February 25, 2014

Spike Lee: There goes the neighborhood

At an interview, movie director Spike Lee offered up a fun (but quite serious) denunciation of how white people are ruining the neighborhood where he grew up in Brooklyn. That reminds me that Spike is slightly to the right of Shaka Zulu.

66 comments:

  1. Wonder how he feels about immigration.

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  2. Gentrification is huge in my hometown of San Francisco.

    That is why for a big city, we have one of the lowest percentage of Blacks in the nation.

    Even Austin has a higher percentage of Blacks than San Francisco.

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  3. I read the transcript of this gentleman's remarks. He brought in the topic of parochial schools at one point in his discourse.

    I've never been to New York. Who is this Mother Fouqin to whom he kept alluding? Is she headmistress of some Brooklyn catholic school or something?

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  4. And why does it take an influx of white New Yorkers in the south Bronx, in Harlem, in Bed Stuy, in Crown Heights for the facilities to get better?

    I have no idea Spike. Could it maybe have something to do with wealth creation, income, property values, tax revenue derived from that etc? Maybe you and Michael Moore could get together and make a movie to explore the issue. Now that Charlton Heston is dead Moore seems to have some time on his hands.

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  5. Not entirely off-topic: a quote from a National Interest review of a George Keenan biography:

    'A 1978 trip to California inspires a soliloquy about how the intermingling of the state’s various regional groups inevitably leads to a “vast polyglot mass, . . . one huge pool of indistinguishable mediocrity and drabness. Exceptions may be only the Jews and the Chinese, who tend to avoid intermarriage, and, for a time, the Negroes as well.” This could mean, Kennan reflects, that these three groups would ultimately subjugate the rest of the populace to their will—“the Chinese by their combination of intelligence, ruthlessness, and ant-like industriousness; the Jews by their sheer determination to survive as a culture; the Negroes by their ineradicable bitterness and hatred of the whites.” It’s tempting to dismiss this sort of lazy bigotry as a product of Kennan’s times; such views were, after all, quite common among white Americans born in the early years of the century. (Kennan’s biographer, the admirable John Lewis Gaddis, makes just this plea for clemency in his book.) But the thought does not entirely console.'

    http://nationalinterest.org/bookreview/inside-the-mind-george-f-kennan-9938?page=show

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  6. Peter the Shark2/26/14, 2:16 AM

    As Spike says "You can’t just come in when people have a culture that’s been laid down for generations and you come in and now shit gotta change because you’re here?"

    Exactly right. A smart politician would figure out a way to get Blacks and working class Whites to ally on immigration.

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  7. This reminds me of when I'm trying to explain to others why having more Indians or Chinese in our country is a good thing for us. Welcome to the club, Spike Lee has finally become an old white man. Spike is correct about the ridiculousness about people prepping to get their kids into private, but that's about it. He just doesn't get why having white people gentrifying black neighborhoods actually helps black people too, even though the questioner tried to explain a bit of it to him.

    It's strange how Whites, Jews, Chinese, or Indians moving into any neighborhood tend to make it better. More high IQ people moving into your neighborhood or country, makes it a better place to live, even if you're a low IQ person. Shocking! He laments Brazil, but would you rather be black in Brazil or America or South Africa, or black in Haiti or Sudan or the Congo. I'd rather than high IQ whites, Indians, Jews, and Chinese making my life easier.

    Life gets better Spike, get a clue. And so does culture. Reading those comments, it's funny to notice that Spike Lee recently bogarted a highly acclaimed Asian movie himself, attempting to cash in on someone else's creative culture. Way to Christopher Columbus that, Spike.

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  8. Yet blacks in Detroit complain that White flight was the reason for their city's demise. Go figure.

    At any rate looks I wonder if Googke asks for SAT scores from applicants decades later? Evidently more companies are doing just that, I wonder why?

    http://m.us.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303636404579395220334268350?mg=reno64-wsj

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  9. "Gentrification is huge in my hometown of San Francisco.

    That is why for a big city, we have one of the lowest percentage of Blacks in the nation."

    When I visited San Francisco I must have walked through half of the city, and never once did I feel that my safety was in jeopardy. Not even when some stoners in Golden Gate Park were trying to sell me weed. Much ado is made of the large homeless population in San Francisco, but they are mostly white and completely non-menacing.

