Crown Heights: 1 Tragedy, 1 Murder 20 Years Later

Twenty years after riots erupted between blacks and Jews in Crown Heights, newcomers — including hipsters, Latinos and Asians — are calming old racial divisions.

In the years that have passed, the central Brooklyn neighborhood has settled into an uneasy peace, even as many of the mixed-race, kumbaya community groups have fizzled.

Black and Hasidic Jewish residents have more pressing issues than their old animosity: Black-on-black gun violence and the dilution of the ultra-orthodox Chabad-Lubavitch Jewish community.

“There are no longer different communities. There is one community made up of different backgrounds,” said Rabbi Joseph Spielman, who led the Jewish Community Council during the three days of rioting.

A handful of upcoming events will mark Aug. 19, 1991, the day Gavin Cato, 7, was killed in a car accident. About three hours after the wreck and five blocks away, 29-year-old Australian scholar Yankel Rosenbaum was fatally stabbed.

What annoys me most about the Crown Heights story is the way it’s framed in the media; one tragic death that touched off a riot, and another that was a wakeup call to the neighborhood and the city that things had gotten out of control.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

7-year old Gavin Cato was killed when a car hit another and jumped the curb, crashing into the front yard where Cato was playing, killing him. That, indeed, was a tragic accident.

3 hours later, Yankel Rosenbaum, a visiting Rabbinical student was stabbed in the back as a racist and anti-Semitic mob of black people roamed the streets like animals looking for someone to kill, and as they chased Rosenbaum down the street before stabbing him they yelled, “Kill the Jew” which, Lemrick Nelson, age 16, later confessed to.

These are not equal “tragedies” no matter how many times they’re placed side by side to be mourned. One was a tragic accident. One was a murder. The whitewashing of Yankel Rosenbaum’s murder is offensive to the common sense of decent people, and that whitewashing must end.

Gavin Cato died accidentally.

Lemrick Nelson murdered Yankel Rosenbaum.

End. Of. Story.

If everyone is so interested in “healing,” then maybe we need to start by coping with the truth.