I’m writing to comment on the Dinkins interview, and (I should be clear in advance) to give a shameless plug for my book about Black-Jewish relations in CH.

It was nice to hear Dinkins reflect so candidly on the violence of 1991 — I suppose when you’re not running for office (or being sued by Lubavitchers) you can afford to be blunt. But it was disappointing to hear him focus on the same old, tired questions that shaped so much of the conversation about CH in the 1990s. What did the ambulance do and why? What did the police do and why? What did Dinkins do? What did Sharpton do? Who was at fault? We seem to be over this conversation, at last, and it was kind of a drag for Dinkins to bring us back into it.

There are other, more important questions about the violence of 1991 that have always been crowded out by the finger pointing Dinkins was reflecting on (and perhaps still engaging in). How did Blacks and Jews in CH actually understand the tragic events of August 91? Why did they understand them so differently? Why are they still divided by discussions of these events? What did the violence say about more enduring (even current) patterns of Black-Jewish relations in the neighborhood?

These questions have been ignored in the media, but (here comes the shameless plug) they’re central to my book about CH, which I wrote on the basis of two years of ethnographic research. If you’re interested you might want to check it out. It’s called "Race and Religion among the Chosen Peoples of Crown Heights," and here’s a link to the amazon page:

http://www.amazon.com/Religion-Among-Chosen-People-Heights/dp/0813538971/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1249062512&sr=8-1

I hope you enjoy it. I’d be delighted for non-academics, and especially CH residents, to take a look.