By Isaac McKenna
The Communicator
Ann Arbor Community HS
1st Place Division 4, News Writing
Diversity Coverage
JUDGING CRITERIA
- Topic relevant to the school or students and reflects lifestyles, challenges and potentials of those from a diverse background
- Sharp, attention-getting lead grabs reader and arouses curiosity
- Shows thorough reporting skills through research and interviewing
- Effective use of facts/quotes from both primary and secondary sources
- Balanced, fair and sensitive presentation
- Sentences, paragraphs of varied length; written clearly, concisely and vividly
- Proper diction/grammar; use of third person
Kacy DuMouchel wears eyeliner every day, almost without exception.
The sharp black wings above her dark brown eyes are the only makeup she’s ever worn. They give her the protection, power, conviction and confidence she has struggled her whole life to find. In them, she sees her icons, the beauty in others that she works to find in herself.
She wears them like a shield.
As a senior, DuMouchel has recognized that CHS is a place full of subtle and sometimes open racism, of being the token black girl, of prompted self-doubt. But after her number was called from the waiting list, two weeks before the start of her freshman year, there was only the excitement of her new environment, the new friend group she found and the few friends who looked like her.
“When I first came, I had a group of predominantly white friends and then I was friends with one person [of color],” DuMouchel said. “It’s weird because we didn’t become friends on purpose. In Ann Arbor Public Schools (AAPS), there’s just not enough black people in general to have differences.” Nonetheless, friendships are friendships — DuMouchel loved her group of seven, and so she loved Community, for a while.
You can’t really tell change until it’s over.
According to the U.S. Department of Education, CHS’ student body is about 75 percent white. The school always presents itself as a welcoming environment for diverse students, but the statistics show that it remains one of the whitest schools in AAPS.
As DuMouchel grew up at CHS, she changed. She began to recognize the effects that 75 percent can have on a school, on people who look like her. Microaggressions from ignorant white peers have been a constant, as has been the struggle with how to respond.
“A lot of my life is controlled by my lack of confidence, up to the way that I walk and talk and wear,” DuMouchel said. So when a class conversation about race and straightening hair took an offensive turn, her anger initially manifested her typical response: “I’m not going to say anything.”
But then, DuMouchel took a stand. “I was so sure of what I was saying, because this was a lecture that I’d given before,” she said. “I can never be white, and I know that because I wish I could. In the moment, I felt so on it. I was definitely wearing eyeliner.” And the response was good, with peers validating her point.
However, there are so many instances of microaggressions at CHS that DuMouchel doesn’t often find the energy to call them out. “The problem with a lot of Ann Arbor, but it’s so central at Community, is that there is this idea that if a person is not actively racist, they are never insensitive or are always doing the right thing. And that’s just not true.” And, in her experience, this ignorance can extend to some of the adults at school.
At almost any CHS assembly, DuMouchel is at the front, her voice ringing through St. Andrew’s Church with confidence. She is a talented public speaker, and she has been involved with planning the opening day and Blue Ribbon celebration. But it wasn’t originally her choice to be a part of these events.
“It is [tokenizing],” she said. “I am kind of helpful, because you put a gay, black woman up there and you’re like, ‘we hit everything.’” She believes that the lack of genuine diversity in the student body leads event organizers to present “pseudo-diversity” at events. In fact, she’s worked out what she believes is the “algorithm for putting a diverse group on stage.” To make a group of nine presenters diverse, at least three will be black, five will be female, and one will be a different racial minority, according to DuMouchel.
Responsibility for working towards diversity is hard to place, and DuMouchel acknowledges this. “I don’t think anyone that I interact with can be blamed for this,” she said. Rather, it is a system of ignorant action that shapes those within it.
An environment of discomfort around the topic of race might also be to blame.
“I feel like part of the reason that it’s just never going to be done correctly, at this rate, is because people don’t want people to be upset,” DuMouchel said. The general reaction to conversations about race, she says, is one of defensiveness and dismissiveness.
You can’t really tell change until it’s over.
DuMouchel’s dad, J Rizor, also attended CHS, though he didn’t graduate. His mother was one of the parents that protested against the exclusionary lottery process that required parents to stand in line during work hours to submit their children. All of the students who got in due to these protests were placed in a new forum, and all of them were racial minorities.
“I don’t know if we were viewed as invaders [because] we had gotten in on the loophole but people who didn’t get in were like ‘They had to go complain and play the race card,’” Rizor said. Although the barrier to his admission was removed, he still sees other ways that Community is discriminatory, especially in the context of the Ann Arbor “bubble.”
“They talk about an inclusive community, but it’s really not,” Rizor said. Ann Arbor often shares the defensive, self-congratulatory environment that many minorities at CHS face, making the pressure nearly impossible to escape.
What’s striking about DuMouchel, though, is how she carries herself through the pressure of her city and school. On stage, in front of hundreds of students and staff, she always seems cool and collected, cracking jokes and speaking with confidence. She may not have volunteered to do it, but she excels at public speaking and leadership; the pressure to do well is increased by the feeling that she represents all black students when chosen for such a role.
You can’t really tell change until it’s over.
Neutral Zone, Ann Arbor’s teen center, is like a second home for so many high-school-aged youth around Washtenaw County. DuMouchel is one of them. She’s become a leader in the music programs there, helping to found a group called Women in Music Production and recording original songs in the center’s Orpheum Studio. DuMouchel says the dialogue around race at Neutral Zone is very different from at CHS.
“It’s so difficult when you have classroom discussions about racism,” she said. “All of the adults [at Neutral Zone] are friends with you. It’s easier when you feel like you’re talking to your friends and your friend is like ‘hey, when you said that, you really hurt
some people’s feelings.’” Neutral Zone draws a far more diverse population of youth, with white teens making up only 45%, according to the annual program report. Inclusion and the centering of marginalized communities are major goals there, and those things have made DuMouchel feel welcomed. She thinks that some of the structures that make Neutral Zone a truly inclusive space could be applicable to CHS, especially an increased value on youth voice.
At Neutral Zone, there is a shared learning experience between adults and teens. If schools gave students a greater say in choosing the books they read, the way that schedules are structured and the flow of classes, there might be better results, DuMouchel says. And she also hopes teachers can find a way to make focused efforts to center marginalized communities within the learning sphere. Still, she finds it hard to come up with an answer to the lack of diversity and inclusivity she’s felt at CHS.
“It’s an attitude difference, and I think it’s going to come over many years,” DuMouchel said. Although CHS has come a long way from the exclusionary policies that ended the year of Rizor’s admission, DuMouchel thinks the school still needs to do better promoting diversity.
You can’t really tell change until it’s over.
So DuMouchel hopes that things are slowly, almost invisibly changing, that when elementary-aged kids get to CHS, it will be a different environment.
She doesn’t have all the answers, and she recognizes that her story and her feelings aren’t representative of everyone with her identities. But she knows that the push for a better, more inclusive community will continue. And, when she’s part of it, you can bet that she’ll be wearing eyeliner.