In other news, Munira Khalif, a high school senior from Minnesota, was reportedly accepted to ALL EIGHT IVY LEAGUE SCHOOLS!

Munira is SOMALIAN, MUSLIM and a WOMAN–sure as hell sounds like a triple-threat if the media ever saw one.

Before anyone pulls out the race card or defaults to cries of AFFIRMATIVE ACTION (a concept I am sure most opponents know nothing about), lets take a look at what Star Tribute lists as some of Khalif’s accomplishments:

“She started the nonprofit Lighting the Way, which helps East African diaspora youth empower their counterparts in the Horn of Africa by making education accessible. The organization has raised about $30,000 to provide scholarships and tackle sanitation issues. An organization in Kenya donated $250,000 to help build a library in Somalia.

Khalif is also a global youth ambassador for A World At School, a campaign focused on ensuring universal education.

Khalif also founded a Social Consciousness Club, a platform for students to discuss domestic and international issues, such as hunger in America and foreign aid.

As a teen adviser for the U.N.’s Girl Up campaign, she mobilized young people in her community to send letters to Congress in support of legislation fighting against child marriage.”

That’s more than what many people of all colors achieve in a lifetime. This young woman deserves all the accolades in the world for defying odds that people of her race and background face in the land of the free and still making all these achievements. Go Munira!

Earlier in the week, Officer Michael Slager of South Carolina was recorded shooting and murdering an unarmed black man.

The unwarranted deaths of black males in America have become appallingly commonplace. These events and how they parallel Americans’ lives is eerily similar to the way many people respond to distant wars in nameless countries–if it doesn’t affect one’s own life, it doesn’t cross their mind at all.

I receive a lot of news through my social media feeds, and the only people save for a handful that commented anything about this event were my black friends.

To quote a favorite rapper of mine–and please excuse the NSFW language–

“Then hang the phone up, and proceed to lay the wood,
I came fast like 9-1-1 in white neighborhoods.”

Word.

If you are currently a student at Binghamton University, there is a high probability that you are aware of the ongoing battle, for lack of a better word, between President Stenger and the campus group “Students for Change”, an organization dedicated to fostering a more positive environment and university experience for students of color on campus as well improving minority representation at the school.

According to Students for Change, members repeatedly attempted to get in touch with Stenger to address their concerns to no avail, until this past Wednesday when an open-forum lecture was held to discuss the issues that they had been collecting thus far.

Pipe Dream reported that the atmosphere of this meeting grew increasingly hostile as Students for Change bombarded the president with difficult questions to which he responded to with a repeated “I don’t know” among other vague answers.

I can state without hesitation that I am both an avid and vocal advocate for the promotion of diversity and furiously condemn the under-representation of the minority population. While I remain wary of commenting on these events, I am astounded by the backwash of negativity and discrediting of the group and its’ claims that has amassed in the wake of these past few events. The amount of hate unleashed against this group is totally mind boggling. Based on the content of the articles, I can understand having a negative perception of what is going on. But most opponents of the group are commenting with total bias, and a lack of understanding of the roots of the organization and why they are going about trying to gain recognition for their cause in such a brutally vocal manner.

Without remarking on the validity of either sides’ arguments, I think it is safe to say that without a lack of understanding of the group’s concerns from a personal standpoint, it is very difficult to wave around sweeping epithets of how things should be done, or commenting on the groups’ baseless points or methods of action. The group could possibly bring the level of professionalism in which they present their demands up by a notch, yes. However, the core of their arguments are rooted in such deep emotions that at times it can be nothing short of impossible to cave to professionalism. In an earlier blog I posted a couple of years ago, I wrote about being randomly searched by the police at my local train station. Both times, I was accompanied by people who were not part of the targeted demographic for the police. Even now, I can recall the sting of humiliation and fury I felt at being put on the spot, as well as the wrath that tumbled in my mind at being marginalized in such a way. If a person does not have this sort of experience, then it poses a serious problem as to whether they are able to accurately criticize Students for Change. This is not to say that any criticism is unfounded. However, without the personal anecdotes to back it up, on what ground do these opponents of the group stand on?

