Black and Jewish students belong to cultural groups that have each faced centuries of discrimination, yet leaders of both communities at the university say the two rarely interact.
In an effort to strengthen ties, program organizers from the university chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Jewish Student Union orchestrated an event to open lines of communications yesterday.
About 80 students attended Bridging the Gap Between Two Struggles, an event where a panel of experts, which included the presidents of the student chapters of the JSU and NAACP, two professors, the Nyumburu Center director and a rabbi, sought to alleviate social estrangement between the cultural groups.
“All of you are reflections of the wider society we live in. At the same time we have had an alliance and friction,” Nyumburu Cultural Center Director Ronald Zeigler told students.
Panelists discussed the diversity within black and Jewish communities as well as the similarities between them, such as how both have ties to their countries of origin.
Rabbi Ari Israel, executive director of the Hillel Center, made a salad analogy to describe the two cultural groups.
“Today it’s not about a melting pot, but a tossed salad. It means we’re going to have a tomato here, an avocado there, a cucumber and a bed of lettuce to keep us all together,” Israel said. “I hope and wish we can eat together and not be eaten by each other.”
Both student leaders spoke of a future featuring more communication between the two cultural groups.
“The best way to build bridges for both communities is one, to not just target our own people, and two, reach outside our racial groups,” said Mark Conway, president of the university chapter of the NAACP.
Conway pointed out the fact the he had several classes with JSU President Eric Merin but had never spoken to him.
“The dialogue needs to open,” Merin said. “It’s nonexistent right now. Tonight it needs to start.”
Compared to the black campus community at the university, the Jewish community is much larger, mostly because half of university Greek life is Jewish, Merin said.
Whereas Jewish students have long been a recognized community at the university, the black community has had more difficulty “understanding themselves,” said Zeigler.
“I’ve never had to look for a community. It’s so easy to find Jews on campus,” said Sarah Albert, a freshman journalism major.
One student cited historical interactions between Africans and Israelis as relevant to the dialogue.
“I notice that often times, when we talk about issues in the black and Jewish community, we like to sugarcoat things,” said Desta Anyiwo, a former African Student Association president.
At the end of the event, Wanika Fisher, programming and research chairwoman of the university NAACP chapter, invited students to discuss a long list of controversial terms that touched on issues of religion, intermarriage and race.
In the past, the groups have held events built to strengthen relations between blacks and Jews at the university, and the NAACP hopes to continue this tradition, Fisher said.
“Hopefully this can be the beginning of a changed environment,” said Israel. “Sometimes you have to have a little bit of tension to move together.”
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