On March 12th, my fellow CST friend, Maggie Myers and I took a quick trip to Evanston, IL. We had heard from some fellow CST students about this presentation going on in Evanston, so we decided to look it up. Once I looked it up on my phone, I quickly noticed the topic of the presentation fits the subjects we have been learning class almost perfectly. The event was titled “African Americans and Jews: Parallels and Divergences”. It was an easy 30-minute drive and the presentation was taking place in a very modern, refine building called the Jewish Reconstructionist Congregation. Right when we walked in we were greeted by a worker there and were told where to go which was nice because it was a large building. We went upstairs to a large convention-type room where we were greeted by yet another person. The event was free so the guy just checked to see if our names were on the sign-up sheet. We found our seats and waited for the presenter to take the podium.

 

 

The person giving the speech was actually a well-accomplished professor named Tony Michels. He is an American Jewish History professor and the University of Wisconsin-Madison and he has published a book. Professor Michel’s began his speech by listing off several dates throughout history in which Jews and African American have been abused or discriminated against. He did this for awhile giving me the impression that he was trying to prove a point that there are almost too many horrible events that have occurred.

Later during his speech, Michel’s started to discuss how pop culture has had some controversial anti-semitic traits such as the music industry. This topic had me very intrigued because he had switched from discussing past events to a more modern topic that I could relate to. Michels’ had talked about the rap industry specifically and about their free use of slurs towards Jewish people as well as the foul language towards African Americans. He even displayed a video montage showing dozens of music videos of rappers excessively using the n-word and rapping about their “Jewish lawyers”. This topic of the controversial use of the n-word made me quickly think of the article, A Question of Language by Gloria Naylor. Naylor writes about how the n-word can have several different meanings and descriptions to those of different colors. For one description she writes “In the plural, it became a description of some group within the community that had overstepped the bounds of decency as my family defined it: Parents who neglect their children, a drunken couple who fought in public, people who simply refuse to look for work, those with excessively dirty mouths or unkempt households were all ‘trifling n——’” (Naylor 2). Naylor goes on to describe several other meanings for the word but the overall connection and difference of opinions interested me.

 

 

Michaels discussed his opinion on the racist use of the word in rappers songs while Naylor learned to see the word as a form of control. She described in her writing how African Americans were trying to change a word that was once used to denounce their ethnicity into a word that signified the history and power of the group. I respect both the opinions of the authors, but Naylor’s article made me question if that’s what all the African American rappers were trying to do with the word as opposed to using it aggressively against themselves.

One last topic Michels’ mentioned that troubled me, was his parallel that Jews and African Americans have both always consciously been the minority group. With all the discrimination they have faced in the past and still present, they have never known what it is like to be in the “agent”, minority group. I’m not sure why but this point that he made kind of came at me to surprise. I had never really considered the fact that even throughout history and modern day, whites have always been the dominant, majority group. This fact really saddens me that we have been stuck in this same societal hierarchy for hundreds of years. Although I believe America has come a long way from all the racist, anti-semitic ways we participated in in the past, I still think we have a long way to still go.

I honestly didn’t think I was going to be as interested in this presentation as I was, but it allowed me to listen and think very differently about topics that I have in the past and was overall a really good experience. I would definitely consider going to another event like this sometime in the near future.