I Googled the phrase “Germanwings crash” and “Andreas Lubitz” in the hopes that the results I was looking for would enable me to solidify the rant that I am ready to unleash. Needless to say, I was not disappointed. Let’s take a look at the following articles–

Crash Victim’s Father Calls for More Focus on Pilot Welfare – ABC News

Andreas Lubitz, Germanwings co-pilot: The tortuous trail to ‘Why?’ – CNN

Excerpts from the CNN article:

“The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, citing unnamed sources, reported that Lubitz suffered from mental illness.”

“Officials say he passed a psychological test when he was hired, had no known ties to terrorism and showed no sign of medical distress during the flight.”

Germanwings plane crash: Co-pilot ‘wanted to destroy plane’ – The BBC

Germanwings Crash Raises Questions For Pilots Taking Depression Drugs – Forbes

Depression. A focus on pilot welfare. No ties to terrorism. Mental illness.

WHY IS THIS MAN NOT CALLED A TERRORIST?!

This is not an attempt to deviate attention away from the horrors of this event. I am not trying to push a political agenda or force my opinions down anyone’s throats. I am not excusing the heinous actions committed by terrorists over the years. I just want events like this to shed light upon other, real issues that have ties to ones like this.

Why, why is it that media outlets have no qualms about stamping a terrorist label upon individuals with a darker shade of skin or some sort of Islamic background who are involved in terrible situations like this? I have no problem in believing that the Germanwings pilot possessed some sort of mental illness–after all, what sane person would have the ability to commit such mass murder? (Don’t answer that.)

Of course, that first question was rhetorical. Much of the public is well-aware, or so I hope, of the strings attached to maintaining a firm “colored people/Muslims/people who fit in our ‘other’ category only” theme for a number of reasons–political power, financial gain, swaying public opinion for private purposes, etc etc etc.

It is a seemingly unrelenting phenomenon that people will try harder to excuse the actions of Caucasian terrorists by digging into mental histories and historical backgrounds dating from birth: anything to find a reason, none of them being terrorism. Where is this sort of reasoning when it comes to the popular opinion of terrorism? Do we consider the upbringing, the background or the mental histories of these individuals? Where is the equality there? Don’t all lives matter?

Now, the term terrorism is commonly understood to mean something along the lines of “one who uses terror (read: violence) to for political means.” According to a Yahoo! News article, pilot/murder Andreas Lubitz was quoted telling his ex-girlfriend that he was worried “health problems” would dash his dreams and vowed one day to do something to “change the whole system”. Hmm, commit an act in order to gain ground in his beliefs? Sounds kinda like the media-touted definition of terrorism, don’t you think?

But it’s OK folks, he is white after all. No need to jump the gun here, he clearly poses no threat as a terrorist.

Generally, I try not to take part in too much dialogue regarding Israel and Palestine simply because it often feels like a circular discussion with no acknowledgment of truth or dissent on either end because my peers are too deeply ingrained in their personal beliefs to truly allow themselves to be swayed by views that do not parallel their own.

I say this not to berate anyone, but to make it clear that despite an individual’s level of education and knowledge, the role that a person’s upbringing plays in their identity also serves to heavily entrench them in the beliefs that correlate. In essence, if you are a Muslim then almost by definition you support Palestine, and if you are Jewish (referring mostly to American Jews), then you are more than likely a supporter of Israel.

Before reading about this BU senior’s decision to hold up a Palestinian flag at the Shabbat 1500 event on campus, I immediately knew there would be a serious backlash from the Jewish population at this school. Ordinarily, I would neither support nor condemn vocalizing political views at an event like this, but I can say on behalf of this student why he chose to do something like this. As someone in the comments section of this article stated, the disproportionate amount of Jewish/Israeli supporters and community far outnumber the Islamic/Palestinian one and is not immediately apparent unless you are part of the latter minority, and therefore any attempts to make a conversation regarding the mentioned conflict can hardly be conducted peacefully without an overwhelming number of proponents for one side to the point where the opponents’ views are drowned out.

As soon as this op-ed gained attention, it jumped to becoming one of the most-read articles on Pipe Dream for the week. The comments section generated some good discussion, but plainly painted an accurate picture of how back-and-forth conversations regarding the conflict often becomes. Instead of viewing the incident as isolated and trying to figure out why the student would do such a thing as what I would call a peaceful demonstration, a barrage of furious commentary materialized instead, with calls of ignorance and antisemitism. I was initially taken aback, but later deemed this response as standard considering the demographics of our student body. What pains me about this article and the response to it was the predictability from start to finish: one student taking a stand, a uproar of disapproval, and then back to flat lining.

