efficacy, based on reputation and ratings, to affordability. This would improve the

affordability pillar without any substantive costs to accessibility or efficacy. In fact, physicians would likely feel more pressure to improve their performance metrics to justify a higher appointment price.

Affordability in the Medicare system could be improved with modifications to what Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein term in their influential book Nudge, “choice architecture.” Medicare currently provides what’s called a “Part D” option for coverage of many prescription drugs for those who qualify (Americans aged 65+ or who suffer from disability, ALS or terminal renal disease). Unlike other Medicare programs (i.e.

Parts A, B & C), one must select a private coverage plan which is pre-approved by the federal government and offers myriad options for enrollees. Unfortunately, the process of comparing deductibles and coverage for different prescriptions is labyrinthine and ultimately bewildering to many beneficiaries, which results in unnecessary spending on the part of Medicare recipients. Thaler and Sunstein suggest that if the federal government required private insurers to electronically send a complete, itemized list of prescription drug spending over the previous year in addition to a complete list of their pricing schedule, Medicare recipients could use this information to enroll in cheaper private coverage plans. This process could be expedited and simplified by providing an import function on the Medicare website when using the plan finder service. Including a tab or link to private comparison pricing programs such as Massachusettsbased Experion on the Medicare website would also enable users to choose alternative services, to compare prices and identify the ideal plan.

A study in Wisconsin has already predicted cost savings from Medicare Part D enrollees of around $500 from enrollees moving to their current coverage plan to the lowest cost offer which meets their needs.

Apart from reducing the cost of medical care, the affordability of our health care system might

National

be reduced by improving the efficacy of health insurance plans. This could be done by introducing a kind of “rainy day” fund which is tied to the stock market as a public health insurance option in the Obamacare marketplace. Much like a privatized Social Security system, where payroll taxes are allocated to shares in a diversified stock portfolio, one could apply a similar system to a public health insurance plan. Considering the high cost of diminished health care coverage from a stock market crash, it would be prudent to supplement this with monthly payments toward a low-cost, bare-bones, high-deductible plan for emergency use. Given the long-run rise in stock market indices such as the S&P 500 or the NASDAQ, beneficiaries of this plan would almost certainly reap disproportionately high benefits as compared to other plans at a fraction of the cost. As an example, $10,000 invested in the Dow Jones Industrial Average in 1970 would have yielded $35,710 after inflation—a 357.1% return. What health insurance plan would be able to guarantee coverage of the cost of care which is three and a half times the amount paid by the consumer? Any health insurance company which did so would quickly become bankrupt. Rather than compelling private insurance providers on the ACA marketplace to provide this option, a public option would rapidly spur private insurers to adopt a similar—even superior—service to remain competitive.

Finally, despite the comparative strength of America’s health care industry in the pillar of efficacy, as demonstrated by the preponderance of breakthrough medical research occurring in the United States: 51% of Nobel Prizes in Physiology or Medicine were awarded to Americans or researchers working at American institutions, a majority of global pharmaceutical R&D occurs in the U.S. most new medicines are developed in the U.S., and 32 of the 46 billion-dollar medical technology companies are American­—there is still room for improvement. Much of the medical treatment R&D which occurs in the U.S.

and across the globe originates from the private sector, where profit incentives steer resources toward lucrative innovations as opposed to those which may save the most lives. For example, the annual death toll of antibiotic-resistant bacteria (often referred to as “superbugs”) is projected to reach 10 million people in 2050, more than cancer kills today. However, R&D allocated to antibiotics in the private sector has declined due to the low rates of success and approval following clinical trials. The cost to develop a new antibiotic is in the hundreds of millions while its potential to garner profits is low relative to other pharmaceuticals. This market disincentive is exacerbated by the reality that prescription drug patents are only effective for 20 years—ten of which are often necessary for clinical trials and FDA approval. Once a pharmaceutical company’s patent rights disappear, generics will enter the market and diminish profit margins for the drug’s original developer. Extending patent rights for antimicrobial medications and other crucial, yet under-researched medical treatments would incentivize more R&D by increasing potential long-term investment returns for pharmaceutical companies.

The above-mentioned reforms might seem unpalatable to those seeking more ambitious or transformative changes to the health care status quo, but they build on the best qualities of America’s health care system. To those seeking some form of universal health care in the United States, such as a single-payer system, a note of caution: a severely disproportionate fraction of medical innovation occurs in the United States as a result of the higher profit margins afforded to companies in a (somewhat) private health care market. 40% of the global demand for medical treatments stems from the U.S. despite accounting for roughly a quarter of global GDP. This is primarily a virtue of Americans’ higher demand for the newest, state-of-the-art treatments, many of which would be restricted by budgetary constraints, as is the case in other developed countries where some form of

universal health care has been implemented.

