The Black-Jew Dialogues

The Lectures, Education & Diversity committee of the Campus Activities Board hosted the event The Black-Jew Dialogues Thursday. The Black-Jew Dialogues is a two-person comedy show, which combines the use of puppets, multimedia, and props to discuss the experiences as well as the history of African-American and Jewish people.

Before the show started Garth Brooks “We Shall Be Free” played behind a PowerPoint that showed various inspirational quotes as well as fun facts and trivia questions. Larry Jay Tish and Ron Jones came onto the stage and immediately began the show by telling the audience to “turn off their bigotry, prejudice, hate and preconceived notions,” and urged them to “turn on their wisdom, knowledge, openness, and love.” The comedy show was surprisingly better than expected, the performers did a great job really explaining the history of their people as well as society’s views towards groups different from their own. The show focused around stereotypes as well as the true nature of prejudice and really forced attendees to think about the biases that separate people daily.

The two also played an interactive game with the audience and gave prizes, which kept the audience engaged as well as offered extra laughs. Both being a part of a minority, Jones and Tish really concentrated around the downsides of being in a “non-dominant group” and how to overcome the obstacles that are often present. The men did multiple sketches to explain the relationship between blacks and Jews and the importance for not only these two groups to reunite but for all people to reunite.

After their performance the two men took a seat onstage and opened a discussion of the show. The discussion allowed audience members to give their perspective on race/cultural relations as well as share personal experiences with Tish and Jones. Jones made a big statement during the discussion that really ignited conversation, which was, “diversity is a discipline.” This statement was one that the entire audience agreed with because it stressed the fact that we have to learn how to first understand others so they can understand us in return. The duo also discussed how the media plays a part with the cultural issues, the show ended with a question: “What is the job of the media?” The men offered five dollars to whoever could get the question correct. While everyone shouted out answers, no one actually won the five dollars and Tish gave the answer to us. The answer was “to get and keep your attention.” Tish and Jones discussed that this was important to understand because it does not mean that what is always portrayed in media is always true or the whole story, but the job is to only to get your attention, therefore they may not display the real issues in America.

Sanice Arrington

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