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  10. Spike actually does have a point. His father bought his house in 1968; there was a set of social mores about how loud was too loud and how late was too late for music-playing.

    I'm guessing that those mores were "black" mores, in which case it would seem too loud and too late for my ears. It's reasonable for him to be annoyed at newcomers who have different expectations, and who call the cops when those settled expectations are violated.

    Of course, this is also an argument against unsettling the settled expectations of white people in white neighborhoods. They get no protection whatsoever against the disruption of having blacks move in next door, and are vilified when they so much as notice that the music is too loud too late, and oh by the way who is that living with you? The "baby mama" you say? What's that?

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  11. White people concerns when blacks move into a neighborhood: Crime and violence increase and the schools become terrible; Spike Lee concerns when white people move into a neighborhood: The schools improve and after dark the streets are safe for women and children.

    I wonder what the reaction might have been if Spike had replaced "white" with "jews".

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  12. "And why does it take an influx of white New Yorkers in the south Bronx, in Harlem, in Bed Stuy, in Crown Heights for the facilities to get better?"

    I think Sweet Dick Willie got the answer to that question in Do the Right Thing: You n-words (LOL) are just...plain...dumb.

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  13. "You can’t just come in when people have a culture that’s been laid down for generations and you come in and now shit gotta change because you’re here?"

    Steve's wife's family could have said the same thing when their neighborhood (Austin, Chicago) changed. My family was ethnically cleansed from North Philadelphia.

    Spike speaks about a culture that was present at one time being disrespected by newcomers. Spike should take a look at 2 churches in Philadelphia, Most Blessed Sacrament (West Philly) and St. Columba's (N. Philly). There was a ton of culture in those 2 neighborhoods less than 45 years ago. All was destroyed by the arrival of new arrivals.

    No one cares about the people cleansed from the 50's-70's.

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  14. Anonymous said "Yet blacks in Detroit complain that White flight was the reason for their city's demise. Go figure.'

    Blacks complain nonstop and blame whites no matter what happens. Its best for (us) whites to just ignore them and live our lives as best we can.

    Btw, I'm curious if Spike has shed any tears for whoever was living in these neighborhoods before his "muthafuggin" father bought his place in 1968. I assume whoever it was fled for their lives sometimes around 1969-1970.

    Spike - most places were better before blacks arrived and become better after blacks leave. That's not whitey's "muthafuggin" fault.

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  15. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2567496/Pictured-Shocking-moment-doting-son-killed-single-punch-head-row-cycling-pavement-killer-jailed-just-four-half-years.html

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  16. What SWPL types never seem to understand is that Blacks vote liberal for conservative reasons. I.e., they vote Liberal because it benefits them in a material way, not because of some kind of Kantian commitment to abstract notions of justice. To them, it is purely who/whom.

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  17. Peter the Shark:"Exactly right. A smart politician would figure out a way to get Blacks and working class Whites to ally on immigration."

    Absolutely. Blacks in CA, for example, are not exactly keen on seeing the steady diminution of their voting clout as Hispanics move in.

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  18. Gen. Triff-Eyer2/26/14, 6:40 AM

    In Britain, professional racial grievance mongers like the obese and pathologically anti-white Diane Abbott rail against the 'gentrification' of areas like Brixton and Hackney, which are 'traditionally' black. This is true if tradition goes back 50/60 years but on no account any further, of course - from the moment they first existed to the white flight of the post-war era - i.e. comfortably within living memory - these areas and all others like them had been solid white/English working-class areas. Not understanding this bespeaks the short time horizons of Abbott et al, I guess. But mainly the who/whom, of course.

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  19. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNK6wz5PIGc

    Is There Still Alternative Culture in New York?

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  20. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2568167/Whose-big-youre-Map-uniquely-popular-musicians-U-S-state-Bruce-Springsteen-representing-New-Jersey-Jack-Johnson-really-big-Wisconsin.html

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  21. Hey, I own this brownstone!

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  22. Tough luck! Blacks pushed out many Whites from their traditional neighbourhoods in the sixties.

    Brooklyn went from 95.91% white in 1940 to 41.20 white in 2000. During the same period, it went from 3.98% black to 36.44% black! So whose 'hood did it use to be?

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  23. Spike is a pretty stupid guy, though I can admire his impulses here.

    Of course, it would never occur to him that those gentrifying black neighborhoods he laments were white neighborhoods long before blacks moved into them and ruined them in the first place. Now he wants to preserve the ruins.

