As was expected from the title of the book, the debate of race vs. religion once again comes up. Interestingly, Henry Goldschmidt explains why this is a recurring theme. He claims that “racial and religious identities (and others) have been inextricably woven together, to such an extent that ‘race’ and ‘religion’ have each helped define the very nature of the other” (26). He believes that there is no clear distinction between the two classifications, although they do explain different instances, and therefore the two are “co-constitutive categories” (26). In this book about Black and Hasidic Crown Heights residents, Goldschmidt tries to intertwine the two distinctions those residents hold so separate.
The book describes the “riots” or “progroms” that follow the death of a Guyanese young boy (that was countered with the death of a Jewish 29-year-old man). Both the Black and Hasidic populations of Crown Heights claim themselves to be the “chosen peoples,” or in this case the oppressed minority. The Black community saw the death and the subsequent events as being heavily racially driven and therefore countered with “riots” or a “rebellion” to gain justice for their oppressed race among the whites. On the other hand, the Hasidic Jews saw the events as religion based, calling the “riots” a “progrom” in which they are the minority Jews among the Gentiles. Each group makes a clear distinction between race and religion, whereas Goldschmidt, in trying to understand the events, sees the two categories as being intertwined. He mentions that each serves as a “metalanguage” (28)- where something that can be reasoned on the basis of several different things is explained by either race or religion in our case.
What I found particularly interesting was that living in such close proximity and many times being isolated from other communities and neighborhoods, the residents of Crown Heights are born knowing only what is around them. Goldschmidt mentions that a Black child in Crown Heights’ first perception of a white person is the Hasidic Jew. And a Hasidic child born in Crown Heights’ first perception of a Gentile is his Black neighbor. I think it really gives us something to think about when this clear distinction of race vs. religion impacts not only our interpretations of the events of August of 1991, but also a child’s view of the outside world.