Perhaps even more striking is that, according to the Brookings Institution, an estimated 64-78% of pharmaceutical profits derive from the U.S. market. Many proponents of universal health care in the U.S. also propose government negotiation of drug prices, as is the case in universal health care systems across the developed world.

This would slash pharmaceutical profits and severely undercut the profit motive to develop new medications, thereby stunting biotech innovation.

By contrast, the substantial reforms necessary to realize the vision of a fully privatized health care industry must reckon with the insuperable and perverse problem of medical care remaining underutilized by those which it could best serve: the economically disadvantaged and chronically ill—two segments with considerable overlap— will confront the excruciating choice of life-saving medical treatment or financial ruin.

In recognition of these glaring drawbacks, I would argue that the piecemeal reforms recommended here represent a better prescription for the ailments of our current health care system.

Johnathan Romero ‘20 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. He can be reached at johnathan. romero@wustl.edu.

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WU Political Review Race to the whitehouse:

The Historical Implications of Impeachment for 2020 Rachel Olick-Gibson In the WUPR issues leading up to the Democratic nomination, Rachel will be writing a monthly column presenting new angles on the candidates for the 2020 presidential race.

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rom Johnson’s dispute over appointment powers to Nixon’s break-in to Clinton’s adultery, the American public has experience with impeachment. Still, the circumstances surrounding the latest impeachment inquiry are unprecedented. Never before has the name of a sitting U.S. President facing an impeachment inquiry appeared on the ballot as it will in November of 2020. Both Nixon and Clinton faced impeachment in the second terms of their presidencies, making them ineligible to run for re-election. However, as a first-term president, President Trump’s re-election campaign has marched ahead at full speed despite an impeachment inquiry investigating his attempts to garner Ukraine’s help in investigating his political opponent, Joe Biden. While popular narratives concerning impeachment assert that the party initiating the inquiry often suffers in subsequent elections, a historical review of past impeachment inquiries suggests an alternative conclusion.

Impeachment has already influenced the rhetoric and strategies of presidential primary candidates as well as analyst’s predictions about who will win the nomination. In the days following Speaker Pelosi’s announcement that the House would open an impeachment inquiry, all nineteen Democratic primary candidates released statements supporting impeachment.

Frontrunner Elizabeth Warren called for Trump’s impeachment after the release of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 election and reiterated her beliefs after Speaker Pelosi’s announcement. Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders released a statement labeling Trump’s “self-dealing and corruption” as “limitless.” Biden, a central figure in the impeachment inquiry into Trump, stated that his campaign would be focused “not on how Donald Trump abused his power to come after my family, but on how he has turned his back on America’s families.”

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Candidates also attempted to capitalize on the situation. Within three hours of Pelosi’s announcement, the Trump campaign had raised $1 million through a series of texts, tweets, and emails asking supporters to financially protect his campaign for the presidency. Most Democratic primary candidates made less explicit requests for money, emailing supporters to sign impeachment petitions, with links to a donation page on the side. However, some were more explicit. In an email, Biden’s campaign stated, “Donald Trump asked a foreign leader eight times to investigate my family. But I’m only going to ask you once: Please, I need you with me at this critical moment. Chip in to my campaign tonight.” The Democratic National Committee (DNC) also used impeachment for a fundraising push with a text that read, “URGENT: Stand with Speaker Pelosi as the House moves forward with an official impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump.” The flurry of donations that followed marked Tuesday as the highest fundraising day of the month.

stature to headline their own segments.

In addition to its effect on campaign rhetoric and funding, impeachment has also shifted media attention away from the Democratic primary.

For the next few months, impeachment will be the dominant topic covered by popular news channels. While top-polling candidates will continue to receive a decent amount of media coverage, analysts expect that pieces on lower-ranking candidates will be replaced with segments on impeachment. Several of the primary candidates are still waiting for their “breakout moment,” a moment much less likely to occur as they receive diminished media coverage. Some candidates have attempted to tie themselves to media coverage of impeachment in an attempt to gain more screen time. Cory Booker and Kamala Harris appeared on MSNBC in the same program to discuss impeachment, demonstrating both candidates’ desperation to get media coverage, as each would normally have the

After Republicans failed to convict Andrew Johnson after the Civil War, the GOP not only maintained control of the House in the following elections but also won the White House in the 1868 election with Ulysses Grant as the face of the party. In more recent history, the Democrats won back the White House two years after President Nixon’s resignation. Some would argue that Democrats were able to do this only because Nixon’s impeachment ultimately held bipartisan support. However, the impeachment of President Clinton had a similar outcome despite the fact that Clinton’s impeachment was largely viewed by the American public as a partisan attempt to take down a president.