    Spike sez: "So, why did it take this great influx of white people to get the schools better?"

    Wow, no idea, Spike. No idea. Must be racism.

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  24. "I've never been to New York. Who is this Mother Fouqin to whom he kept alluding? Is she headmistress of some Brooklyn catholic school or something?"

    LOL!

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  25. So much to say (like a few reasons the garbage might not have been picked up so nicely when he was raised there other than that damnable racial prejudice) but I'll settle for commenting on Spike's use of language:

    "Then comes the motherfuckin’ Christopher Columbus Syndrome. You can’t discover this! We been here. You just can’t come and bogart. There were brothers playing motherfuckin’ African drums in Mount Morris ...." blah blah, blah blah, blah blah....

    So nice to see a senior citizen still clingin' to the altar of cool....

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  26. "Gentrification is huge in my hometown of San Francisco.

    "That is why for a big city, we have one of the lowest percentage of Blacks in the nation."

    Last I heard, saw gays were moving in and gentrifying parts of Vallejo that had run-down Victorians.


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  27. As Spike says "You can’t just come in when people have a culture that’s been laid down for generations and you come in and now shit gotta change because you’re here?"
    _____________________________

    Wonder if Spike would apply this to that poor baker who doesn't believe he should have to bake a cake with two grooms on top of it or risk going to prison?

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  28. More high IQ people moving into your neighborhood or country, makes it a better place to live… --anon

    High-IQ migrants can destroy neighborhoods, too. Ask any old-timer in Vancouver, where Hong Kongers tear down beautiful old Victorians to erect non-descript lot-filling compounds. Or San Francisco, where the high-IQ minority you neglected to mention so tastefully decorates the shop windows of the Castro District.

    As for the damage high-IQ immigrants are capable of, let's not even get started on that

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  29. More high IQ people moving into your neighborhood or country, makes it a better place to live, even if you're a low IQ person.


    No, it does not. If you're a low IQ person than high IQ people moving into "your neighborhood or country" means that it will quickly cease to be your neighborhood or country. The result of more high IQ people moving into New York has not been to improve the quality of life of black New Yorkers, it has been to push black people out of New York.

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  30. As long as he's talking about newcomers taking over local institutions and reshaping them in their own image, maybe Spike remembers how black activists tried to implement Afrocentric education and took over community institutions once enough Jews and Italians moved out of Brownsville and other parts of Brooklyn to make those neighborhoods predominantly black?

    At least when yuppies reclaim Brooklyn they organize for better schools and cleaner streets. When the blacks displaced the Jews and ethnic whites from those same neighborhoods all their "community organizations" provided was ugly murals of Malcolm X.

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  31. That reminds me that Spike is slightly to the right of Shaka Zulu.

    To the right?

    Nothing right wing about Spike Lee.

    Plus, the White political nerd need to put things in the Right/conservative team vs the Left liberal team doesn't work with blacks.

    Black racists like Spike Lee, Eric Holder, Colin Powell or the various MSNBC/Atlantic/Slate/Salon/NYTimes black racist writers are all in ways aligned with the White liberal left (although Powell opportunistically punked the White Republicans for his own career) but they are fundamentally about having a pro-BLACK and anti-White identity.

    It's that Who?Whom? stuff. It's "But is it good for the Jews?" question.

    How does it benefit and protect the black ego? Create black heroes, martyrs and the necessary White villains.

    Oh yeah and, "Where da' White women at?"

    Blacks aren't simply darker White people.

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  32. Spike always meets expectations.

    At least he didn't incite violence against random people by tweeting a wrong address this time.

    His ethnocentrism, however, is rather refreshing, I must say. One wonders what are his thoughts on the illegal immigration question. Maybe he will tell us soon. Goody!

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  33. " Indians or Chinese in our country is a good thing for us." - please elaborate on who us is.

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  34. "Exactly right. A smart politician would figure out a way to get Blacks and working class Whites to ally on immigration. " - They made their deal with the devil, and there is no backing out now, even if they were inclined to, which they aren't.

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  35. Take The Red Pill2/26/14, 10:03 AM

    Anonymous: "Yet blacks in Detroit complain that White flight was the reason for their city's demise. Go figure."

