New York’s Dinkins Pleads for Greater Racial Harmony : Cities: Mayor takes aim at the ‘rabble-rousers’ he blames for escalating conflict between some black and Jewish groups.

Mayor David N. Dinkins on Wednesday delivered an impassioned Thanksgiving Eve appeal for greater racial understanding in New York City, declaring that neither black anti-Semitism nor Jewish racism can be tolerated.

“Our character as a people is being tested now,” the mayor said. “Our city will not be divided.

“Race baiters and rabble-rousers do not understand our lives,” Dinkins added, in what advisers said was one of the most important speeches of his three-year-old Administration.

Dinkins’ noontime televised address was structured to answer critics after a jury last month acquitted a black teen-ager of killing a Hasidic scholar in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn. It also was designed to show that the mayor still possesses the leadership to keep racial peace--a key issue as he prepares for what surely will be a bitter reelection campaign next year.

“I was elected to be the mayor of all our people . . . I have never nor will I ever pander or cater to one group to permit it to gain an advantage over another group,” Dinkins pledged. “ . . . I will never use code words and subliminal messages to create mistrust between groups. I have never nor will I ever play favorites or pit one group against another for political advantage.

“In a city which prides itself in its ability to get along, too many groups come too close to upsetting the delicate balance by talking first and thinking later, by shouting without listening and by providing answers before asking the questions,” the city’s first black mayor lectured. “New Yorkers do not need or want this.”

Dinkins has been the target of intense criticism in both phases of the Crown Heights incident.

The original riots erupted after a car in the entourage of a Hasidic Jewish spiritual leader went out of control and accidentally struck and killed a 7-year-old black child. Hours later, Hasidic scholar Yankel Rosenbaum was surrounded by angry blacks, beaten and fatally stabbed.

Some of Dinkins’ critics have argued in a federal lawsuit filed this month that the mayor--a staunch supporter of Israel--and his former police commissioner, who also is black, held back the police so that “anti-Semitic criminals” could attack the area’s Jewish residents.

A teen-ager was tried on charges of killing Rosenbaum, but was acquitted Oct. 29. Critics then charged that Dinkins did not show sufficient outrage at the jury’s verdict.

In his 10-minute address Wednesday, the mayor responded angrily.

“A few have suggested that someone made a political decision to deprive the people of Crown Heights of police protection,” he said. “That charge is false, reprehensible and despicable.”

At the same time, he accepted ultimate responsibility for an inadequate police response when the rioting first erupted.

“By their own accounts . . . the police department did make tactical errors in judgment and deployment of police officers in the early hours of the disturbance which may have delayed a return to normalcy,” the mayor said.

“I know and I accept when a mistake is made that it is the mayor who is called to account,” Dinkins said. “ . . . I also want to make it clear that I am determined that such an error never take place again.

“Astonishingly, a few people even tried to blame me for the verdict reached by the jury in the Rosenbaum case, even though I had nothing to do with the prosecution or the defense. The mayor of New York does not operate or control any district attorney’s office.”

Dinkins announced a series of steps to improve race relations, including strengthening partnerships among schools, community groups and religious institutions to promote understanding; supporting efforts to create the city’s first anti-bias curriculum in public schools, and increasing funding for efforts to resolve neighborhood conflicts.

“We must never forget that no crime is more odious than the hate crime,” the mayor said.