Anti-Semitism: The Crown Heights Riot of 1991 Essay Example

in the neighborhood on behalf of both parties; the Hasidic and African-Americans. “‘Some Jews were afraid to go into black parts of the neighborhood because of fear of getting mugged or shot; some blacks saw Jews as ‘taking over’ Crown Heights and receiving preferential treatment from police and in public housing allocation’”(2).

Even before the Crown Heights Riot of 1991, there has been a lineage of earlier incidents between African-Americans and Hasidic that foreshadows what was to come. “In the summer of 1986, blacks had allegedly beaten a Hasidic man to death in a subway station; in April 1987, some 400 blacks engaged in a protest march against what they considered to be Hasidic surveillance harassment; in March 1989, several Hasidic Jews reportedly crowded around and beat a young African-American, Chris Gilyard, who was 16 years old, who they suspected of slashing a Hadisic man, Shalom Rabkim, and his mother, Shoshana Rabkim, during a robber”.

This goes to show how a riot occurring was all in the works- yet, the severity of it was definitely not predetermined by these incidents. All in all, the disparity and distrust between African-Americans and Jews in Crown Heights as well as the distrust of police along African-Americans definitely contributed to the increased rate of violence in the Crown Heights area in 1991.

The culmination of the riot originated from a car crash that caused African-Americans to start pointing fingers at the Jews and vice versa.After leaving a cemetery to visit the grave of a leader of the Jewish community, Yosef Lifsh started to drive east on President Street when he either ran a red light or passed through the intersection illegally and

got into a traffic accident with a car headed north on Utica Avenue.

Along with hitting a car, Lifsh’s “vehicle veered into the sidewalk, striking a 7-year-old Guyanese boy named Gavin Cato and also seriously injured his cousin Angela, also 7. This traumatic experience caused a frenzy in the Crown Heights neighborhood, more than it would have had it been in any other neighborhood at the time.The tension was there; this just added fuel to the fire.

Different reports have been given from different eyewitnesses as to how fast the car was speeding. Some eyewitnesses claim that the driver was intoxicated, while others say that he sped through the red light. Before Lifsh could even get reprimanded, he fled to Israel and was later found to have not been issued an American driver’s license. All that Lifsh admits to is getting hit by another car which caused him to veer out of control and run over Gavin. Consequently, a private Hasidic ambulance from the Hatzolah Ambulance Corps arrived on the scene and removed Yosef Lifsh rom the scene claiming that it was an order from a police officer who also ordered this very same ambulance to leave the area without the injured Gavin. The rioters saw this as a racially charged threat.

The city ambulance did show up soon after to treat Gavin, but to their dismay, he died of injuries soon after at a nearby hospital. This incident was the last straw for both parties; both communities of Crown Heights had seen enough harm being done to their own people and saw each party as wreaking havoc on their own.The scope of the riot proved to be

more traumatic than what actually occurred on the day of the incident. Over the next four days, numerous African-Americans, ignited by the belief that the treatment of the car accident victims was unequal and unjust, began to riot.

“Fires were set, a police car overturned ,a van set alight, and shops were looted as the riot grew out of control. Blacks and Hasidic Jews threw bottles and rocks at each other on the second night of the riot, however, the violence during the riot appears to have been committed largely by young black men against Jews and police” (1).Young African-Americans reportedly walked around in front of 770 eastern Parkway, the Lubavitcher headquarters, shouting “ ‘Heil Hitler ’” and throwing rocks, causing the police to create barricades in front of the headquarters. Police barricades also walled off the intersection of Utica Avenue and President Street, where the incident originated from. Police reports show that at least 110 arrests were made during the riots, including 44 Hasidic men (only 4 of which were women).

The riots strained race relations in the city, led some to question the viability of urban liberalism and the black-Jewish political entente, raised concerns about the extent of black anti-Semitism, and led the federal judiciary to broaden the scope of federal civil rights legislation to include Jews”. One would assume after the events that took place in 1991 that the tension between the blacks and Jews would only grow. Instead, black and Jewish leaders have made major efforts to create institutional and informal ties between the two parties.

How surprising it was to find that ten years after the riots in Crown Heights, the neighborhood’s black

and Jewish residents conduct joint picnics and ice-skating parties, even a police-supervised Halloween parade. There is a storefront mediation center, a black and Jewish mothers group, and an effort to add black youngsters to the private Jewish security patrols. Even though tensions still remain and are just buried beneath the surface, one cannot escape the fact that they live side by side and must face each other every day.

Hopefully, with tolerance and education, both communities will learn to live at peace with one another for the right reasons, and not the wrong.

Reference

1. http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Crown_Heights_Riot
2. Shapiro, Edward S. Crown Heights: Blacks, Jews, and the 1991 Brooklyn Riot. Brandeis University Press, New York: 2006. http://www. upne. com/1-58465-561-5. html
3. Kifner, John and Lee, Felicia R.“In Crown Heights, a Decade of Healing after Riots, but Scars Remain,” August 19,2001. http://www. racematters. org/crownheightsscars. htm.