    SO many leftists/liberals/'minorities'/et al. (and their political leaders) seem so incredibly mystified by the simple fact that (given the opportunity) producers will flee parasites when the parasites become too numerous, and the parasitic culture becomes too toxic and onerous to support.
    If the producers cannot flee, they will reduce production so that they become smaller targets for parasites; eventually, producers will stop producing.
    It's been happening in California since the 90's.

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  36. Then comes the Christopher Columbus Syndrome. You can’t discover this! We been here. You just can’t come and bogart.

    It seems like Spike has brought himself to genuinely believe that these neighborhoods were built and originally populated by blacks. The history of blacks driving out whites from the neighborhoods simply doesn't exist in his mind.

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  37. A national conversation among residents of central cities, inner-ring suburbs, and other local communities that have relatively weak tax bases could focus on overlapping interests in centralizing important aspects of governance. It could focus on challenging the practice of low-density zoning in wealthy suburbs, which helps perpetuate socio-economic and racial segregation.

    It's not a bug, it's a feature


    http://www.philly.com/philly/opinion/inquirer/20140226_When_talking_about_race.html

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  38. "And why does it take an influx of white New Yorkers in the south Bronx, in Harlem, in Bed Stuy, in Crown Heights for the facilities to get better?"

    Parental sex-ed is often called a talk about the birds and the bees. Someone should finally talk to Spike about the tundras and the jungles. I nominate that black guy who came up with the ice people vs. sun people terminology.

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  39. A 1978 trip to California inspires a soliloquy about how the intermingling of the state’s various regional groups inevitably leads to a “vast polyglot mass, . . . one huge pool of indistinguishable mediocrity and drabness. Exceptions may be only the Jews and the Chinese, who tend to avoid intermarriage, and, for a time, the Negroes as well.” This could mean, Kennan reflects, that these three groups would ultimately subjugate the rest of the populace to their will—“the Chinese by their combination of intelligence, ruthlessness, and ant-like industriousness; the Jews by their sheer determination to survive as a culture; the Negroes by their ineradicable bitterness and hatred of the whites.” It’s tempting to dismiss this sort of lazy bigotry as a product of Kennan’s times; such views were, after all, quite common among white Americans born in the early years of the century. (Kennan’s biographer, the admirable John Lewis Gaddis, makes just this plea for clemency in his book.) But the thought does not entirely console.'


    Wow as recent as 1978, the term Negro was still used by the mainstream media

    I guess the term African American was not adopted by the mainstream media until sometime in the 1980s.

    Another sign that the 1980s was more politically correct than the 1970s is that Blaxploitation films stopped being made in the 1980s. Blaxploitation films often portrayed Blacks in a "stereotypical" negative light.

    And of course some of the 1970s Blaxploitation film titles like "Boss Nigger" for example, would not have gotten the green light by the studios had it been made in the 1980s. It would have been considered a way too controversial film title in the 1980s "I Want My MTV" generation.

    The irony of America becoming more politically correct when Ronald Reagan was president than when Jimmy Carter was president.

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  40. Perhaps Spike Lee could could ally with President Museveni in dealing with the gentrifying homosexual interlopers.

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  41. I can sympathize with his complaints about the changing neighborhood, and the increase in costs.
    But change happens. This is what happens to the poor cultures. This is why complacency is deadly.

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  42. Vandal Savage2/26/14, 12:43 PM

    Funny thing is that Spike cashed in on his highly appreciated Brooklyn home now lives on Manhattan's lily WHITE upper East Side.

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  43. Whites finally realized that poor neighborhoods in NYC have great housing stock. So they're helping themselves to it while using Section 8 to exile blacks to the wastelands of upstate new York.

    And there's nothing the blacks can do about it.

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  44. I've been to Brooklyn many times. Want to know the funniest irony about Spike Lee's complaint? The vast majority of the "gentrification" consists of White left wing Democrats. You know: the champions of the Black man and the down trodden. As long as it is with someone else's money and in someone else's neighborhood.

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  45. http://www.suntimes.com/entertainment/25829953-421/a-cia-alum-plants-chicago-clues-on-the-americans.html

    Well, well, lookie here.

    When wasps ruled America and anti-communist conservatism was on the ascendancy in the 50s--and when many Jews were commie sympathizers--, Jews went crazy about 'rightwing paranoia' about communism and etc, etc.

    Now that Jews totally own America but Russia refuses to bend over to Jewish-promoted homo agenda, some liberal Jewish guy is fanning retro-Cold War fears to encourage anti-Russian bias among Americans.

