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Teaching Ethnic Identity and Intergroup Relations: The Case of Black-Jewish Dialogue

That we live in separate worlds on our campuses is certainly not a new observation, yet with the recent attention given to incidents of racism on campus, curricular revision, and talk of the multicultural university of the twenty-first century, it is important that we begin to devote more attention to face-to-face intergroup dialogue as well as other means of teaching for the new curriculum and the multicultural university of the future. To study race relations without offering opportunity for dialogue between races, or to be a part of a diverse student body but to have no experience with groups other than one’s own, certainly represents a severe limitation on students’ education. This article is a description of one class using intergroup dialogue as a means of studying blacks, Jews, and black-Jewish relations in the context of exploring broader issues of ethnic identity and intergroup relations. In the six years that Blacks and Jews: Dialogue on Ethnic Identity has been taught, nothing has been more striking than the fact that these classes have represented for almost all the students the very first opportunity to talk with individuals of another ethnic group about anything more than passing superficialities. The emphasis of this class on active learning, through discussion and dialogue, allowed for a deeper understanding of blacks, Jews, and their intergroup relations through both theory and practice, study of text and of personal experience. The description and analysis that follow are intended to offer insights both into the teaching process itself and into the substantive learning and insights, the rich personal understanding of topics, and the degree of personal empowerment that emerged from this approach to learning.