Nonsense. The anti-Semitic remarks and actions at UCLA took place in public, in front of large numbers of people. They were captured on an official video that was published. They actually did something which arguably constituted a hostile atmosphere for Jews. There was actually a vote taken to deny a person a position solely on the basis of her religion, and it was only reversed because there was an adult in the room who told them they couldn’t do that. These are students who have been elected to represent other students, and, in my opinion, should be held to a higher standard than a bunch of drunken frat boys on a private bus, not a lower one.
I have to say I’m annoyed by news reports that suggest that the students thought better of the improper vote after more discussion. They changed position only after a faculty member told them they’d have to.
@Hunt, I posted the video of the Rachel’s election meeting in #113. The meeting is a pretty tame affair and the tone and tenor of it can’t be compared to OU racists. @Donna. My son will occasionally post. You are not dealing with him. Bottom line, I don’t know what Roth’s religion is and apparently neither does anyone else.
SamRam, I don’t think the tone or tenor of the UCLA meeting in any way lessens the meaning of their actions. In fact, a case could be made that the UCLA case is worse. It is a school sponsored student organization, where blatant religious discrimination is being used in making decisions as to who should and shouldn’t be allowed to serve. The fact that students are comfortable making these decisions in such a biased way, and that they don’t seem to understand why this is wrong, is really hard to believe.
I would imagine that UCLA requires students on a Council of this sort to acknowledge school policies against racism and discrimination. That is why my very first post starting this thread said they should be removed: I assume they violated rules they likely had to sign their name to when they took the job. That’s a significant failure in a lot of ways, including the Administration and the faculty representative who let this kind of thing happen. That wasn’t a “teaching moment” but a complete failure.
As for SamRam, I ask the moderators to remove this person. If more than one person is posting using an account, that is a violation of terms of use in every forum I’ve ever moderated. And etiquette is that when a family member posts, that person says “I’m blank posting for …”, which isn’t happening here. So we have a poster putting up borderline anti-semitic comments while either using another person’s screen name or pretending to be a second poster using that name. In either case, I ask the moderators to consider suspension or removal.
I have no idea whether SamRam is breaking the rules. But if (in his current persona) he is not the college freshman who usually posts under that name, but an adult (the freshman’s father), I think that actually makes his comments, and his demands that I somehow “prove” that Fabienne Roth is not Jewish – while he simultaneously refuses to explain the basis for his speculation that she may be Jewish, despite all evidence to the contrary – even more unpleasant.
Regarding the UCLA video, I would have liked to see it turn into a real discussion: too bad someone didn’t ask the Muslim students why their religion and ties to student groups didn’t render them unfit for service. As it was, the only lesson learned seemed to be that one should not voice one’s prejudices, not that one should challenge or attempt to rethink them.
Exactly. But I think that if someone questioned the Muslim students about their belonging to Muslim groups, that question would have been seen as offensively racist.
Note that UCLA does not punish or expel students for offensively racist speech. Refer to the episode about Alexandra Wallace and the “Asians in the Library” video (she withdrew shortly thereafter, claiming social ostracism and threats against her; the threats are deplorable, but the social ostracism indicates that she got what she deserved).
Indeed, isn’t that the typical lesson? As with the OU ΣAE incident, the racists who were exposed have basically been rendered harmless, but the racists who remain hidden, perhaps to practice racial discrimination in situations where it is unprovable in individual cases, have more of an overall effect on members of the target groups.
While they are rendered harmless in one sense, the fact it is now known some members of that fraternity chapter were singing songs which aren’t only racist, but also calling for the lynching of AAs considering lynchings and racism were pervasive in that state and even among SAE historically means there’s going to be a heightened sense of fear among the targeted minority. A fear those who weren’t part of long historically persecuted minorities aren’t likely to understand as shown by some posts here.
This is heightened when some are equating the social ostracism and stereotyping of fraternity/sorority organizations on the campus with the centuries long persecution of AAs in US history even after the Civil War. Ironic, especially considering SAE’s past history and the fact fraternities/sororities, especially White-dominated ones in Oklahoma and other parts of the south were part of and mostly catered to the White dominated establishment which passed and perpetuated those very persecutions and discriminatory laws/traditions until they were forced to stop by Federal court rulings and sometimes…Federal enforcement action.
I also should take a moment to point out a common fallacy among some lawyers and people who seem to believe the synonymous with what’s right or just and jurists/lawyers objective interpreters of the law. Even if the latter was possible, the law itself is a human creation created by error and bias-prone human beings.
