The Oxford University rugby team
This story didn’t receive much coverage, unfortunately. The Oxford University U21 XV thought it’d be a good idea to attend a safari-themed party in blackface and to hold a ‘bring a fit Jew’ party where, the Guardian reports,
students are alleged to have been told to invite a pretty Jewish date and arrive dressed as Orthodox Jews carrying bags of money.
I find the attitude of casual racism and particularly anti-Semitism deeply worrying. It would seem that some of the people behind this idea didn’t even realise that using a moneybag as a feature of a stereotypical Jew is not only offensive but dangerous. It makes it rather harder to counter anti-Semitism when people at Oxford are promoting an image of Jewry and Jews that is one step away from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
There is another tendency. When I was at university, one of my contemporaries (who, for the purposes of avoiding a law suit, shall remain nameless) was, IMHO, sexist, racist and homophobic. His comments at the weekly Union General Meeting were testament enough to that effect. However, because he went to a public school, spoke the Queen’s English and was friendly with the rugby lot, he was often excused by others with lines such as ‘oh, it’s just banter’ or ‘it’s only [name]‘. I fail to see why otherwise-reasonable conservative views attached with a particular accent and set of affectations justify antediluvian views or why being a ‘good old boy’ allows you to get away with actions that would otherwise be met with disdain and disgust. That in turn allows idiots like the above to think that things like the above are acceptable.
xD.
