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MARK
J.
MIRSKY
My paranoid intuition sensed that what the Blacks were calling for was
not 100 places more in the Freshman class, or a 50/50 split, but an
admission of shame on the part of the white faculty and student body.
I felt as
if
I was the victim of a Negro inquisition or,
if
you like, of
a Black tribunal where cast in the role of Adolf Eichmann I was forced
to examine myself as a willing cog in a vicious system. No man is free
of the guilt of his society and as several Black leaders were blind with
righteous indignation I was soon walking around shaking with fear
and anger. I'm a Jew, I mumbled to myself. I have my own rights to
reparations. My father's family, 400 strong, was dead in Nazi gas
chambers. I had doors slammed in my face in Protestant Wellesley as
an adolescent.
Angry
WASP fathers pulled the telephones out of the
wall when I tried to date their daughters. Why should I have to bear
responsibility for white America?
Yet it was true that my sainted mother dying in a hospital bed had
whispered ironically to a visiting neighbor who buzzed about my
non-Jewish girlfriend, "At least she's not black." My mother, who
propped up in front of the T.v. watching the riots after Martin Luther
King's death, had whispered to us that when she got well she wanted
to help the Blacks.
0
we Jews are just as sick, confused, culpable, in
this dreadful condescension to the African as the rest of the U.s. All
right, I'm guilty! I wanted to shout. Tell me what lowe. Let's get it
over with and get back to being human beings. And then again, what
good was it to my Negro students
if
I lost my self-esteem, if I cringed
before statements I thought were stupid,
if
I flattered mistakes? Wasn't
this condescension too? My head banged with questions and I didn't
feel like teaching anything. After a few seconds of the solemn rational
discussion in the Senate I began itching in my seat. I wanted a religious
happening not a debate, catharsis not constitutional procedure.
Nor did the Senate, despite the self-congratulation of its report,
"... in contrast to most academic institutions in the nation ... the
City College Faculty Senate refused to be stampeded into hasty decision–
making," move in a deliberate fashion.
It
swung Left, then Right. At
first its members were in a conservative mood. As the chamber began
to feel the pressure of events, President Gallagher's resignation, injunc–
tions to open the school, violence, burning buildings outside, the
atmosphere changed. It was impossible to preserve a starched self–
righteous front with the din of fire engines and police sirens echoing
in the street outside. The room was invaded by student delegations,
community leaders, crackpots. One boy grabbed the rostrum and flashed
a swastika he claimed was being flaunted everywhere. Black preachers