    Just like Hollywood appropriated pop fascism, it looks like Jews are not appropriating cold war paranoia to promote Jewish global interests and vilify Russia as the evil empire.

    McCarthowicz.

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  46. https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation/

    Well, well, looky here.

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  47. Spike says blacks play music loud, act crazy, make lots of noise, and always love to make a scene. In other words, blacks are very disrespectful in their behavior.

    And yet, he expects 'whites' to respect this disrespectfulness.

    It's Radio Raheem redux. Raheem has the right to disrespect other people, but other people better respect him.

    Cogdis.

    Let the boom box boom.

    --------

    Funny that Spike didn't mention homos as homos are often the gentric cleansers par excellence.

    White folks didn't know what to do with uppity blacks, but they finally found a way to create the bendity black. Black folks can be uppity to whites but they better also be bendity to homos. Since homos are the darlings of white/Jewish privilege, they can be used to make the Negroes bend over indirectly to white/Jewish interests.
    After all, if blacks complain about homos, they are 'homophobic', and that is very very bad... since 'gay marriage' is sold as the new civil rights movement.

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  48. Hey friends. Let's take a walk down Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn, a (now) black neighborhood.

    http://bit.ly/1embYMR

    First, notice the wide, European style avenue, with walking areas on both sides. Go down the street a bit. Then move off to the sides, to get behind the trees. Check out the housing stock there, the many fabulous old buildings.

    Somebody tell Spike that "he didn't build this." And is it any wonder that areas like this -- gorgeous works of urban planning laid waste by people who can't maintain it -- are being gentrified?

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  49. "I've never been to New York. Who is this Mother Fouqin to whom he kept alluding? Is she headmistress of some Brooklyn catholic school or something?"

    LOL!


    That line appears to be an adaptation of a joke that has been making the rounds on social media the last few days: image

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  50. >>Peter the Shark said...
    """As Spike says "You can’t just come in when people have a culture that’s been laid down for generations and you come in and now shit gotta change because you’re here?"""""

    Now then. Will Spike remember he said this if whites were to use his exact words when huge numbers of blacks start moving into gated communities?

    Or will he revert to doing what he always does and play the race card?

    And odds on how to bet on this one?

    Spikes a card player.

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  51. """I wonder what the reaction might have been if Spike had replaced "white" with "jews"."""""

    Spike did say Jews, just in coded form. This is NY we're talking about. And a large segment of the white population in NY is Jewish, especially in Brooklyn.

    Seems he's gotten a little smarter than the last time.

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  52. I saw Mr Lee on Martha's Vineyard driving around in a Jeep Wrangler not too long ago. Seemed to fit right in with the wytes.

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  53. …those gentrifying black neighborhoods he laments were white neighborhoods long before blacks moved into them… --PeterIke

    He's talking about Fort Greene and, by extension, Harlem. Ft. Greene has had a significant black population since the 1830s. In large parts of Harlem, blacks were the first post-agricultural residents. (Some, no doubt, running from the Irish squatters in Ft Greene.)

    So while "blacks drove out whites" is a valid claim in other parts of the US-- and Canada, Britain and France-- it doesn't apply in these neighborhoods. Spike is on firmer ground in his hometown.

    Nonetheless, Wikipedia tells us that there were 200,000 Jews in Harlem in 1915, and only 5,000 in 1930. Post-WW1 white flight could be as rapid as the post-WW2 variety.

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    Replies
    1. @Reg: Pre-WW1 white flight could also be rapid. Interesting reading about Baltimore residential segregation. Lots of the arguments made in the past about Blacks seem eerily familiar today.

      http://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2498&context=mlr&sei-redir=1&referer=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Furl%3Fsa%3Dt%26rct%3Dj%26q%3D1910%20baltimore%20population%20by%20race%26source%3Dweb%26cd%3D1%26cad%3Drja%26ved%3D0CCQQFjAA%26url%3Dhttp%3A%2F%2Fdigitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu%2Fcgi%2Fviewcontent.cgi%3Farticle%3D2498%26context%3Dmlr%26ei%3DTMsLU_6PKJCMyAHUi4GYBA%26usg%3DAFQjCNGhSqDtg_dbMfVWKrmUGb4yl1725w%26sig2%3D2EaiyEFvAmxPW6JYtbWp8Q%26bvm%3Dbv



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  54. Ironic sidebar: Spike's Fort Greene was named after Gen Nathanael Greene of Rhode Island. After the war, he retired to a small cotton plantation near Savannah.

