Re: Against "Diversity"

[Mike Kluznik <mkluznik@HOTMAIL.COM>]

George,
In my brief travels in Central Europe, I've come away with a sense that
attitudes are indeed a bit different than in American.
Re: bias against Jews.  I think it might be a bit more obvious in the
eastern U.S.  I remember visiting a female friend in Boston back in the 60s.
 We went out to a few night spots.  Some guy started hitting on her.  He
seemed a very nice guy to me.  When my friend and I got back to her car, I
asked her why she showed no interest in him.  She said, "Oh, couldn't you
tell.  He was Jewish."
I had never encountered that kind of bigotry before.
I used to get a lot of hate mail from some anonymous reader for some of my
letters to the editor in the St. Paul & Minneapolis papers.  My surname
includes Jews and non-Jews.
In fact, I think the Kluzcnik Gallery in Washington, D.C. is funded by a
Jewish family.  Anyway, I'm not Jewish but I used to get a lot of
anti-Jewish hate mail but I don't anymore.  Who knows, my ancestors may have
been Jewish but were forced to convert to Christianity?
Mike



> From: "George N. Schmidt" <Csubstance@AOL.COM>
> Reply-To: Assessment Reform Network Mailing List <ARN-L@LISTS.CUA.EDU>
> To: ARN-L@LISTS.CUA.EDU
> Subject: Re: Against "Diversity"
> Date: Sat, 8 Sep 2001 10:13:16 EDT
>
> In a message dated 9/5/01 5:04:39 PM, mkluznik@HOTMAIL.COM writes:
>
> << She
> said all major religions are accorded full recognition except to Islam.
> I don't know much about the Czech Republic, but I found the guide's
> comments
> interesting.  I believe that the Czech Republic sees itself as a bulwark
> for
> Christendom having stopped the hordes of Asia from invading the rest of
> Europe, although Poland played a part in that too. >>
>
> Two Substance staff members just spent a year teaching ESL in Prague and
> travelling around that part of Europe. Last night, they were discussing how
> shocked they were to find the intensity of racism (anti-black variety) and
> anti-Semitism among the educated people with whom they worked regularly.
>
> They gave examples. Any takers as to how far we can generalize about this?
> It
> was fair for me to warn one colleague here a few years ago that the reason
> his calculus students might be giving him a hard time was that the majority
> of them were Polish and he was American (but Jewish).
>
> More than a decade ago, I had a similar experience because of my "Jewish"
> accent (I was raised in the Newark area in New Jersey). One student in my
> division at Amundsen High School was a real pain in the ass until one day
> he
> came up to me and said, "I'm sorry. Why didn't you tell us you weren't a
> Jew.
> You sounded like a Jew..."
>
> These problems are deep, and still embedded in some of the most interesting
> post-Communist societies there. Let's not ignore them.
>
> George Schmidt
>
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