fuck yes Spike Lee!
Dear Parasites, stay home and get yr own house in order.
Smaller, denser, self-sustainable cities; anti-globalism.

Pull the plug on the 1%

just for the dog comment alone. Holy shit; has anyone been to a Fort Lawton lately? Its increasingly being over-run with these assholes intent on smearing the feces of their canine crutch over every square inch of sod.

some context
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/gentr…

@5, OMG, thank you.

As recently as 2010, he partnered with Pernod Ricard, a French vodka company, to create Absolut Brooklyn, a booze drink sold, according to marketing materials, “in a specially-designed bottle reminiscent of the ubiquitous Brooklyn Stoop Life,” complete with a label depicting a brownstone bearing the number 165, the address of Lee’s old home.

The cartoon says it all, really.

Only black people can sell their neighborhood to white people!

Charles and Spike have to hate white people every once in a while or they risk losing their street cred.

Hypocrite or not, it's true that poor areas are underserved until they get gentrified.

I don't think most black folks were comfortable asking nor would expect help from the city/police or whutevah...

@10 Bingo. Lee's contradictions are completely separate from the arguments to be made against gentrification. Conflating the 2 is more or less equivalent to claiming that since one drives, one has no legitimate complaints against our fossil fuel-driven economy.

@12 If he were just bitching about public services only coming with white people, that'd be a good argument.

But, then he starts bitching about how a park looks like motherfucking Westminster Dog Show, or how the rich white people who moved in next door to his father called the cops on his ass for playing shitty music late into the night because they had to work during the day.

At first I was all ready to be like "I prejudged you, you're preaching gospel" when he was talking about trash being picked up, and schools being funded. But, then...he continued on with his racist hypocritical ways saying white people were the problem because they came with their own cultures, without looking at why white people were having to move in to traditionally black neighborhoods, nor looking at his role in that gentrification.

I thought neighborhoods were made of human beings regardless of color. Fact is that the immigrants of the Mayflour and beyond sold their property to blacky, before blacky sold to whitey, and so on.

@13 - I disagree with you. Minorities being overwhelmingly on the losing side of gentrification is a manifestation of systemic racism. Lee could be more gentle but I personally don't mind his style.

@15 No. Gentrification is NOT a manifestation of systemic racism in that gentrification itself is not racist.

Gentrification is, however, a result of past segregations which were systemically racist. Gentrification also is the result of three different forces at work.

1) The return of white money into the city. Gentrification generally happens in large cities, where systemic racism had led to segregated neighborhoods. The black neighborhoods were generally poorer and more run down, thus costing less to get less. But, when the white money returned to the city, especially middle-class money, the values of all big city neighborhoods started going up. Especially with such seemingly new concepts as pied a terres, where rich people will take up a residence in a city that they won't occupy, the new money has pushed out the middle and lower middle class people into the poorer neighborhoods. And that has pushed the poorer people into further out neighborhoods.

2) Overpopulation. Nobody wants to address this. Everybody is still having broods of children. Rich, poor, black, white...multiple children is still en vogue in many sectors of America. Many bosses on Undercover Boss are show with 3-5 children, several families on wife swap have 3-5 children. My single-income coworkers have three kids. My bosses have three kids. Where the fuck are we supposed to put these people?? Many of America's problems are the direct result of too many people, and not enough planning for them.

3) Growing income inequality. The middle and low-middle class has to settle for cheaper and cheaper spaces as the rents and housing prices rise. Thus, they go looking to poorer neighborhoods where the rent is more affordable so they don't have to pay as much. Traditionally those neighborhoods are black because of the racist distribution of wealth. Black people who own homes actually make out like a bandit as their neighborhood raises in value, but renters actually suffer the hardest.

What does this have to do with Spike Lee? Everything. Spike Lee may be black, but he has the privilege of a white man now. He has more money than you or I will ever get in a lifetime. He has a 9,000 sq ft mansion that he has for sale for $32m. This is a man who went to Kickstarter to get funding for his next film. Yet, he has a $32m mansion.

Spike Lee has bought places and then sold them for double in 5-7 years. Who does he think is pricing out the poor black people in the neighborhoods? If it's the white people, then he must be whiter than white for all the gentrification he's participating in.

Now, the main reason that gentrification could be a manifestation of systemic racism is that poverty is generally higher among black people than white people, especially in cities. And, that's not being fixed any time soon, sadly. But, Gentrification in many neighborhoods mainly shows a great flattening of the worker income in America. White people aren't moving into black neighborhoods because they want to kick black people out. Largely, they're being priced out of their own neighborhoods. But, we'll ignore that so we can bitch about motherfucking hipster and ignore Spike Lee's role in gentrification. It's an easier conversation because it is about that old liberal sawhorse, racism...right?

@16 I didn't say that gentrification was inherently racist. I said that minorities being overwhelmingly on the losing side of gentrification was an expression of systemic racism. Systemic racism is made-up nonsense to rationalize taking advantage of someone, and it has economic consequences for the victims.

@17 But, it's not.

Poor people are always the ones on the losing end of gentrification. And that's becoming more and more egalitarian.

@18 Yes, and the black poor (for example) are poor for the usual reasons that white people can be poor and also because of racism; therefore, racism plays its part in minorities not being able to fight off being pushed out of these neighborhoods.

@19 Gentrification is no more racist than it is homophobic.