Tuesday, February 9, 2016

In the safe spaces on campus, no Jews allowed


The following is an article with interviews of and by participants at University of California, Berkeley November 6, 2015 annual Students of Color Conference:


"College students have risen up to fight racism on campuses across the country. But it is often those very same students who subject Jewish students to anti-Semitism..."

 

".....It was a prevailing sentiment that I felt at the conference and in the progressive community, that because I am Jewish, I cannot be an activist who supports Black Lives Matter or the LGBTQ community. When I heard that among my peers that “the Jews are oppressors and murderers—How can you care about students of color on campus when they’re murdering our people abroad?”—it quickly dawned on me that it wasn’t that they don’t like us because we’re pro-Israel—they don’t like us because we’re Jews. We were targeted.....


It was, ironically, in a safe space intended to protect students from discrimination and bigotry in which their Jewish identity was marginalized, ostracized, and politicized. And it was the progressive students and students of color—often themselves targets of hate, bigotry, and discrimination—who were the propagators of ancient hatreds against the Jewish people.

Mokhtarzadeh still painfully remembers that weekend. “I was made to feel uncomfortable and unwanted in a space that was meant to be inclusive and safe,” she said. “It was in that moment, during that conference, that I realized that every identity and every intersection of identity was to be welcomed and championed in progressive spaces—except mine.”

For the full article see:

http://www.thetower.org/article/in-the-safe-spaces-on-campus-no-jews-allowed/