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I knew when I came to CU that there wouldn’t be as many Jews as I was used to growing up in New York, the Jewish mecca. But I was okay with that, because I was going to a school with people from all over the world who had the same desire as me to get a good college education. Then I hit the dating scene, and it was like an anti-Semitic 18-wheeler repeatedly drove over me.
(Kai Casey/CU Independent Illustration)
Growing up in New York, anti-Semitism was something that we learned about but not something that I had ever seen or heard of happening. I truly didn’t think that in America, Jews were still being persecuted for their religion until I came here. That may have been naïve of me to think, but, hey, it’s 2013, and America has come such a long way to achieve equality for so many people. I didn’t think that religious persecution still occurred.
Before I came to Boulder, I didn’t even know that the “k” word was referring to Jews in a derogatory manner, but then I kept getting called one by the guy I was dating. When I found out what it meant, it was like my world erupted into a million pieces; I became the victim of a hate crime and I didn’t know how to handle it. Breaking up with him didn’t change what he said to me or how I felt about it, but I tried forgetting it so that I didn’t think every guy on this campus was a complete asshole.
A year later, a completely different guy I was dating started telling me jokes like, “What’s the difference between a Jew and a piece of pizza? The pizza doesn’t scream when it goes into the oven.”
Except I wasn’t laughing. I was asked by his friends where my horns were and got made fun of for having a “Jew nose.” No one thought it was a problem. No one even bothered to tell him to quit it with the jokes aside from me. To them, it was funny, but it made me question whether or not I ever wanted to tell someone I was Jewish, let alone be Jewish. Once again ending things with him only removed me from hearing more of his hateful words but didn’t end the pain I was suffering from.
Most recently I received text messages saying, “Long live Palestine! The Israeli aggressors will get the karma coming to them!” I was told to relax because the senders were drunk. Why should I relax just because they were drunk? Does being drunk give someone the right to verbally harass someone? Why should I be forced to face such discrimination and not stand up for myself?
There is something that this campus is just not teaching the students here. Bringing people down based on their religion, sexual preference, race, etc. is the most awful act anyone can commit, yet it happens on a daily basis at CU and no one is stopping it. It truly amazes me how alone I can feel on a 30,000 person campus.
So my question is: how do we fix this? How does a “progressive” campus like ours stop these hate crimes from happening? The only answer that I can think of is that people need to remember what they learned in kindergarten: treat people the way you want to be treated.
Contact Guest Writer Rachel Messer at Rachel.messer@colorado.edu.