On August 19, 1991, a car crashed in the Crown Heights neighborhood of New York. The car belonged to a motorcade carrying a Jewish leader; one fatality was of Guyanese descent. Tensions between Jewish and Caribbean residents quickly flared and robbery, fighting and even murder took place for four days. In the podcast Love Thy Neighbor journalist Collier Meyerson connects these riots with contemporary problems such as racism, police brutality and anti-Semitism. Her mixed identity as a black Jewish New Yorker motivates her, her father also notes in the podcast: “Do you think the struggle in Crown Heights is a reflection of the tension and struggle within yourself?” Her eyes roll almost audibly, but then she realizes: he’s right.
A version of this article also appeared in NRC Handelsblad on 16 April 2022
A version of this article also appeared in NRC on the morning of April 16, 2022
