Shots From The Darkside

Authorities at South Carolina A&T
said they plan to investigate an anti-semitic Yom Hashoah party that
mocked Jewish stereotypes by featuring a faux gas chamber, a staged crucification and someone imitating an Arab suicide bomber.

“I feel like there is no excuse for this type of ignorance,” said Godfrey Bradman Greenberg, president of the Orangeburg school’s chapter of the Aisht HaTorah
- an international network of Jewish educational centers where Jews from all backgrounds can explore Judaism.

Photographs posted on social networking Web site Facebook.com showed
party-goers wearing curly wigs, large fake noses and and wearing yarmulkes. One photo
showed students “reenacting scenes from Schindler’s List and Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice,” Greenberg
said. In another picture, a student is dressed as Adolf Hitler and wears a
swastika false tatoo. The word Shylock was also painted on the walls in the all the photos.

“It upsets me,” Greenberg said, “that people who’s own parent suffered racism, who claim to be
reaching for a better life through education would do something as awful
as this.”

Wanda Goldstein, the school’s vice president of student finance, said an investigation was planned into the Jan. 15 party. More than 400 students attended a university-sponsored forum
Wednesday night that Goldstein described as ‘a baby step’ in bridging
a divide between black and Jewish students on the campus, which had
about 12 Jewish students out of 7,800 overall last semester.

Greenberg said he sensed a racial divide at the forum, with black
students sitting on one side of the room and Jews on the other.

“It began civil, but it eventually escalated into a shouting match,” he said in a telephone interview afterward.

Some of the students shown in the photos apologized, Greenberg said. University President Tyrone P. Jackson said the photographs were reprehensible.

“I am personally insulted by these photographs and am disappointed
that South Carolina A&T students have demonstrated such
insensitivity,” he said. “Some of our brightest students are Jewish or
of Jewish Descent. We don’t hold that against them. Hell, both my
jeweler and my banker are great Jews, you’d almost believe they weren’t
Jewish, that they had been born Jesus-loving Christians.”

Copyright 2007 FARFROMCUMING Press. All rights reserved.
This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or
redistributed.

These are comments copied from the A&T message:

– start thread —

Topic: How will this affect recruiting?

uscbeckham

Glass houses. This happened to us in 2003. Students dressed up as Shylock during a play. It pissed off a lot of people. Everyone has
these problems. Even schools up north. It’s just publicized more because our
schools are in the “racist” south. Truth be known, it’s about the
same everywhere.

Darbyfish

If it was on any other day I would say no effect. If it was on Yom Hashoah it still
shouldn’t effect recruiting but it was disrespectful.

bilbo1408
People dress up as pilgrims and eat Turkey on Thanksgiving. Is that
disrespectful as well?

uscbeckham

No, because we are honoring our own tradition, not ridiculing someone elses.
Don’t try to justify what fraternities do in these cases. It is racist. You
know it, I know it, and they sure as hell know it. It’s just a case of some
idiots taking fun too far.

inkscock

People who thinks this is racist are looking for something to start a racist
argument. I eat kosher two or three times a month. I splack a jewish girl whenever I
can get it. Tried growing those curly sideburns, but my girl did not like it. By the way I forgot to mention: one of my
best friends is Jewish. He is American just like me. To hell with the rest of the
ones that try and stir up trouble over nothing. By the way I like the confederate flag also.

We
had something similar to it in the fraternity that I was in at Carolina. In some sorority pageant, one of our
guys made his evening wear a painted on tux (black of course) and the entire
school went into an uproar. I agree, what the clempson kids did is
disrespectful, but some people need thicker skin.

97srad750
Was there an outcry when the Wayans brothers come out with White Chicks?
People need to get over this.

Ardencock
it doesn’t take a Rhodes scholar to figure out what is racism and what is
not … and you can’t hide behind the “heritage, not hate” argument
on this one. Parties with bigoted elements, held on Yom Hashoah may
be fun to some, but are part of the old Klan mentality that says …”I can
do whatever the hell I want , in your face, and you have to take it! So
there!” Next thing you know, these nigger’s’ll attack Christmas.

Dolphincock
USCbeckham must be running for office. People need to lighten up. This
world will be a much better place!

97srad750

Playing on stereotypes is done in comedy all the time, this is no different.
This is playful humor. Now had they had a Klan party I would feel different. If
there isn’t an outcry when other races play on the black stereotype, I don’t
want to hear it when blacks do the same.

– end thread —

30 Comments

Original post by Shots from the Dark Side