Some random examples in US history underscoring the above:
For the first few decades of the republic, one must not only be a White male, but also property owners owning a certain amount of land or equivalent value in order to be allowed to vote. This meant not only were non-Whites excluded, but also women and those who weren’t wealthy enough to meet that minimal property qualification or equivalent demonstrated wealth. In short, the vast majority of the population including the working and middle classes who didn’t meet that minimal property ownership/wealth requirement.
The Dred Scott Case in 1857…especially Supreme Court Judge Roger B. Taney who was sympathetic to slavery. Earlier in his legal career, he was vehement enough about his disregard for even free Black people considering as US DA he supported a South Carolina law which prohibited the entry of free Blacks into the state and argued no Black person could never be made US citizens.
Slavery was officially legal in parts of the US until 1865. In the antebellum period, many attorneys and jurists like Taney made plenty of legal arguments in support of it.
Plessy vs Ferguson(1896) which provided official legal sanction to laws mandating segregation in government institutions and venues open to the public on the basis of “separate, but equal”.
Jim Crow and other discriminatory laws and practices which continued well into the 1960s.
My point about the UCLA issue is that this is the most insidious form of racism. When people chant, as they did at a BDS rally in S. Africa last week, that they’d kill the Jews, that’s pretty easy to see as foaming at the mouth garbage. But the setting aside of Jews as somehow different, as somehow less trustworthy is the kind of thing that gets spread around a culture until it is soaked in hatred. And that is what, I’m sorry to say, many Arab Muslims and the far left in the US has brought to this country: insidious hatred.
As a minor example, Raw Story ran a list of 10 “horrifying facts” about Senator Tom Cotton, the author of the letter to Iran. These included 3 or 4 that minimized Muslim terror - mentioning ISIS, for example, only in the context that Cotton thinks we should bomb and bombing doesn’t work - and then listing $700k in contributions from an American PAC called Emergency Committee for Israel as a “horrifying fact”. That the Jews have such influence is direct from the Nazis. That they now “own” Cotton is expressed in both the article and the comments to it. That this group is giving Cotton money because he already supports their goals is never considered because that doesn’t fit with the idea that Jews buy influence and corrupt people. Jews as corrupters is the common currency of hatred in the Arab world: blamed as being behind ISIS, behind the failure of the Arab Spring, behind even the start of the Arab Spring because it was clearly designed as a masterstroke to entice Arab failure.
On a daily basis, I can read more about a tiny country of 14 million people that’s smaller than New Jersey than about any other country in the world. That media obsession reflects the problem: the so-called Middle East conflict hasn’t been about Israel for many, many years, since the Sunni/Shia war broke out between Iraq and Iran in the 1980’s, and it’s lack of importance has been obvious since the war erupted in Syria, in the chaos in Libya, in the upheaval in Egypt, in the bombings of Christian churches today in Pakistan, and on and on and on. Except the media writes more about Israel than about all of these places combined. I’d wager the average American knows more bits about the Israeli Bedouin - without knowing any of the actual story in its complexity - than about the lives of minorities in their own state or city.
“Jews as corrupters is the common currency of hatred in the Arab world: blamed as being behind ISIS, behind the failure of the Arab Spring, behind even the start of the Arab Spring because it was clearly designed as a masterstroke to entice Arab failure”
Ah, but whatever would they do without the Great Excuse?
The reason that our leaders are cruel and repressive is because of the existence of the Jews. The reason we live in poverty and misery is because of the existence of the Jews. The reason I am miserable, and the Arab world suffers humiliation and indignity, is because of the Jews. What other reason could there be?
It is not like the far-left, far-right, conspiracy theorists, etc. have managed to get much traction on convincing Americans on their hateful views of Jewish people. http://www.pewforum.org/2014/07/16/how-americans-feel-about-religious-groups/ indicates that Jewish people are viewed more positively and less negatively than those of other religions.
Mainstream US media has recently had a lot of Israel-related stories, but that is because Israel-related stories like US diplomacy in Israeli-Palestinian politics, Netanyahu giving a speech in the US, etc. have been popping up. I.e. these are US stories that also happen to involve Israel; it is not like mainstream US media tends to write a lot of articles about the numerous political parties in Israel’s upcoming election or the process of forming a governing coalition when the biggest party will probably end up with only about a fifth of the Knesset seats. Similarly, Afghanistan and Iraq were much bigger topics in mainstream US media when more US military was there. Mainstream US media coverage relating to Islamic State tends to favor stories also involving the US (e.g. US diplomacy, US possible military action, IS threatening US targets, etc.). Iran is now a big topic due to current diplomacy involving the US and Iran.