It’s the middle of the week, we all could use a little boost to get us to the weekend, so welcome to Wednesday🔥🔥takes, where we offer … Let’s call it constructive criticism. Or big ideas we’d like to see in Flint. Or maybe just a rant about something. If you have an idea and would like to write one, pitch it to team@flintdaily.news.
Up front and in general: I think it is impossible to claim to have made a good faith effort to learn about something new to you in one breath and then belittle that very same thing in the next.
That’s essentially what Genesee County Commissioner Shaun Shumaker did during the County Commission meeting on November 12. During discussion of a proposed resolution to update the appointment process for Genesee County’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Commission, Shumaker spent several minutes disparaging the work and mission of that particular group. It begins at about the 37-minute mark of the video here, so you can listen and judge for yourself whether my summation is accurate or not. But a few things stood out to me, starting with this:
“I had a very delusional idea of what DEI was when Commissioner at the time (Domonique) Clemons, now Clerk Clemons, formed this committee,” Shumaker said. “But I volunteered because I didn’t want to judge anything before I experienced it because guess what? I can listen to what other people say, but the real fact of the matter is how do I make an opinion off someone else’s opinion? I can’t. I got to do it myself. And I did. And I participated. I participated in healing circles and I did a lot of stuff. But I can tell you this. I thought it was to unite our community to make a fair system that worked for everybody. And I can tell you right now, if you’re a conservative, that’s not the agenda over there.”
You really have to catch the way he says “healing circles” to inform your opinion of whether he participated with an open mind or not. I can’t interpret what’s in anyone’s heart but I’ve spent enough time coaching tweenage basketball players to interpret tone, and that tone was sassy as hell.
First, let’s back up for a second: Genesee County formed the DEI Commission in 2021, partially in response to national protests of the killings by police of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, and the momentary awareness this country seemed to have about racial injustice (we’ve … uh … backslid a tad in the awareness department since then). The commission was given the ability to appoint members who would represent county employees, community members, and others in Genesee County in order to help advise on topics related to racial, economic, and gender equity in county government. During the meeting, if you watch the discussion, Commissioner Charles Winfrey and Commissioner Beverly Brown, PhD, both describe the DEI Commission as different from other advisory commissions because its role is related more to creating and building culture rather than specifically helping create policy. Its members are volunteers, appointed by the County Commission for specific terms, just like many other commissions within county government. They make recommendations based on their expertise or community connections or lived experiences or other reasons they’re appointed to their positions, and the actual elected County Commission can decide whether or not to follow those recommendations. I don’t know the members of the DEI Commission on a personal level, but several are well-known for their service and passion and positive efforts in the community.
Shumaker was once on the DEI Commission along with Winfrey, but actually quit in February. During last week’s meeting, he made multiple other comments (many of them starting with “GUESS WHAT,” like all the great orators of our time) that suggested his participation prior to quitting wasn’t as genuine as he represented it to be in the first quote above.
“I’ve sat on this commission, I took flack because I didn’t go to meetings.”
“My gripe was why do I want to show when I’m the minority?”
“I think it’s a divider of people.”
“I’m copyrighting this phrase, I think it’s dividing everyone intentionally.”
“And for those of us, guess what? Who don’t believe in DEI if we’re going to be inclusive of that fact. Guess what? And where it’s going. And there’s a lot of corporations that have recently decided that guess what? This is not the best direction for us to take.”
Your guess on what that last one means is as good as mine, I’ve watched the recording a few times and can’t really decipher, other than I think maybe he’s suggesting we need more people who don’t believe in DEI on the DEI board? Seems counterproductive but what do I know!
And, not that it is super important to the larger point in writing this, but I would like to point out that Target is one of the highest profile companies in the country to publicly abandon its DEI efforts, and what has resulted is one of the longest and most successful boycotts in American history. They’re so down bad they’re even forcing employees to smile in an effort to get customers to return!
My inclination here is to mock, because those quotes clearly lack self-awareness, and I’m fairly immature. But I’m trying to improve as a person, and it isn’t productive to solely make jokes even when they’re warranted. Shumaker isn’t my representative on the County Commission. I only leave the city of Flint on the rarest of occasions, so I am not really invested in what happens in the Fenton area he represents other than when I’m coaching sixth grade girls’ basketball there and watching my kids repeatedly run perfectly executed delayed cuts out of their offense in a rout which I did observe last weekend, sorry Fenton.