While it is widely believed that the Republicans’ attempt to impeach President Clinton when the majority of the American public did not support the move cost the party, this assertion is based on too narrow a focus. Those who argue

However, garnering media coverage in connection with impeachment may do little to aid these primary campaigns. As all democratic candidates have endorsed impeachment, merely restating Trump’s offenses will do little to distinguish any individual from the field. However, a history of presidential candidates who have managed to benefit from past impeachment inquiries may provide insight into the effect of impeachment on subsequent elections.

It is a commonly shared belief among analysts that Pelosi refrained from opening an impeachment inquiry into President Trump after the Mueller Report was released, in part due to a fear of facing the supposed repercussions that the Republicans faced after their attempt to impeach President Clinton. However, historical facts do not support the myth that impeachment consistently harms the party that opened the inquiry.

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Never before in American history has the name of a sitting U.S. President facing an impeachment inquiry appeared on the ballot as it will in November of 2020. for this position reference the fact that House Republicans opened an impeachment inquiry in October of 1998, just a few weeks before midterm elections, in which Democrats gained five seats. However, two years after Clinton’s impeachment, the Republican party controlled the White House, the House, and the Senate.

Although Republicans lost the midterms a few weeks after Clinton’s impeachment began, in each of these cases, the party that initiated impeachment to oppose the president ultimately benefitted in the subsequent presidential election.

Impeachment harmed the party of the president facing impeachment in both the 1976 and 2000 presidential elections. In both cases, the opposing party’s candidate organized their campaigns around the theme of restoring honor and integrity to the Oval Office. Both Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush’s campaigns managed to tap into public distrust of the presidency and present themselves as pillars of honesty. Throughout his presidential campaign, Jimmy Carter consistently stated, “I will never lie to the American people” and closed hundreds of speeches by saying, “All we need is a government that’s as good and decent and honest and truthful and open and compassionate and as filled with love as are the American people.” Through rhetoric such as this, Carter created the sense that he would restore integrity to the American political system.

George W. Bush utilized a similar strategy as he ran on the campaign promise to “restore honor and dignity” to the presidency. In an interview with The Atlantic, a strategist for Bush’s 2000 campaign argued that Democrats have “learned the wrong lessons” from Clinton’s impeachment, specifically in terms of how it shaped the subsequent presidential race. A strategist for Democratic nominee Al Gore who ran against Bush in 2000, agreed that Bush’s claim to moral

decency in opposition to the past Democratic president’s actions “more than anything else got in the way in terms of winning the election.”

Current primary candidates should learn from Carter and Bush’s strategy, and some are already employing these lessons. The candidate with the greatest chance of beating President Trump in the general election must focus their campaigns on two central themes. First, a winning-candidate will likely employ the strategies of their predecessors and make a strong claim to moral high ground and American unity. Secondly, candidates must give the public a reason to vote for them, not just a reason to not vote for President Trump.

So far, Kamala Harris has shown signs that she understands the first idea. In an email following Pelosi’s impeachment announcement, Harris asked her supporters to “rush a contribution to Kamala’s presidential campaign to elect a president who will fight for truth, justice and the rule of law — and defeat the lawless one we have now.” This statement reflects Harris’ ability to draw upon her background as District Attorney of San Francisco to present herself as the antithesis of President Trump.

Meanwhile, Pete Buttigieg and Elizabeth Warren both seem to embody the second idea. During the most recent Democratic debate, Buttigieg stated that he wants to be President for the day after Trump. Buttigieg articulated that the most important question in this is election is, “Who among the candidates for President can lead us in a world where we’re going to have to solve these big policy problems that didn’t take a break during impeachment?” This language demonstrates the Buttigieg’s understanding of the fact that he will have to do more than attack Trump to win the presidency; he will have to unify the American people.

Elizabeth Warren has also managed to balance impeachment with policy. When discussing impeachment at a rally in Keene, New Hampshire, Warren quickly stated her opinion and then pivoted back to her policy proposals.

Warren’s refusal to focus on impeachment in order to garner attention for her ideas may provide voters with reason beyond opposition to President Trump.

