I'm going to have to start charging the music department to do this next year.
Speaking of which, I got re-hired as a TA for the Intro to World Music class! Yay! I think there were more senior grad students ahead of me who got the independent instructor slots, so I am happy to TA again.
In other news, this article annoys me. I don't disagree with the vast majority of what Mr. Herbert has to say -- there is indeed a severe racial bias in the way that news is covered in the United States, and the ongoing slaughter of Chicago Public School children is a highly newsworthy event. But what annoys -- irritates, angers -- me is when he dismisses the murder of Johanna Justin-Jinich as just another sensational story of an attack on a young, pretty, white woman.
Johanna Justin-Jinich was Jewish, and she was specifically targeted as a Jew, by a man who wrote in his journal that he thought that murdering Jews was a good and acceptable thing to do. This was a murder that caused the town's only synagogue to close its doors for several days in fear. This was a murder with anti-Semitism at its heart.
Anti-Semitism still exists in this world. It did not die with Hitler. The fact that the majority of Jews in the United States are middle-to-upper-class and white, does not make them any less Jewish or any less targets for determined anti-Semites. Anti-Semitism exists, just as racism exists. Don't ignore either of them.
