NY Times
David N. Dinkins, a Democrat, campaigning in Lower Manhattan in 1989, became New York’s first black mayor.

Former Mayor Dinkins Blames Racism for Re-election Loss

Delivering his most explicit and candid appraisal yet, David N. Dinkins says in a forthcoming memoir that he barely won the New York City mayoral election in 1989 and lost four years later for one reason: because he is black.

“I think it was just racism, pure and simple,” Mr. Dinkins writes.

In the memoir, “A Mayor’s Life: Governing New York’s Gorgeous Mosaic,” which is to be published in September by PublicAffairs, Mr. Dinkins tiptoes out of his courtly public persona to berate Rudolph W. Giuliani, the Republican who defeated him in 1993, and to take a swipe at a fellow Democrat, former Gov. Mario M. Cuomo.

According to an advance copy of the book, Mr. Dinkins even admits some missteps, including a failure to contain race riots in Crown Heights, for which he largely blamed his police commissioner, and the prolonged boycott by blacks of a Korean-owned grocery in Brooklyn.

On his refusal to break the boycott by shopping at the grocery, he writes: “It may well be that I waited an overly long time to take this step, but I had faith in the court system and in the rational ability of people to come to satisfactory conclusions among themselves.

“I may have been wrong on both counts.”

In the memoir, written with a collaborator, Peter Knobler, Mr. Dinkins offers insights into his views on race, a subject that he typically skirted as the city’s first African-American mayor, and into how being black shaped his personality.

He describes his taste in sports, speech and attire as, perhaps, aspirational, but adds, with a wink, “it may simply be that I like tennis, proper diction and formal wear.”

While the book is peppered with expletives, Mr. Dinkins, 86, still hews to perfect, if sometimes stilted, diction in public speaking, he explains, because “I want to be heard as a man, not as a black man.”

When he would publicly express “great displeasure,” he recalls, “I felt it behooved the press to report that I was, in fact, highly angry.” But he acknowledges that “perhaps I should have learned to express my fury in more easily reported terms.”

“ ‘Courtliness’ became a code word for ‘inaction,’ yet I was both courtly and active,” he writes.

Not surprisingly, Mr. Dinkins aims his most acrid salvos at Mr. Giuliani, describing him as “a cold, unkind person” who “apparently has some difficulty apologizing for anything” and practiced “the politics of boundless ambition without the guidance of a set of core beliefs or the humility and restraint of experience.”

He accuses Giuliani operatives of spying on his campaign and maintains that the comedian Jackie Mason, in describing Mr. Dinkins as a “fancy schvartze,” was “essentially calling me a nigger.” Mr. Mason, who supported Mr. Giuliani in his race against Mr. Dinkins, declined to comment.

Mr. Dinkins said Mr. Giuliani’s underlying message was: “The city is in terrible financial straits. Do you really want a black man presiding over it in this time of trouble?”

He also accuses Mr. Giuliani of “all but inciting the police to riot” during a raucous demonstration against Mr. Dinkins in 1992 over his support for a civilian review board for the Police Department. “Would the cops have acted in this manner toward a white mayor?” he asks. “No way. If they’d done it to Ed Koch, he would have had them all locked up.”

Efforts to reach Mr. Giuliani for comment on Tuesday were unsuccessful.

Having come up with a plan to hire more police officers and to raise the revenues to finance it, he argues, “I drove down crime faster than any mayor in New York City history.” But he says that during the Crown Heights riots in 1991, set off when a black child was killed by a car driven by a Hasidic Jew, “in many ways, the Police Department failed and the buck stopped with me, the mayor.”

He writes, “There was no order given, there was no unstated code, there was no tacit understanding, there was nothing anytime or anywhere that authorized the police not to do their jobs, to stand down, to allow the black community to attack Jews and create mayhem.”

At one point, he writes, he told Lee P. Brown, the police commissioner at the time: “How dare you let it get this way! I want every officer that can be sent to Crown Heights to be there tomorrow. If you have to use horses, add the horses.”

Mr. Dinkins said he was angered when the commissioner said he was exploring what charges could be brought against rioters: “ ‘Well what about freaking riot? Why don’t we start with that!’ ”

Mr. Brown declined to comment.

A report on the riot commissioned by Mr. Cuomo found a failure in the chain of the city’s leadership. It was a politically damning assessment, even after the governor had said, according to Mr. Dinkins, that he had “watered it down” and that it would have been much worse if he had not.

To which Mr. Dinkins replied, “If you, me and a bear are in a fight, Governor, help the bear.”