While some candidates may successfully navigate the discourse surrounding impeachment through claims to morality, the circumstances surrounding impeachment may damage the candidacy of another frontrunner, Joe Biden.

Despite the fact that President Trump’s claims about Biden and his son Hunter’s corruption are unsubstantiated, discussion about this incident will still dominate many news cycles in the months to come. Rumors of corruption will make it hard for Biden to credibly make the claim of restoring honor and honesty to the Presidency.

Furthermore, impeachment tends to evoke a sense of distrust in Washington among voters.

Therefore, Biden’s long history with Washington will make it difficult for him to separate himself from the establishment in the minds of voters.

Rachel Olick-Gibson ’21 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. She can be reached at rachel.olick-gibson@wustl.edu.

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WU Political Review

Justin from Canada Clare Grindinger Artwork (right) by Haejin An, staff artist

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nly a month before the 2019 Canadian federal election, Time Magazine released the first photo of the current prime minster, Justin Trudeau, in brownface while he was a teacher at the West Point Grey Academy.

Trudeau was dressed as a caricature of an Arab man for an Arabian nights themed party. This isn’t the first time a politician has been outed for sporting racially degrading attire. Ralph Northam and Mark Herring of Virginia, Michael Ertel of Florida, Kay Ivey of Alabama, Brant Tomlinson of South Carolina, Hal Patton of Illinois, Robbie Gatti Jr. of Louisiana, and Dov Hikind of New York name a few of the many white, male politicians who dress up in blackface—dressing as anything from a DJ to a Katrina Victim—only with the occasional apology.

To understand the cultural context for blackface, we must take a deep dive into our country’s racial history of minstrelsy. Minstrelsy was a form of American entertainment that begun in the 19th century. In the 1830s, a white man named Thomas Dartmouth Rice came to fame as a minstrel performer. Known as “the negro par excellence,” Rice imitated black music to entertain white crowds, which included painting his face with burned cork and adding a deep layer of black paint to pretend to be the enslaved people he was impersonating. Blackface minstrelsy delighted the white people of this racially segregated country, allowing racism to be a blunt, overt form of entertainment. After the civil war, black performers were allowed to become blackface minstrels, playing into the established racial guidelines set by the white minstrel performers—white minstrels were showing black minstrels how white audiences want blackness to be performed. Here, white people are showing black people how to operate as a black person, as if race is a concept that can be performed through mere makeup. This was one of the few ways black performers could make money, although they almost always functioned as a last-minute replacement for white performers and were more likely to be poorly received by the white audience.

This appropriated blackness continued into the

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However, even with alternatives, history shows that blackface rarely slows a candidate down.

20th century and even today through the performance of blackness from blaxploitation films to Jay Z’s The Story of O.J. Blaxploitation is a genre of film that relies on the stereotypical depiction of a black man, portraying the black character as criminal, thug, and gang affiliated. This is how white audiences wanted to see black people perform, not as an educated, law-abiding person, but fitting into a stereotype. Jay Z’s music video, The Story of O.J., focuses on the historical depiction of black people in film, from dehumanized to oversexualized, and about the accumulation and racial exclusivity of wealth. While white people have accumulated wealth, black people have historically been exploited, from slavery to modern entertainment. Black music is heard, reproduced, appropriated, and critiqued throughout the world, but appreciating black music is drastically separated from respecting black culture.

By labelling blackface as equivalent to wearing makeup, one ignores the historical devaluation of black people through the white creation of blackness in American entertainment.

American history, however, is not always parallel to Canadian history. Canada is stereotypically a figure of progressivism on issues ranging from race to sexuality to the environment. Even in the 19th century, Canada was known as a safe haven for runaway slaves escaping their hell in America. However, Canada had slavery until its abolition in 1834, only 31 years before Lincoln declared the abolition of slavery with the Emancipation Proclamation. Starting in 1843, minstrelsy began in Canada and was common into the 1970s, years after this popular form of entertainment became taboo elsewhere in the

world. Although Canada claims to be a post-racial society, similar to the United States after the election of Barack Obama, it has a history that it chooses not to face and in doing so, history resurfaces.

Justin Trudeau sets himself apart from the divisive, racialized rhetoric of Donald Trump, but these photos show that this progressive divide might not be that large of a divide after all. Trudeau’s future was in the hands of the Canadian populace, and he was running with multiple accusations against him. Not only did Trudeau have three documented accounts of appearing in blackface (an occurrence so common that he is unable to produce an exact number of times he has worn blackface), but he was also facing a corruption scandal. This scandal encompassed Trudeau allegedly pressuring his former attorney general in 2018. Specifically, Trudeau was requesting the attorney general to help SNC-Lavalin Group Inc. settle corruption charges before it came to court.