    There, Gen Greene's widow hosted a poor young Yankee tinkerer named Eli Whitney. He fiddled around with the extant cotton gins, and found the secret to making the damned things work well enough to pay. The rest is history.

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  55. Don't think San Francisco ever had that many blacks, even before the latest wave of gentrification. Mostly they were in Oakland, Vallejo, Richmond, etc.
    As for Brooklyn, it's different than Harlem, which has been predominantly black as long as it has been an urban neighborhood. Most of the black neighborhoods in Brooklyn were white ethnic (Jewish, Italian, etc) until after World War II.

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  56. Michonne stole my katana2/26/14, 6:30 PM

    Yes, those damned whites, there they go, obeying the law, helping their neighbors, paying their taxes and bills, leading peaceful lives. No one wants to live in their neigborhoods.

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  57. "t's strange how Whites, Jews, Chinese, or Indians moving into any neighborhood tend to make it better. More high IQ people moving into your neighborhood or country, makes it a better place to live, even if you're a low IQ person. Shocking! He laments Brazil, but would you rather be black in Brazil or America or South Africa, or black in Haiti or Sudan or the Congo. I'd rather than high IQ whites, Indians, Jews, and Chinese making my life easier."


    -Indians and Chinese in the US are not representative of their native populations. We're getting the valedictorians and their kids. Indians in India on average have a relatively low IQ. Take a trip to their countries and see how "great" those places are. You may say it doesn't matter since these are higher IQ than their countrymen, although there is the issue of regression to the mean in their offspring over time. In the meantime, having a more diverse country or neighborhood creates problems, not helps them. They also bring their cultures and strange ideas. Ever seen an old chinese man on a hot day tie up his shirt to expose his belly like a girl, or roll up his trouser bottoms to expose his calves and walk around the parking lot spitting everywhere? Unfortunately I have. Chinese will often bring their retired parents to live with them when they have kids. And don't get me started on some of the smells I have had to endure all day long around Indians.

    In addition, they both tend to be very racist, and blatantly favoritist for their own. Only whites are into the ideas of treating everyone equally or bending over backwards for people of other races. Fill a neighborhood with either and you'll be a second class citizen in your own home. Its still much better than living in a black neighborhood, but not as good as a white neighborhood.

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  58. North Tijuana2/26/14, 7:27 PM

    Bushwick becomes "East Williamsburg"--that's classic

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  59. Interesting factoid - Jackie Gleason lived in Bedford–Stuyvesant.

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  60. International Jew2/26/14, 10:42 PM

    Here's an amusing account of how diverse black people in Oakland are unhappy with a white gay couple that's trying to make a formerly dilapidated neighborhood more congenial to SWPL values:

    http://www.insidebayarea.com/ci_25126926/scorned-oakland-gentrifier-accepts-label-but-calls-truce

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  61. Peter the Shark2/26/14, 11:57 PM

    Of course, it would never occur to him that those gentrifying black neighborhoods he laments were white neighborhoods long before blacks moved into them and ruined them in the first place.

    Your complain might be valid in some neighborhoods of Chicago or Philadelphia, but most ethnic whites left Brooklyn voluntarily after WWII for the greener pastures of the Long Island and Connecticut suburbs. I could be wrong, but my impression is that blacks in Brooklyn were moving into neighborhoods that were already being abandoned.

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  62. Gentrify! Gentrify!

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  63. How sad and cruel that Brixton is considered a "traditionally" black area of the U.K. I guess "traditions" in Britain only begin when blacks invite themselves to an area.

    Cause its not like white people were living in Britain 60, 100, 200, 500, 1,000, or 2,000 years ago......No! Brixton was "always" a black area.

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  64. " Indians or Chinese in our country is a good thing for us." - please elaborate on who us is.

    --------------------------

    Indians + Chinese make up 40% of world's population. So "us" is pretty much Indians + Chinese and everywhere other minor group out there.

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  65. Unwittingly, and without any apparent irony, Spike made a very strong anti-diversity argument. Shouldn't he respect and be happy to accept the less noisy culture of the new inhibitants(?) of his old neighborhood? I guess diversity isn't so great when when it happens to Spike.

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