Dear Mom and Dad,
My first semester of college is almost over. Exams start this week with organic chemistry. Can you believe it? Your daughter’s dreams of one day becoming a doctor are underway! I promised I would not waste this opportunity, and I haven’t.
That’s mainly why I haven’t written these past two months—long hours of studying and making new friends. But there was another reason. A little disturbing, which is why I didn’t bring it up. I didn’t want you to worry.
Okay. Please sit down. So here goes . . . there was this student group on campus comprised of mostly white boys from the south who are opposed to diversity on our campus. They say that Blacks have taken scholarships and grants away from more deserving white kids. They feel that African-Americans and other people of color are inferior. They also say that we are prone to violence, and demanding of government handouts. They say that George Floyd gave African-Americans a blank check to vandalize businesses and intimidate white people.
It’s just gross.
Well, they started making their feelings known in a much more aggressive manner. Protests outside of the main library; sit-ins at the President’s office; disruption of classes; scheduled walk-outs; blocking the entrance to the student center; shoving Black students; racist graffiti everywhere: “Blacks get out!”; “First George Floyd, you’re next!”; “Take your welfare elsewhere!”
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You’ll love this part. My roommates. You met all three of them on move-in day. All white girls, right—they stood by me throughout the entirety of this campus unrest. And some white football players I know from one of my classes escorted me to the dining hall and libraries.
In fact, most white kids supported students of color in different ways (someone baked me cupcakes with smiley faces as frosting!). They all wanted us to know that they had our backs, and they openly rejected the racist hatemongers. They even scheduled a nighttime vigil where everyone held candles and chanted songs from the Civil Rights era.
It gets better: The President of the university, a white female, made it clear almost immediately that the First Amendment does not protect such harassing, harmful, despicable speech. “Lynch Blacks!” She said this university is better than that, and she and the administration won’t tolerate it. The actions of the students and faculty violated not only the university’s Code of Conduct, but broke the trust that students and parents have that safety, mutual respect, and a collegial environment will be given the highest priority.
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Almost immediately after the surreal murder of Jews in southern Israel on October 7, large crowds of masked pro-Hamas sympathizers have been parading around campus, threatening and intimidating Jews, spreading fear, calling for a global “Jihad!” (everyone knows what that means!), ripping down those hostage posters, and basically doing some of the same things that the white racists were doing to us.
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As a black girl, I am sensitive to racism, of course. But I know about antisemitism, and read about the Holocaust. And yet I have never seen anything like this, hatred so overt, a lynch mob in search of Jews. And nobody seems to want to help. They are looking the other way. I don’t know what to make of it all.
The Jews are standing alone. So much for their white privilege.
On that unpleasant note, I must get back to the books. But I’ll see you for Christmas after finals. Maybe I’ll have better news.
Your loving daughter,
Latifa
Thane Rosenbaum is a novelist, essayist, law professor and Distinguished University Professor at Touro University, where he directs the Forum on Life, Culture & Society. He is the legal analyst for CBS News Radio. His most recent book is titled “Saving Free Speech … From Itself.”
View this Essay from the Jewish Journal