Dinkins Reminds Us Why He Only Served One Term

David Dinkins was a one term, third rate mayor of New York City. He had a speaking style that could put your foot to sleep. During the Crown Heights riots, he did nothing for 3 days, until someone almost hit him with a brick. Then he realised that it was serious and let the cops make arrests.

On the first day of Rosh Hashanah, Dinkins made up for the mind numbing boredom of his speaking style by saying something so stupid, it made people sit up and take notice. While endorsing State Senate candidate Adriano Espaillat, Dinkins noted as follows.

"But it is important, it is so very important, particularly for the people of this district who vote on Tuesday to recognize how important it is to understand that the city is changing. Most people in the city are going to look more like us than others and that's just a fact. It is not a bad thing. It is frankly a good thing."

Since when is "looking like us" a qualification for office? Was it a qualification in the segregated south, or in apartheid South Africa? If a neighborhood is turning white, am I allowed to say that "It is frankly a good thing."?

Espaillat, has not repudiated Dinkins' racially divisive remarks. His opponent, Mark Levine is a white Jewish man who is married to a Hispanic woman On the campaign trail, he doesn't look quite right to Dinkins. Did David Dinkins tell us anything at all about how Espaillat differs on the issues from Levine? Do we know anything at all about how the two candidates differ in ideology? The answer is clear. Dinkins is invoking racial solidarity to create a winning bloc of votes.


Dinkins has not changed a bit since he was mayor. Once, when he was asked if he was going to visit Ellis Island, he replied as follows.

“Ellis Island is for the people who came over on ships. My people came in chains.”




The fact is that many Caribbean, African and South American immigrants of African ancestry came to the US not as slaves but as free immigrants. One could argue that they faced racism, but they did not "come in chains".

Dinkins trades in racial resentment painted over with a thin veneer of gentility that all too often during his career flaked off and showed the ugliness beneath.By law, he served as the mayor of all New Yorkers, but as shown by his Ellis Island statement and his Espaillat endorsement, his heart was not in the job.

New Yorkers were fortunate to survive the David Dinkins mayoralty. We were not fortunate to have Dinkins as mayor. His racist endorsement of Espaillat, so devoid as it was of any discussion of issues faced by all New Yorkers is a vivid reminder of why New Yorkers voted that petty and prejudiced man out of office.