Echoes of 1991 in Crown Heights?
The Times and Sun have articles this morning about the escalating tensions between Crown Heights’ black and Hasidic communities. The stories talk about how the NYPD has stepped up its presence on the area’s streets and politicians have been holding press conferences to decry the violence, all to try to prevent the neighborhood from once…
The Times and Sun have articles this morning about the escalating tensions between Crown Heights’ black and Hasidic communities. The stories talk about how the NYPD has stepped up its presence on the area’s streets and politicians have been holding press conferences to decry the violence, all to try to prevent the neighborhood from once again becoming the war zone that produced the 1991 riots. The latest problems in Crown Heights began in April, when a black 20-year-old was attacked by Hasidic men in what the police have deemed a bias crime. Since then, black children have pelted a bus carrying Hasidic toddlers with stones and last week black youths beat and robbed a Jewish teen. The police believe the first attack against the black 20-year-old was done by someone with ties to a Jewish civilian patrol group called the Shmira. Bias crimes in the neighborhood are up this year; there have been nine so far, compared to seven at this time in 2007. Some Crown Heights residents say the city and politicians are overreacting to the spate of violence, according to the Sun, since “most of the culprits — both black and Jewish — are too young to remember the riots, and some community leaders say they are concerned that it’s actually the grown-ups who are stoking a conflict between the groups.”
Neighborhood Simmers With Tension Again [NY Times]
Threat of Another Riot in Crown Heights [NY Sun]
Photo by Frank Lynch.
Mississippi 1948 = Mississippi 2008
Why do Hasidic men on the subway knock over old ladies and pregnant women to make sure they get a seat?
Can someone please explain this to me…?
I see it happen almost nightly on my way home from work.
Literally pushing people out of the way to sit down.
I’m a black guy who’s owned a house in Crown Heights since 2000, and who has lived in Brooklyn all my life. I don’t have a problem with any of my Jewish neighbors in Crown Heights, never have had one, and they’ve never had one with me. I’m friendly with several white people in the community, some of whom I know to be Jewish. A Jewish guy owns the small agency I work for, and I even bought my home from a Jewish real estate agent. Ther are Jewish families living on the “black” (or north) side of Crown Heights and black folks living on the “Jewish” side. The communities interact every day. Does every black person feel the way I do? Clearly not. But I know many who do. I’m sure the same is true of the Jewish community – some may have ill will towards black people as a group, but I know several who are friendly with their black neighbors in Crown Heights. If we all can continue to treat each other with the proper respect, and not generalize about each other based on what group we happen to belong to, everything willl hopefully work out for the best.
11:59: “Jews don’t keep asking for the help of others because their culture says they’ve not been helped by goya during what they see as their 1000s of years of persecution.”
Goya? Wasn’t he painting in Spain at the time?
Mississippi 1948 = Brooklyn 2008
Crown Heights has been a hotbed of anti-semitism for as long as I can remember. Its Jewish residents, including me, are sick of it and there is a limit to what we will tolerate. If that means taking up arms to protect ourselves and our families, so be it.
Finally something worth discussing about, instead of strollers
……
11:40 you go to the heart of the matter. A black kid in his own neighborhood is treated with callousness by another ethnic group as if he did not have the same right to be on his bike in his own neighborhood. Police officers in both the 77th and 71st Precincts act as if the perpetuation of racial bias crime goes only one way—Blacks against Jews. In fact it works both ways. When Blacks are confronted with Jew on Black bias and attempt to report the crime, there is a concerted effort by officers of both precincts to keep a “hands off” towards the Hasidim. In one incident it took an attorney/community activist with political and community ties to have an issue addressed. If he had not had the knowledge of whom to call and how an incident of this type should be addressed, the matter would never have been handled properly.
The problem is that not only is there a correct perception that there is favortism in bias incidents, there is a fact that police officers for whom we all pay taxes towards the salaries handle the two communities differently. A law abiding citizen be they be an adult or minor are in fact treated poorly by the police and all too often by their Jewish neighbors.
“I just want those inbred grubby scummy filth out of this country.”
If I buy the ticket for you, will you go back to Africa?