Nathaniel, there are two reasons we didn't have riots after the King assassination, or other events that triggered race riots in other cities:
1. NYC race riots are always about local issues. NYC isn't the same powderkeg as other cities, and it takes a big spark -- a local spark -- to set things off.
2. Lindsay's walk through Harlem isn't what really what kept things calm. It had more to do with two cops being posted on every corner in Harlem.

Why only Republicans since Dinkins???

There have only been TWO Mayors since Dinkins Brian. It's not like a string of Republican mayors have run NYC.

It's interesting that people think "Race Relations" in NYC were always difficult in NYC. In that it gives cover to the racist behaviors of Koch and Giuliani. People over look that the night Martin Luther King was assassinated Mayor John Lindsey walked the streets of Harlem without NYPD escort and asked people to stay cool. Many American cities went up in revolt, New York City stayed calm. Its clear Giuliani and Koch intentionally exploited the racial fears of Caucasian New Yorkers to secure their political power.

While giving all due credit to Giuliani and Bloomberg for the spectacular reduction of crime in NYC over the last 21 years, there is another major factor that is hardly mentioned, and that was the Million Man March, where many from the Black communities decided within an internal pact for themselves to repair their own dysfunctional family lives. It really was a milestone in repairing the disrupted, fatherless Black families that were really at the core of the production of so many alienated youth.
In addition, welfare to workfare reform of the late 1990s did force many to get off dependency on the welfare culture, and that has been instrumental in getting many Blacks into the workforce and up the ladder to self-sufficiency and even prosperity in many cases.

If you look at the actual data on NY crime rates, it contradicts all the public policy claims for causing the amazing long rapid decline starting from the summer of 1990.

Nothing but the ongoing cultural change in communities of the city has the uninterrupted and highly unusual continuity of change displayed so clearly in the data!!!

http://www.synapse9.com/issues/CrimeWaveEndNYCs.jpg
http://www.synapse9.com/cw/crimewave_nys2.htm

Yup Bloomberg changed things alright!

Dinkins only cared about new shoes and new clothes.

The black community is calm because the race baiters, Al Sharpton etc, were paid off by Bloomberg to keep quite. All the "Church Leaders" had their hands out for "donations".

Ed Koch once criticized Dinkins for carrying out a "pogrom" against the Jewish community in Crown Heights..What does he think about Ed Koch and his mayorship?

Suits aganist the city 's NYPD is at a all time high
I think you have to re-think that Brian..along
with the killing of that guy on the GCP who was un-armed

How dare Mayor Dinkins accuse Mayor Koch of racially insensitive statements? Mayor Dinkins' reaction to the Crown Heights riots was an affront to the Jewish community and the city in general. Does he accept that this is why he wasn't re-elected? To this day, will he refer to the event as a riot, a pogrom, or an "uprising", as many hateful people in the Black community still call it?

Dinkin's image seemed to be that of a feckless leader (as well as somebody who thought NYC consisted only of the borough of Manhattan). I never hear him speak about that.

Hello Brian,

Please ask the mayor his opinion on the constitutionality and effectiveness of the current stop and frisk policy? Does he believe it's a net good or negative for NYC?

THank you