So I don’t have to be invested in Shumaker as an elected official because he’s not my representative, and he also doesn’t really have to care what I think since I’m not his constituent. But overall, as someone who watches way more local government meetings than is advisable, he doesn’t strike me as a bad representative. He is actually right that, as a conservative, he’s at a disadvantage in a county that leans heavily Democrat, but he and other conservatives on the County Commission seem to work efficiently with their Democrat colleagues and get Genesee County business done mostly harmoniously and transparently at the moment. He seems to respect and have good, professional relationships with his colleagues on the board. Or at the very least, he’s not openly disrespectful and abusive to them like the face of the U.S. conservative party at the moment is to his colleagues.
He’s just super wrong on this issue, and that’s extra frustrating because he has access to people on the DEI Commission who are knowledgeable and could help inform a more nuanced understanding of why diversity, equity, and inclusion are vital in a county like this one that has huge economic, health, and other disparities. It’s a nonpartisan issue. He’s also part of a county government that is objectively pretty good about thinking about inclusion! We just wrote last week about Brown championing, and finding buy-in from her colleagues (including Shumaker!), on making sure ASL interpreters are present at all County Commission meetings. That’s DEI and it is good for residents! Winfrey and the late County Commissioner Bryant Nolden have been longtime champions of making sure people in the poorest parts of this county have access to education, health, recreation, and other needs. Dale Weighill has long been a fierce advocate for underrepresented voices in government and education. Weighill is also incredible at having respectful conversations with people whose political views are extraordinarily different from his. I watched that rant from Shumaker and just wanted to yell at my screen, “Talk to your colleagues and actually listen to their experiences, bruh!”
As much as I want to isolate myself from people who purposely miss the point, even when they have access to others who can help inform them or teach them about their blind spots if they’d allow themselves to learn anything, I also have this annoying belief in community and in growth, even in the unlikeliest circumstances.
Actually, just this week, the Detroit Metro Times had a great example that this possibility exists. Anthony Hudson, a Grand Blanc-based MAGA-pilled conservative unsuccessfully running for governor after unsuccessfully running for Congress, had spent weeks fearmongering about Muslim people in Dearborn, “Sharia Law,” and a bunch of other bogeymen that news outlets no one should watch constantly create panic over. Hudson decided he was going to go there and “expose” Dearborn, whatever that means. Instead, what he found is what anyone who actually visits Dearborn encounters: a beautiful, vibrant, unique city that is actually one of Michigan’s treasures.
“I can tell you in good faith right now today standing at a pulpit in a mosque that Sharia law does not exist in Dearborn, Michigan, nor do I believe it exists anywhere in the United States,” Hudson said, via the Metro Times, in a video posted from a Dearborn mosque. “You have all been lied to with the propaganda that’s going on about Dearborn, Michigan. I can tell you with absolute faith that everything you’ve been told or taught about Dearborn is a complete fabrication of the truth. Dearborn is a very quiet community. There is a lot of hospitality. I’ve been extremely welcomed here.”
That’s growth! And I also have hope for Shumaker’s story. There was a comment he made that is extremely close to getting the point. “When you watch children and you watch young people, they are more united than we give ourselves credit for,” he said.
I agree wholeheartedly with that statement. I’ve worked in higher education for more than 15 years now. When I was at Kettering University, General Motors CEO Mary Barra spoke at commencement and described Gen Z in 2013 as, “The most inclusive generation in history.” Immense amounts of research since then back that up, and Gen Alpha on their heels is likely going to top it. Some of the bravest protestors in Chicago pushing back against government overreach and aggression and unlawful detainment of residents are teenagers.
One of my proudest moments as a parent was when my sixth grade daughter asked me for a Pride flag magnet for her locker. She wanted it not because she was trying to tell me something about herself, but because she’d noticed something about her classmates. She said there were two kids in her grade who are gay, and she wanted them to know she was a safe person to talk to. My son is in high school, and the first shoes he truly begged me for weren’t Jordans, they were Sabrina Ionescus. When a few kids at school teased him about the choice, he doubled down by wearing an “Everyone Watches Women’s Sports” shirt. Then, he tripled down with a deep cut and wore his Deanna Nolan Detroit Shock jersey to honor women in sports and Flint simultaneously (he’s costing me a fortune, by the way).
My point, other than to brag on my kids, is to tell Shumaker and others who are struggling with understanding: the kids DO get it. And if you continue to refuse to do the work or fail to see the kinder world they want to and deserve to inherit, they’ll evolve past you.
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