I was chewing with my mouth closed. It was the second day of my freshman year, and I was eating at Gordon Commons with someone I had just met from my dorm. “That’s weird,” he said.
“What’s weird?” I responded.
“I thought all Jews chewed with their mouths open.”
This was my introduction to the University of Wisconsin. I, a Jewish student from New York City (yes, the city. Not Long Island, Westchester or New Jersey), had just encountered the most odd — but still offensive — stereotype about my heritage. I could have become angry. I could have accused him of anti-Semitism. I could have said he had no idea how to deal with people who were not raised the way he was or thought the way he did. But I didn’t. I calmly stated that I thought it was probably a stereotype that wasn’t true and went on talking. Why did I do this? Because I realized I would be living with this person for the next year, so it would be better to get to know the person before I judged him from one comment alone.
Far too often the debates on campus issues surrounding the sundry of different student racial and religious backgrounds relies not on legitimate dialogue and interaction but on cheap accusations, flawed forums, and all without addressing the single most obvious reason there is not a healthy debate on this topic on campus: the self-segregation of each group on this campus.
Let’s be honest with each other on this issue. As a Jewish student who lived in Sellery my freshman year, I was separated from almost every other Jewish student on this campus, as the vast majority of them live in private dorms. There can be no good dialogue between Jewish students and non-Jewish students if they don’t live together or see each other.
Likewise, it is not a surprise that many students of Asian descent mingle mainly with other students of Asian descent, or that African-American students often interact with other students who are also African-American or that Hispanic students associate with other Hispanic students, and the list could go on. There can never be a true campus debate on any issue that is race-based until we realize we’re not even having a debate in the same room. We don’t live with each other, and for the most part, we separate ourselves from each other. And often the only time we come together is to accuse each other of offending another party.
If we only come together to speak about these issues when there is controversy, then this conversation will always fail to find a consensus. What we need is to talk about this when tempers are not high and when we are just living our lives. And this cannot happen with the segregation of students on this campus. I don’t have an actual solution to stop this from happening now and in the future. I just want this to be part of the debate and for people to recognize why all previous debates have failed.
As for the student who was shocked that a Jewish student chewed food with his mouth closed, four years later, he is now one of my dearest and closest friends. I realized he wasn’t anti-Semitic or na?ve at all. He just had not met many Jews before and held an extremely odd stereotype. But neither of us overreacted. We talked. We realized we both were flawed human beings. And we happened to see each other on daily basis for almost a year. And that made all the difference.
Josh Moss
Senior, majoring in history and physics
