It appears from this chapter that the theme of blurry lines of identification is a theme that manifests itself in every aspect of the Black and Jewish communities of Crown Heights. Not only do the individual communities struggle with self-identity and interactive identity, but also they even struggle with geographic identity. Essentially, the “personality” of a neighborhood is defined by the culture of its inhabitants. In a neighborhood like Crown Heights we find to distinct communities, each with their own identity crises, living in tension with one another. It’s no wonder that Goldschmidt struggles to define what and where exactly is the neighborhood.

When reading Goldschmidt’s general review of the history of shifting ethnic communities in Crown Heights, I got the impression that the shift in Crown Heights from being a predominantly white, Jewish community to a Black, Afro-Caribbean and African American community, seemed natural. “White Flight” to the suburbs was a common occurrence in the sixties and seventies. What was unusual about Crown Heights, however, was that there was an active force going against the tide of natural ethnic shifts on the part of the Lubavitcher Rebbe. Had the Rebbe not instructed the people in his community to stay where they were, the Lubavitcher Chassidim likely would have left with the rest of the whites and Jews in Crown Heights. Since the vast majority of Crown Heights had once been Jewish, the remaining Chassidish residents never adjusted their identification of the geographical borders of the neighborhood. Even the Jewish part of ton shrank to a mere six-block radius, the residents nevertheless held on to the old picture of Crown Heights.

The tension and confusion of geographic borders in Crown Heights continues to reflect the tensions between the two communities on a socioeconomic level. I found Goldschmidt’s explanation of the mixed-community (that is, lower income families living among higher income families) to be reminiscent of the ways in which the Blacks and the Jews in Crown Heights relate to one another. He writes that, “Jews in Crown Heights seem to be a bit worse off…than their Black neighbors” and yet everyone assumes otherwise, due to the spatial correlation between Jews and wealth, and probably some Jewish stereotypes as well. Though rather than assuming that geographic and racial/religious misunderstandings just happen to appear to parallel one another in Crown Heights, I would sooner argue that the geographic confusion of Crown Heights is one of many factors that lends itself to general misunderstandings of race and religion.