The major news network CNN reported on an interview in which Lee bemoans the gentrification of his old neighborhood with a variety of people including “mother…ing hipsters.” This discussion prompted reactions such as Spike Lee’s Racism Isn’t Cute: ‘M—–f—– Hipster’ Is the New ‘Honkey’ Lee appeared again on CNN. Spike Lee explains expletive-filled gentrification rant.
I think it is interesting that his complaints about whites moving into his old neighborhood which his grandparents inhabits. Focus largely two critiques, one economic and one cultural. The first is that when only black people live in a neighborhood, it does not receive the same services the predominantly white neighborhoods receive. Things like regular trash service, street cleaning, well-stocked libraries, ambulance services, police services, road maintenance, available public transportation, and even taxi services are all very dependant on which racial demographic your neighborhood matches. He is saying that the tendency is for people with money who tend to be white come to these places for cheap real-estate often knocking out historic structures to build new condos or expensive brownstones which the original inhabitants of the neighborhood cannot afford and which raises their property taxes eventually to levels they cannot afford. This has happened and is ongoing in two cities I lived in for several years, Chicago and Indianapolis. So that when the neighborhood finally starts to get better services and even better schools the original inhabitants do not get to benefit from this and communities are often broken apart.
The conversion of inexpensive multi-unit low-income real-estate into expensive condos and brownstones and restored apartment buildings is an ongoing process which is usually ushered in by the migration of “Hipsters”. Though in the 90’s when the process of gentrification began in the Chicago areas of Wicker Park, and Printers Row, as well as Bucktown, were called artists often with tattoos and brightly coloured hair, and they were mostly white. Sometimes from poor as well us upper-middle-class families, well read, suburbanites went looking for cheap places to live in the exciting city. Being well read and often well educated they were not afraid to move into areas where they were the ethnic minority. Once whites who are much wealthier than the original inhabitants enter such a neighborhood, the culture changes again at the expense of the original residents of the community.
In this sense, the poor blacks are being re-colonized and displaced by predominantly white people. He is not saying white people are racists. He is explaining what is happening when the “Mother F..” “Hipsters” start moving into a neighborhood as it begins the process of gentrification. Having seen Lee speak only a few weeks ago at Virginia Tech [see earlier post] I know that he regularly uses the word mother f…when speaking for emphases. Explaining what is happening is not calling anyone group racists. “Hipster” is not code for “Honky.” In fact, that is a problematic assumption because there are black Hipsters. I also know that in white culture many people dislike Hipsters. See this explanation for why Hipsters couldn’t incite more blind hatred if they were all ginger-haired Al-Qaeda members.
I think it is problematic to call out Lee as being or encouraging racism towards whites. Not that it is impossible for blacks or any other shade of dermal discrimination to be racists, but because of what racism involves. Racism is not merely about not liking someone because of their pigmentation distribution. Racism is saying that the person is a criminal, stupid, animal violent thug and denying or making it tough for them access to jobs, good schools, decent housing, clean streets and health care because they are too dark. The white people moving into the neighborhood are not in the same social, racial position as the black population who already live there, and this shifts the dynamics greatly regarding power. Black people are not very concerned with the reality of whites not liking them or wanting to have a beer with them because they are black. They are very concerned with the fact of not being access to good jobs, or clean streets or a good education, or arresting them or shooting them because they are black. Blacks do not occupy the same position of power in the U.S. today that whites continue to hold. There are always already exceptions to all rules, but we can look at the landscape and quickly read the signs.
And again it looks a lot like colonial exploitation to me.
melungeon mullins 