Jewish students at the University of Tennessee Chattanooga woke up this weekend to discover vicious antisemitic flyers posted around the campus.
“At the height of American slavery, 78% of slave owners were ethnic jews (sic),” the flyers proclaimed. “40% of the jewish population were slave owners, while only 0.35% of white Americans owned slaves,” the flyers continued.
“Rodriguez, p. 385” was quoted as the “sources” for the claims.
Aside from the obvious reality that these statements were completely false, the Stop Antisemitism organization noted in its tweet on the incident: “This is the EXACT hateful rhetoric that Kyrie Irving help (sic) spread when promoting the film “Hebrew to Negroes: Wake Up Black America.”
Earlier this year, a teacher at East Hamilton Middle School in Chattanooga told her students, “If you want to torture a Jew, get them to say this name” and wrote the ineffable Hebrew name of God on the blackboard.
The incident took place during a Bible literature class.
One eighth grade student came home and told her mother about the incident, saying she no longer felt safe in the class.
“She didn’t feel safe in the Bible class anymore,” Juniper Russo’s mother told the news outlet. “She’s thinking ‘I don’t want to out myself as the Jewish kid and be treated differently because of it.’”
The Hamilton County School District responded to the incident, as did the Chattanooga Pastors organization, and the Jewish Federation of Greater Chattanooga, which urged the school district to “use this as an opportunity to reflect on and assess both their curriculum and how their teachers are presenting the material to ensure these classes are education, not indoctrination.”