15 Comments

  • declasse' intelelctual

    Justification for his incompetence is that I am Black. He should never have been Mayor–he was never been competent enough to lead and to govern. so, instead of really recognizing the facts blame everyone else with finger point and proclaim race. Sour grapes from a loser and it comes at the worse possible time when tensions have been escalated through the Zimmermann affair.

  • Ummmmm

    He lost because crime in NY was the highest in the country. It was so bad he was scared to step in and put a stop to the Crown Heights Riots.

  • sc

    He won the first time because he is black. He lost re-election because he is incompetent!

  • look at it this way

    you lost because you were the worse mayor in history and you were the worse mayor in history because you were black

  • Oregano Wilkenson Taylor

    Oh really?….I always thought the reason he lost the second term was that he was incompetent.

  • Half Right and Wrong

    He is right that he won the mayoral election in 1989 because he is Black, as Jackie Mason had humorously called him a “Black model looking for a job,” but he is dead wrong that he lost in 1992 because he is Black. He lost in 1992 despite being Black because he was an anti-Semite; the worst mayor the city ever had, having been directly responsible for the first Pogrom in American history.

  • SEREL MANESS

    BOY IS DINKINS A LIER,,NOT ONLY THAT BUT HE JUST DOESN’T GET IT
    FIRST OF ALL THE CHILD WAS ALIVE BUT THE BLACK MOBS REFUSE TO LET THE AMBULANCE IN HE HAD A CHANCE TO LIVE,THIS JUST GOES TO SHOW YOU HOW THE BLACKS WORK,THEY ARE NOT INTERESTED IN FACTS AND TRUTH,IT WAS AN ACC,THE CAR HIT A POT HOLE,SO THE CAR LANDED ON THE SIDEWALK,,YEAH WHEN DINKINS TRUCK WAS OUT FOR REELECTING DINKINS,HE HIT A JEWISH CHILD,NOPE HE DIDN;T STOP,HE RAN AWAY, THE BOY GOT IMM HELP,NOT A RIOT,THANK G-D HE’S ALIVE AND WELL,THIS IS BEREL VOGEL, AND THEN HE WENT TO THE REBBE,HE SAID TO THE REBBE,THERE ARE 2 NATIONS HERE AND THE REBBE TOLD HIM THIS IS ONE CITY ,HE DOESN’T GET,STILL DOESN’T, A LOT OF BLACKS THINK THE SAME WAY,NO WONDER PEOPLE ARE NOT SO WILLING TO HAVE MUCH TO DO WITH THEM,TRUTHFULLY I WASN’T RACSIT WHEN I CAME TO NYC,I WENT TO SCHOOL WITH THEM,YOU CAN TREAT THEM LIKE PEOPLE BUT THEY ARE HUNG UP ON THERE OWNS WORLD,NOT EVERYONE IS LIKE THIS ,YES THERE PEOPLE WHO DO NOT LIKE BLACKS,SO THEY TAKE OUT ON ALL OF US,THERE ARE MANY PEOPLE WHO PREFER THERE OWN,ONLY NORMAL

  • CR

    It was definitely racism that caused Mayor Dave to be rejected in ’93. Just not the sort that he is hinting hat here. True racism was expressed by his own administration in protecting miscreant, criminal activities by members of the African American communities in Crown Heights, Bensonhurst, Flatbush, Washington Heights and Harlem during his years. His administration refused to enforce the law where “brothers and sisters” were concerned and he paid the price. As he well should have.

    Davey, don’t blame The Man for your own failures when occupying that office!

  • bbb

    well, then can we re-enact (G-d forbid) the violence in Crown Heights and let him be on the street for the same amount of time…..and see how he views things? He was inept to say the least.

  • Stinkin' Dinkins

    David N. Dinkins (Meir Fecheter) was afraid to step on the black toes of his base constituency. That’s why he did not take decisive action during the Crown Heights riots or during the Korean merchant protests. The only thing he is good at is being a liar, even to himself!

  • Stinkin' Dinkins

    Sorry David N., the people who were around then know the truth and don’t buy your pitiful narrative of self-pity and victimization. Jackie Mason was 100% right with his characterization of you, no matter how offensive you and your ilk may find it!

  • What a Liar

    THE POLICE STANDING LIKE STATUES, TOLD US ‘IF WE MOVE FROM OUR POSTS TO HELP ANYONE, IT WILL BE INSTANT SUSPENTION.’
    so STOP FOOLING EVERYONE; THAT’S A FACT.
    INSTANT SUSPENTION.
    “LET THEM VENT” WAS ANOTHER LINE USED.
    SHARPTON WAS CALLING THE SHOTS AND DINKINS WAS AGREEING.
    IMAGINE THE OTHER WAY AROUND.
    WHAT A LIER THAT”S WHY YOU LOST.