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Melissa Harris-Perry: Hi, everybody. I'm Melissa Harris-Perry and this is The Takeaway.

Male Speaker: A car driven by a Hasidic man went out of control, jumped a curb, eventually pinned the children against a wall. Seven-year-old Gavin Cato dead, and his seven-year-old cousin seriously injured.

Melissa Harris-Perry: In August of 1991, two Guyanese children were hit by a car in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn. The driver of the car was a member of the Lubavitch Jewish community and was driving in a three-car motorcade carrying Rabbi Menachem Schneerson. Three days of violent clashes followed after rumors spread that Jewish people involved in the car crash received medical attention ahead of the Black children.

Now, during the violence, a Jewish man was stabbed and killed and a number of police officers and members of the community injured. Afterwards racial tensions continued to simmer between Jewish and Black communities in Crown Heights. Collier Meyerson was only six years old at the time of the Crown Heights Riot, but having grown up with a white Jewish father and a Black mother, several parts of her identity were caught up in the events of 1991. Now she's out with a new podcast revisiting what happened. It's called Love Thy Neighbour.

Collier Meyerson: I lived in Crown Heights for close to 10 years in my 20s, and I never felt part of the Hasidic community, but what's interesting about this community is that they proselytized to other Jews. They're the only Hasidic movement who does this. Actually, they're the only Jews who do this. At the time I lived there, I joke with a friend of mine who's Irish, but she got approached more than I did, me as a Jew, and the subtext of that joke, of course, was that they weren't approaching me because I was Black.

I think that there's been a concerted effort on the part of Habad in recent years to change that but at the time I felt miles away from them. On the other hand, I felt so embraced by the Caribbean American community. My neighbors knew me, my friends and family, even, but through the making of this podcast that I came into the Babich community and I found them to be incredibly open and kind.

Melissa Harris-Perry: I want to dig into that intersection that you've just identified for us, this sort of, "Oh, you don't look Jewish." What it means to be Black and Jewish and in this space and trying to love your neighbors.

Collier Meyerson: It's really interesting to look at these two communities through this Black Jewish relationship that is historic and seeing what that relationship meant to two groups of people who sometimes had nothing to do with the experience of Black Americans or of Jewish Americans who are involved in the civil rights movement.

There is this long history of a Black Jewish Alliance, a lot of liberal Jews, and even not so liberal Jews will hold up the memory of a rabbi named Abraham Joshua Heschel, who was a true civil rights hero and believed in Black uplift so deeply, but he is used as this constant and soul symbol of the possibility of Black Jewish Alliance and that the Black Jewish relationship is incredibly strong and real because Jews and Blacks have experienced oppression and have this shared oppression and that we can rise up together and stronger through this shared history of oppression.

The truth of the matter is that white Jews who were not outwardly religious became to be perceived as white in the United States starting in around the 1940s, 1950s. That, of course, doesn't preclude the very real reality of antisemitism, but it is important to distinguish, I think, between the constant experiencing of state violence and being the target of antisemitism by sick individuals or groups of people and of course, as a Black Jewish person, myself, who is both black American, not Caribbean American and comes from a secular Jewish background, my experience doesn't map out perfectly onto the Crown Heights community, but there are these modicums of sameness that I really wanted to explore.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Okay. Now, say more on the decision to look back on the Crown Heights Riot at this moment.

Collier Meyerson: I think there's a macro reason which has to do with taking a long lens to history. I had said in the very beginning of the podcast that I wanted to dissect the anatomy of a riot. Obviously, civil unrest doesn't come out of nowhere and I think 30 years is a good amount of time to give space to a historical event that was so significant to this city and really to the country so that it can help us see the present much more clearly.

Then zooming in more closely to New York, there were serious political implications of the Crown Heights Riot. I really do credit, I don't know, thereafter a month to the rise of Rudolph Giuliani as Mayor of New York City. Also, I was just frankly curious about the more existential question of what it means to be a good neighbor. That was really what inspired me to look at this event that took place so long ago.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Did you come up with a way of describing what it means to be a good neighbor?

Collier Meyerson: There is this idea, this very American idea that we need to love our neighbors, that we need to break bread with our neighbors. In this particular community where Jewish people have really intense food restrictions, religious Jewish people have intense food restrictions, they can't break bread with their Black neighbors. Their very particular way of life is pretty prohibitive when it comes to chilling with your neighbors.

I think that we need to redefine what it means to be a good neighbor. It doesn't mean taking all of these external pressures that we grew up with, this lore, American lore of loving your neighbor and becoming one, the melting pot idea, but really just having a baseline of respect for your neighbor. It ends in a positive way that I do believe in the possibility of mutual respect and political organizing even if you don't love your neighbor.

Melissa Harris-Perry: I appreciate the point about taking the long historic view. What does this moment that we are currently living in, where we don't yet have the long historic view on these questions, I'm wondering what the stories you're telling us in the context of this podcast can tell us about this moment.

Collier Meyerson: There have been, specifically in this community and then also in the country, a state of anti-Semitic attacks in the last few years and they have only risen. I think they've also specifically in this community in Crown Heights have gone undercover in the media. Of course, the death of George Floyd reinvigorated a movement that takes a deep look into police brutality and killing the Black Americans. I felt like looking into the history of those two communities would give us answers that could help to figure out how these things repeat themselves. Of course, the answers are often the same, which is if you set up a community to fight for scraps, they will, and to individuate in ways based on race or religion or class, they will. The answer I think is a better social safety net.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Collier Meyerson is host of the Pineapple Street Studios podcast Love Thy Neighbor. Thank you for joining us.

Collier Meyerson: Thank you.

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