Ah yes, the return of the SHSAT dilemma. Let the same tired yearly dialogue with no lasting change commence.

To add a bit of background to this story, New York City’s top public high schools is a set of nine that admits between 5,000 to 6,000 students total to their schools by utilizing an objective entrance exam called the Specialized High School Admissions Test.  I took the exam myself nearly ten years ago along with over 30,000 of my peers. I distinctly remember the gnawing feeling at the pit of my stomach when I arrived at the Bronx High School of Science to take the exam one Saturday morning, unbeknownst to the fact that the row of hunter-green doors that heralded the front entrance would become familiar to me come the next four years.

The SHSAT has come under fire in the past few years for consistently admitting a disproportionate number of black and Hispanic students into the specialized high schools. I can attest to the fact that Bronx Science was overwhelmingly populated with white and Asian students; I can practically count the number of minority (used loosely since Asian is clearly not a minority in this case) students were part of the populace.

In 2012, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) took action with a lawsuit that targeted the SHSAT for being racially biased. According to Gothamist.com, “The complaint against the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test (SHSAT) that students take to get into the city’s specialized high schools is not a new one. For years there has been public concern about the fact that the test seems to favor certain Asian and white populations over black and Hispanic ones. For example, “of the 967 eighth-grade students offered admission to Stuyvesant for the 2012-13 school year, just 19 (2%) of the students are African American and 32 (3.3%) are Latino.” For context, 70 percent of the city’s public school students are black and Hispanic.”

To no one’s surprise, most people are adamantly against the idea of change for the exam. For one, it is generally agreed that changing the exam’s components and the schools’ admissions criteria will do little to address the problem of lack of diversity within these schools. I agree with this point–a recent study conducted by the Research Alliance for NYC Schools at NYU Steinhardt showed that even while accounting for a different admissions process, such as incorporating grades, test scores and school attendance, would hardly make a dent in increasing the prevalence of minority students. However, what the lawsuit does is shine a light on a problem that has regularly occurred and been ignored for a long time. Because of the consistent excellence of students who attend these schools, the lack of diversity has been ignored. This is not the fault of the students; I know for a fact that many if not most applicants for the exam work extremely hard to perform well on the test, and continue with excellent academic performance throughout high school. It does not mean, however, that the school system is flawless.

Addressing a problem like the lack of diversity in these schools is a conversation where one must walk on eggshells these days–it seems like whenever the topic of minorities is brought up, we hear collective sighs of exasperation and a rousing mantra of the same arguments from proponents and opponents. For current students and alumni of the school, it is normal to feel the need to rush to the aid of the institute that has provided so many opportunities for them. But if we are to be the generation to change our future, we must address the problems in the present that will only worsen with time. Minority representation is not important for the sake of having some color in an underrepresented student body. Black and Hispanic students deserve the same opportunities, and shouldn’t lose out for lack of education during middle school, proper guidance and information, and lack of funding–which, might I add, are all significant contributors as to why they are such a highly underrepresented group in these schools.

It feels so painful to know that this country is so advanced, so powerful, so gifted, and yet this is one of the gripping social issues of today.

In 2012, a young woman residing in Delhi, India boarded a bus with a companion one evening after the two had watched a movie together.
She never came home.

The well-publicized rape of Jyoti Singh sparked a much-needed dialogue regarding gender rights and equity worldwide. In India, thousands took to the streets to express their outrage over the heinous act that took the life of a young woman with no remorse. What was thought to be an event that was furiously condemned by the Indian government took an unexpected turn with the ban of new documentary that examines the case and its’ aftermath. It also interviews some of the men who were behind the vicious crime, capturing in words the true essence of a rapist.

It is disappointing and disheartening to say the least that a nation in dire need of supporting their women after long battles to destroy traditions allowed their perpetual subjugation would reject a film that vehemently supports and gives voice to the cause. Concepts such as “slut-shaming” and demonizing the rape victim is gripping the world in ways that give way to incredibly horrific results. Even in the United States, a so-called democratic world power, a woman faces sexual assault every 107 seconds, according to RAINN. It will be interesting to see the issue in the context of a nation where tradition is the unapologetic root of the issue.

