Black, Jewish students forge new partnership, dispel racial barrier

Fourteen years after African-Americans and Jewish-Americans skirmished with one another in the Brooklyn, N.Y., streets during the Crown Heights neighborhood riots, black and Jewish IU students united Tuesday night in Woodburn Hall to call out for help in dispelling national racist and bigotry attitudes left over from the 20th Century.\nSenior Brian Schwartz founded the Coalition to Unite Blacks and Jews, a student group dedicated to uniting the black and Jewish demographics of the campus community, with the assistance of senior Philip Sherman, junior Joey Rosenberg, senior and Indiana Daily Student Nation & World Editor Cordell Eddings, sophomore Whitney Lee and senior Christina Dunbar.\nAs for the group's mission "to create new and long lasting friendships between black and Jewish students through both educational and social events on campus," the board consists of three Jewish students and three black students.\n"I've been at IU for 35 years and I've never heard of such a thing," said IU Dean of Students Richard McKaig, one of about 20 to attend CUBJ's call-out meeting Tuesday night. "I came to check it out."\nBased on the former president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Kweisi Mfume's vision of a 20th history laced with examples of increased tolerance across the nation, CUBJ events (not yet planned) will include panel discussions, prominent and student-leader black and Jewish speakers, history presentations and the installation of a class jointly supported by the African American/African Diaspora Studies Department and the Borns Jewish Studies Program.\n"What do we mean by being a Jew? Saying someone is a Jew or black is a very blanket assumption," said graduate student Ilan Blustein, who later volunteered to spearhead CUBJ's educational programming. "What about the invisibility of a minority within a minority? I don't know if I feel safe in this space because I'm a Jew and I'm queer."\nCUBJ board member Rosenberg replied that the purpose of the group is to examine issues of group interest, to provide a safe venue for group members to learn where everybody else is coming from and to provide a forum for genuine cross-cultural friendship.\n"We want this to develop into something unique, cool and ideally much bigger," he said.\nCUBJ's first meeting is scheduled for next month. For more information, contact Schwartz at pschwar@indiana.edu.