Letter to the Editor: Ugly and insensitive face of anit-Semitism

Among the various headlines about the recent ugly and insensitive anti-Semitic incidents on the IU-Bloomington campus were: “Bloomington United responds to recent anti-Semitism at IU,” “More anti-Semitic attacks at IU” and “Hanukkah begins amid anti-Semitic incidents.”

Some of us helplessly and sadly read about the anti-Semitic incidents. In fact, many things came to mind, as they rekindled the guilty feeling I often harbored about anti-Semitism and racism when I first arrived in America in 1975. On my way to the U.S. from Stockholm via London, my U.K.-based friends urged me to watch out for these societal evils.

As an undergraduate student at Dillard University, a very tolerant and progressive private liberal arts institution in Louisiana, I also came across another evil: gay bashing. I still recall a request from a polite and openly gay senior for us to meet to talk about his impending Peace Corps assignment in Niger, West Africa.

As we were talking generally about African culture, one of my American roommates at the time saw us. When I returned to our dorm room, the roommate surprised me with a stern warning: “Look, A.B., don’t ever touch anything that I own in this room. I saw you talking happily with one of those gay guys on campus.”

It was a lesson in amazement because, living in a great country such as America with great citizenry, I did not expect this roommate’s intolerance, as he made me seem contaminated.

Since the late 1970s, I have treaded very carefully in trying to avoid but also to be sensitive to incidents of anti-Semitism, racism and gay bashing. It is on this note that I promptly applauded Provost and Executive Vice President Karen Hanson’s very strong condemnation of the anti-Semitic incidents on her campus as well as the guest column by the 12-member Bloomington United responding to the recent anti-Semitism at IU.

In retrospect, I have recently wondered if environments or home training help in fostering anti-Semitic, racist or biased behaviors. Dillard University, as a small historically black university, made sure that its students left the campus with open minds.

For example, former President Samuel DuBois Cook, a Morehouse College friend of the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., established the Dillard University National Conference on Black-Jewish Relations and the National Center for Black-Jewish Relations to “rejuvenate the Black-Jewish Coalition that was a driving force behind the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.”

Dr. Cook has since been given several awards, including the Weiss Award from the National Conference of Christians and Jews for his Black-Jewish initiatives. To ensure Black-Jewish goodwill, I remember creating a very popular E-104 course studying the
history and circumstances of “Blacks and Jews” upon my arrival at IU in 1995.

In the class, students dialogued and did comparative research on the Holocaust and slavery.

As I taught that course for several years on the Bloomington campus, I often felt good about the awareness being created.

In the end, it very often reminded me of the powerful words of Los Angeles’ Rodney King: “Can’t we all just get along!”