Crown hype

National Review, Oct 7, 1991

FOR ALL the talk about the resurgence of anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe, the fact remains that the only anti-Jewish riot in the world in recent weeks took place in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn. The riot began when a car in the motorcade of a Hasidic rabbi spun out of control and hit two black children, killing one of them. Blacks went on a three-day rampage, looting stores, chanting "Heil Hitler," and taking the life of Yankel Rosenbaum, a 29-year-old passerby.

So what happened next? A grand jury was summoned--to ponder the actions of the driver. (No indictment was brought.) The cops arrested one teenager out of the pack of ten or twenty who chased Rosenbaum down. Al Sharpton, and his clones and soul-mates, descended on the scene to "advise" the parents of the dead child. Mayor David Dinkins, though his own utterances were unexceptionable, would not denounce the rabble-rousers. The underlying assumptions seemed to be that only blacks can be the victims of racial crimes; that they can only be victims, never perpetrators; and that any effort to challenge either of these assumptions will so outrage blacks that it should not be made.

There are some signs that black sensibilities are far from being as corrupt as that: in recent City Council elections, two black racist firebrands -- one of them Vernon Mason, of Tawana Brawley fame--were defeated in heavily black districts by white candidates. Even if black opinion were rotten to the core, that would not excuse the authorities from enforcing the law, or the opinion makers from calling things by their right names. Truth and justice are as easy to kill as passersby.