In all seriousness, the information presented in this article provides insight into a serious and disturbing matter. Racial inequality and a misunderstanding of cultures and subcultures have been and will continue to be a hot topic for news, primarily because it is a perpetual issue that is subject to limited resolution. This is not to say that the news accurately depicts unfair treatments–in fact, it is its’ primary breeding ground, stirring up controversies left and right and giving readers a textual and visual confirmation of the injustices that are committed towards targeted groups both domestically and worldwide.

Ferguson, Missouri has been at the center of recent talks regarding the way crimes and so-called crimes are mishandled when the perpetrator or victim (depends on how you see it) is a person of color. This can stretch even beyond ethnic backgrounds and incorporate religion, but for the purpose of this blog post, we will focus on skin color. Black people in the United States are by and far one of the most marginalized populations. They are constantly targeted, stereotyped, accused, and blamed. With the statistical evidence produced in this article that zeroes in on one city alone, it is difficult to contain scathing responses aimed at those who adamantly deny the existence of racial bias.

I began poring over this piece by highlighting the approaches that members of the Ferguson police department practiced that raised the hairs on the back of my neck and made me furiously clench my fists, until I realize that I had been doing that throughout the whole story. The Justice Department’s actions makes one consider to what extent atrocities are to be committed before any attempt at resolution is implemented. It took the deaths, nay, murders, of several African American people who are innocent in the regard that that the acts they committed to warrant aren’t nearly so dramatic as to actually call for such actions.

Let’s take a look at some of the renowned tactics that the Ferguson Police Department resorts to:

•  Internal documents showed Ferguson police officers conducting “pedestrian checks,” in which they stopped people walking down the street and demanded to see their identification without any probable cause.
• lacks in Ferguson accounted for 85 percent of traffic stops, 90 percent of tickets and 93 percent of arrests over a two-year period studied by investigators.
• A black motorist in Ferguson was twice as likely to be searched, according to the report, even though searches of whites turned up drugs and other contraband more often.
• Court fines are a major source of revenue, and internal emails show city officials pushing for more tickets and fines, then congratulating one another when revenue exceeded expectations.
• Federal investigators also found that city officials circulated racist jokes on their government email accounts without fear of punishment. One portrayed President Obama as a chimpanzee. Another included a photograph of African women dancing topless along with the caption “Michelle Obama’s High School Reunion.” A third joked that a black woman should receive a crime-prevention award for having an abortion.

The gravity of the issue at hand is to weigh in which factors contribute heavily to the root of the issue. Is it the unjust systems of power? The stereotypes that media feeds into to allow for this sort of perpetuation? The fact that it takes no effort to dismiss the long-term disastrous effects of consistently belittling minority races?

“The Justice Department’s analysis found that these disparities could not be explained even when correcting for crime rates and demographics. “These disparities occur, at least in part, because Ferguson law enforcement practices are directly shaped and perpetuated by racial bias,” the Justice Department concluded.”  NYT)

With this revelation, we should be inspired to draw parallels between a small scale police force and the racial bias in its’ tactics and observe similar approaches on a macroeconomic scale. Perhaps in doing so, we will be taking one large step for mankind.

On Tuesday morning, I arrived five minutes late to my English lecture, having prioritized grabbing a bite to eat ahead of attending a class that I was paying nearly $1,400 for. As I snuck into the back row, I caught snatches of my professor’s discourse, lamenting on his students’ inability to spell their TA’s names right. Pulling out my laptop, I frantically tried to recall whether my TA’s last name contained the ‘M” that I had written it as, or was it an “N”? To my horror, upon checking my last email from him, I saw that it was neither M nor N; it was a D. D, the precarious letter that stood for the disaster that my generation appears to be on the brink of falling into.

Midway through his speech, my professor was interrupted by a student who raised his hand to object to a question that was on our last exam. The student maintained that although he completely understood the importance of names, in both knowing them and spelling them, he failed to understand the significance of remembering the name of Amadou Diallou, who was the basis of one of the texts we were required to read for the exam, in a particular chapter of “Blink” by Malcolm Gladwell.

I cringed inwardly; I could see my professor struggling to respond in a manner that was devoid of sarcasm. Fortunately, a student came to his rescue, pointing out that the professor had in fact highlighted the significance of that man during one particular lecture, something that the inquisitor would have known had he paid attention.

The focus of the beginning of the day’s lecture was dedicated to those students who were complaining about the difficulty of the exam. The number of people who found the four-part exam consisting of defining terms, passage identification and analysis, fill-in-the-blanks, and a relatively short essay was, to quote a former New York mayoral candidate, “too damn high”.

