Soccer Dad

Crown Heights Selectively

The other day the NY Times carried a review of a new TV show about Crown Height. The review "Finding Crown Heights Peace: Hip-Hop and Hope" by Alessandra Stanely is of a made for Showtime movie "Crown Heights."
Stanley praises the show for not becoming a sentimental mish-mash, but what's troubling is that she leaves something out. Stanley notes with some indignation that Gavin Cato's name is never mentioned. And that is indeed an omission. But there's a bigger omission here: Al Sharpton.
Al Sharpton did not start the riot. That started after Cato was killed and rumors spread that the Jewish ambulance service did not try to help. (Hatzolah was told by police not to tend to the injured black children because the police were scared for the safety of the Hatzolah members.)
But Sharpton contributed to its continuation. And at Cato's funeral he gave a virulently antisemitic speech. (He talked about "diamond merchants" etc.) I didn't see the show, so I can't comment. But if Gavin Cato's funeral had been portrayed, it would have had to have included the Sharpton "eulogy." That would not have looked good for a Democratic presidential candidate. (And why haven't any of the other Democratic candidates expressed their disgust with Sharpton.) Was Sharpton left out of the proceedings because he wasn't in the movie? Or because Stanley was covering for him?
Finally, I suppose what's most frustrating about the review is a line:

To lend the film a historical context and a grittier edge, the story is interspersed with occasional black-and-white interviews with Crown Heights residents, blacks and Jews, who express their very different and often harsh views of the accident and of each other.

The Crown Heights riot - or pogrom - did not start because of some Jews intentionally did some evil to some blacks. It started as a traffic accident. It has hatred of Jews that led to the violence. To portray both sides here in an evenhanded way is dishonest. Using the term "racial tension" is a way of avoiding acknowledging that the hate crimes here only went one way.

Posted by SoccerDad at February 18, 2004 06:16 AM | TrackBack