FACES AND PLACES: Is this what David worked for (06/09/96)

FACES AND PLACES

by Myron B. Kuropas

Is this what David worked for

At a posh banquet sponsored by the Illinois Ethnic Coalition (IEC) on May 22, 11 ethnic leaders were presented with the first annual "David G. Roth Community Relations Award."

The honorees, all "goodwill ambassadors" according to the organizers, included Americans of Greek, Lithuanian, Italian, Japanese, Jewish, African, Polish and Ukrainian ancestry. Julian Kulas and I were among the 11 honorees. All of us had worked with David Roth during his tragically short but productive life. Like David, we all believed that open dialogue leads to understanding and trust. Although we championed cultural pluralism, we believed in American core values and viewed our ethnicity as a productive supplement to our Americanism. We were "Americans plus."

I was one of the founding members of the IEC (originally called the Illinois Consultation on Ethnicity in Education) 25 years ago, an era when American Euro-ethnics were finally receiving the kind of recognition they richly deserved. In his book "The Rise of the Unmeltable Ethnic," Michael Novak called the 1970s the "decade of the ethnic." It was during the 1970s that the Ethnic Studies Heritage Act became law and federal dollars were made available for ethnic research; the U.S. president appointed a special assistant for ethnic affairs; and three significant bridge-building coalitions were funded by the Ford Foundation: the National Project on Ethnic America, headed by Irving Levine; the National Center for Urban/Ethnic Affairs, headed by Msgr. Geno Baroni; and the Center for the Study of American Pluralism, headed by Andrew Greeley.

What was accomplished during the past quarter century? Very little, I'm sorry to say. Irving Levine retired and was replaced by David Roth who died last year. Gino Baroni died some 15 years ago. Andrew Greeley is off writing novels. The ideals that Mr. Roth and the honorees promoted have been amended and revised. Today, our dreams are neither politically correct nor socially acceptable by America's intellectual elite. Cultural pluralism has been replaced by multiculturalism and Afrocentrism, movements that demonize our Western heritage, distort our history and polarize the races. Ethnic research has been replaced by "studies" of gender roles, racist attitudes and sexual preferences. The true, the good, and the beautiful can no longer be defined. All cultures are equal; all lifestyles are to be admired and celebrated. Universal values are irrelevant.

Dialogues between various groups have also been diminished. Readers of this column known that the Ukrainian-Jewish dialogue in Chicago was a bust. We met for almost seven years with representatives of the American Jewish Committee (AJC) and ended nowhere. Oh yes. We agreed on a joint statement regarding the John Demjanjuk debacle. The statement was widely publicized in the Ukrainian press, but totally ignored by the Jewish press. There was also a belated and somewhat self-serving response from the AJC regarding the CBS scourging of the Ukrainian nation. This, too, was widely publicized in Ukrainian newspapers but ignored by the Jewish press. Despite Mr. Roth's best efforts and his numerous trips to Ukraine, our Chicago dialogue never achieved closure.

And now we learn that the Polish-Jewish dialogue also has died. It began with a letter from Edward Moskal, president of the Polish American Congress (PAC), an organization representing some 10 million Poles, to Polish President Alexander Kwasniewski. Complaining about the "submissiveness of the Polish authorities with respect to demands raised by Jews," Mr. Moskal specifically mentioned a number of Polish government actions about which I have little knowledge. I am familiar, however, with one of the concerns of the PAC president, namely, the "preferential treatment given to Jews who are seeking the return of their property in Poland." Pointing out that Jews were not the only ones who lost their property in Poland, Mr. Moskal reminded the Polish president that the Polish American Congress "has petitioned on behalf of Poles who now reside in the United States to have their property restored. In spite of these efforts, no special reprivatization bill has been enacted in their case." In his letter Mr. Moskal suggested that the Polish action also discriminated against Ukrainians and Belarusians.

Regardless of the efforts of Polish authorities to improve relations with Jews, Mr. Moskal suggested, "Poland is [still] accused of anti-Semitism and, in the eyes of the world, perceived as a country which continues to conduct anti-Jewish policies, and the Polish nation as a nation whose anti-Semitism 'was sucked in with their mother's milk.'" The latter remark has been attributed to former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir.

The reaction from the Jewish community to Mr. Moskal's correspondence was predictable. According to one newspaper account, the AJC labeled Mr. Moskal's letter "anti-Semitic" and "severed a 17-year dialogue with the Polish American Congress."

The response of the American press also was as expected. The May 16 issue of the Chicago Sun-Times ran a long article citing remarks of various Polish American academics who argued that Mr. Moskal did not speak for them. Mr. Kwasniewski's reply, which only emphasized that Polish-Jewish relations "should be free of any prejudice and clear of any harmful stereotypes," was expanded in an Associated Press release to read "harmful stereotypes, xenophobia and religious, racial or ethnic prejudice." Not to be outdone, The Chicago Tribune ran a front-page article on May 24 titled "Poland's Struggle with anti-Semitism." The Daily Herald, an influential suburban gazette, condemned Mr. Moskal's "harsh, combative language" which "sprinkled its reasoning with bias." This type of press double-dealing is painfully familiar to Ukrainian Americans whose memory of the scurrilous "60 Minutes" broadcast of October 23, 1994, remains indelible.

Questions arise. If the Polish American community, 12 times the size of our community, can be so gratuitously maligned for raising legitimate concerns, what chance do we Ukrainians, a group that Morley Safer believes is "genetically anti-Semitic," have to present our case? If after 17 years of dialogue the AJC has concluded that the PAC president is anti-Semitic, what chance is there that the Ukrainian-Jewish dialogue can ever reach meaningful closure? And finally, how does all of this reflect on David Roth's lifelong quest for better relations between Jews and Slavs?

The answers that come to mind are troubling.

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