However, even with other political candidates to choose from in an election year, history shows that blackface rarely slows a candidate down.

Take Ralph Northam, for example. The Virginian Governor was faced with a blackface scandal, but the media uproar did not affect voters enough to ask for his resignation, even amongst black voters. While 47% of white Virginians thought Northam should resign, only 37% of black Virginians agreed. This hesitancy for black voters to suggest Northam resigns could be attributed to the aftermath that might follow a resignation, the election of a Republican governor. This is particularly nerve-wracking since Virginia’s neighboring state, North Carolina, recently elected a Republican governor who repealed the Racial Justice Act. Many in the black community were upset with this repeal since the act protected people of color; this act prohibited seeking the death penalty for a person on the basis of race. Faced with a mixed bag of picking a progressive person with a nasty past compared to a racist replacement, the public is boxed in to a lesser-of-two-evils corner, wherein resignation may not be the best option. In the

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case of Trudeau, however, there were other options.

The 43rd Canadian General Election took place on October 21, 2019. One of the candidates, Jagmeet Singh of the New Democratic party, born to Indian immigrants and a turban-wearing Sikh man, went directly against Trudeau’s brownface costume. Singh stood for more progressive policies than Trudeau, as the New Democratic party has populist, agrarian and socialist roots, whereas Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party took on more middle-of-the-road policies, at least from Canada’s political perspective.

While some claim not voting for Trudeau was a vote for the more conservative party (which was less interested in the needs of communities of color), the political system encourages multiple party representation so it was not a binary choice of right and left; Canada’s Parliament is more on a political spectrum than reduced two sides like in the United States. Singh, a human rights activist, planned to help underrepresented communities by installing dedicated hate crime units within local police forces, keep assault weapons and handguns illegal, fund anti-gang projects, and prioritize the survivor as a way to address anti-Black racism, Islamophobia, gender-based violence, anti-Semitism, homophobia, and transphobia.

With Trudeau, however, apathy seemed to rule amongst voters, black and white alike. At first, voters were shocked by the photos of Trudeau in blackface, but with more press attention, the scandal became normalized. Voters did not condemn Trudeau himself, but rather said he should be more mindful of behavior and that people make mistakes. Mistakes, however, are not affordable for all candidates. It seems that good-looking white men tend to get away with bad behavior from their past—Brett Kavanaugh, Bill Clinton, and, for less violent acts, Ralph Northam and Justin Trudeau.

Although Trudeau has apologized for his brown and blackface scandals, we have seen through American political history that blackface tends to not set back political candidates. On October

21st, Trudeau was re-elected as Prime Minister.

Trudeau’s slight fall from power (he won with a small majority) challenges the narrative that positions Canada and progressiveness as synonymous. Trudeau, constantly consciously living in the public eye, was born into national attention through his father, the beloved, progressive prime minister Pierre Trudeau. He has thus consciously calculated every move of his political career. This career was shaping up well, from his popular boxing match in 2012 with senator Patrick Brazeau to his well-practiced handshake, unleashing first from Donald Trump’s grasp, until his career, like anything perfectly crafted, began to crack. After a poorly planned trip to India and an accusation of groping a reporter in 2000, it was only a matter of time before a big breakthrough against his image gained traction.

Trudeau has taken in more refugees than his predecessors by the tens of thousands, lifted hundreds of thousands of children out of poverty, helped aid Canada’s economy, and focused policy on the environment, but still, his ignorance of Canada’s racial past does not excuse his past actions that do not shine so brightly in the limelight.

There is no need to continue to cram our political options into a white, male space that thrives on appropriating black culture. There is a white male privilege in politics, and the world at large, that goes beyond Donald Trump and Boris Johnson. Progressive, liberal white men are entitled to having no limit to what they can get away with, from sexual assault accusations to blackface scandals. Women, from emails and DNA tests, are held to a far more different standard when it comes to making mistakes. People of color run into a similar, unequal playing field, carefully analyzed for anything from the way they talk to providing proof of a birth certificate.

Men, especially white, upper class, and heterosexual, have expectations to go into politics or business. It is time we broaden these expectations by holding everyone equally accountable and actually acknowledge harmful, racist behavior like blackface.

Clare Grindinger ‘21 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. She can be reached at cgrindinger@wustl. edu.