I could easily detect the note of distress my professor’s voice as he struggled to impress upon us an explanation as to why he couldn’t make the exam any easier: because it was already too easy.

Is this what being a college student has come to mean? Urging your professor to adjust your exam to make it easier than it already is? In this day where a focus on STEM majors and future business leaders leave liberal arts majors to be on the receiving end of unwarranted flak, I felt humiliated that the students who participate in the major that I so enjoy are providing material evidence to support the stereotypes.

This isn’t an issue that only students who major in liberal arts deal with. My professor went on to read aloud an op-ed published in 2011 by the L.A. Times on the declining status of college students, and how the focus of college evolved to solely marketing the university and bending to the will of students rather than actually educating them. However, the point of this article that he chose to emphasize is that the responsibility of this issue is not entirely carried by the institutions themselves; a large portion is to be blamed on us students.

These statements do, of course, hold the traits of a generalization, but the article acknowledges this:

To be sure, there were many exceptions to this dismal portrait of the state of undergraduate learning. Some academic programs and colleges are quite rigorous, and some students we followed pushed themselves and excelled. In general, traditional arts and science fields (math, science, humanities and the social sciences) tended to be more demanding, and students who majored in those subjects studied more and showed higher gains. So too did students attending more selective colleges. In addition, at every college and university examined, we found some students who were applying themselves and learning at impressive levels.

These real accomplishments do not, however, exonerate the colleges and universities that are happy to collect annual tuition dollars but then fail to provide many students with a high-quality education.

I am choosing to discourse on this matter simply because this is a truth that I have been struggling with for some time now. The proof of this fact surrounds me. Whenever I see a fellow peer stressing over an upcoming exam or an impending paper, it is often because they have left it for the last minute. The difficulty of the task in question is debatable; I don’t believe for a second that, outside of the exceptions of a barking-mad professor or a particularly challenging chapter, achieving high marks is impossible. Outside of class, many students seem disinterested in real-life situations. I can practically count on one hand the number of conversations I have had with other students regarding war, poverty, class and race issues: in other words, meaningful conversations that involve legitimate debating and fact-based arguments. Most of these kinds of dialogues involved uncomfortable aversions, a simple tsk-tsk at the occurring issue, and then the conversation moves on to a more superficial topic. I think Cherry puts it well in S.E. Hinton’s book “The Outsiders”, when she describes these kinds of conversations:

“You know, sometimes I’ll catch myself talking to a girl-friend, and realize I don’t mean half of what I’m saying. I don’t really think a beer blast on the river bottom is super-cool, but I’ll rave about one to a girl-friend just to be saying something.”

Where, along our paths to greatness, have we lost the desire to learn? Why are we opposed to pushing our limits, our boundaries, and challenging ourselves? Why are we now concerned with setting the bar lower, with making things easier for ourselves? Why have we lost the want to become more intelligent beings, to remain inquisitive and eager and thirsty for knowledge?

My professor continued to express the problem further, describing how students who came to meet with him during office hours were unable to withstand checking their cell phones for more than a minute. This last statement unintentionally exacerbated my personal struggle, because I was could not honestly consider myself separate from this group. Much of my own potential and that of my peers are going to waste simply because we are cannot detach ourselves from digital devices, be it cell phones or laptops or gaming consoles. The worst part about this is the way we seem to dismiss this as a trivial matter, under the pretense that we will somehow “catch up” to what we are depriving ourselves of. The truth is, there is no catching up when the list of procrastinated tasks grows longer and attributing it to the trials of youth. We pay little mind to our dismissal things like how much we truly understand our homework, how little attention we pay to international news.

Sadly, I have no concluding statement to these sentiments. The problem has been expressed, but the trouble is, how do we extract the solution?  I remembered Amadou Diallou’s name because I faintly recalled picking it up from the nightly news years ago. I happened to grow up and still currently live near that section of the South Bronx, and by the end of the recollection of the shooting experience, I was in tears. We should be searching for meaning this way in the material that we consume, not consider it an arduous to-do task. This, I think, is the first step to helping us students change our perspective on our education. This goes towards the academia as well, who would rather capitalize on the process of education rather than further it. For the students who simply don’t give a damn, here’s hoping these words from a fellow peer make any dent in your day.