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WU Political Review

A Plea for Uyghurs Jacob Finke

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his October marked the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China. This October also marks the 70th anniversary of the liberation (from self-rule) of Xinjiang, now an autonomous region of China,

by People’s Liberation Army soldiers.

It’s no secret that China is on everybody’s minds—including fans of the NBA and South Park. As the world watches pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong or wonders about the next round of trade talks between President Trump and General Secretary Xi, it’s important to pay attention to Xinjiang—all the way on the other side of the Chinese mainland.

Xinjiang is not a Chinese province; it is an autonomous region like Tibet. Xinjiang is home to large populations of Uyghurs (or Uighurs), an ethnic minority. The majority of Uyghurs are Muslim, and they are closely related to Kazakhs, Uzbeks, and Tajiks.

Since 2015, Uyghurs and Kazakhs have been systematically placed in concentration camps by the Chinese government. According to Human Rights Watch, people have been detained based on arbitrary “infractions," including carrying a knife, traveling to a Muslim country in the past, having a beard, and refraining from drinking or smoking. Public intellectuals, government officials, and university professors that have worked to preserve Uyghur culture have been among those disappeared.

Why did this happen? China justifies the practices as an effort to stamp out “three evils:” terrorism, extremism, and separatism. Xinjiang has a history with terrorism. In the early 2000s, there were bloody riots in Urumqi, Xinjiang’s capital, leading to violence against Han Chinese residents. The government cracked down on Uyghurs, and as a result, Uyghur terrorists perpetrated a series of knife attacks and bombings in Xinjiang, Kunming (in Southeast China), and Beijing, the nation’s capital.

Extremism is a valid concern; after Beijing enthusiastically supported the United States’ War on Terror, the government began to fear that

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Uyghurs were traveling to the Middle East and bringing back more radical strands of Islam.

Separatism remains a hot-button issue. Xinjiang is an autonomous region and was not under strict control by the Republic of China until its “liberation” in 1949. Uyghur separatists refer to the region as East Turkestan, and there has been a long-standing push for independence for the region.

Now we can see how the “three evils” all blend in Xinjiang. One group advocating for East Turkestan’s independence was the East Turkestan Liberation Organization. After 9/11, China labeled them a terrorist organization, condemned them as extremists, and began dismantling the organization in Xinjiang.

But here’s the kicker—Chinese oppression in Xinjiang isn’t about terrorism, extremism, or separatism. It’s about what Chinese officials privately call the fourth evil: Uyghur culture.

The Chinese state is systematically attempting to coerce, intimidate, imprison, and re-educate Uyghur culture out of existence.

How is China doing this? The Chinese Communist Party has successfully built a technology-based surveillance state in Xinjiang with the help of American companies. Every day, Uyghurs’ information is collected without consent. AI-powered surveillance cameras conduct face scans on sidewalks; police at checkpoints perform DNA swabs at regular intervals throughout the city. Companies like Cisco and Intel have partnered with the Chinese companies providing the security and surveillance technology the Chinese government uses to oppress and imprison Uyghurs. After news coverage exposed these links, Intel and Cisco severed ties with their Chinese partners.

Last year, the United Nations estimated that 2 million Uyghurs have been placed in concentration camps. More recently, reports surfaced that camp officials are forcing detainees to work for little or no pay. The Financial Times reported earlier this year that Uyghur children, when their parents are detained or forced to leave the

country, are placed in government-run orphanages. There, they speak only Mandarin Chinese, effectively erasing Uyghur identity from the next generation of Uyghurs in China.

And they are doing it because the rest of the world has decided to turn away and allow it to happen. China is the world’s second-largest economy; they have the power to threaten countries economically if they do not stay silent about—or outright support—China’s concentration camps. Turkey—a majority-Muslim country that is also home to a large diasporic Uyghur population—condemned conditions in Xinjiang this February. However, the Turkish President rescinded those statements after a trip to Beijing in July. The Prime Minister of Pakistan—which is benefiting economically from Chinese-financed infrastructure projects—claims to not know much about the issue.

China’s practice of placing Uyghurs in concentration camps is undeniably wrong and must be condemned. But the rest of the world—including the United States—is at fault for refusing to address these human rights abuses as what they really are: an atrocious process of ethnic cleansing.

Author’s Note: To learn more or help Uyghurs, consider donating your time or resources to the Uyghur Human Rights Project or the Uyghur World Congress.

Jacob Finke ‘20 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. He can be reached at jbfinke@wustl.edu.

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Artwork by Haejin An, staff artist

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