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Big mistake: Taking any celebrity seriously on any subject outside of their own arena. Just because someone has the genetic gift of good vocal chords or can mimic emotions in front of a camera doesn't mean squat in any other arena of life. Spike Lee's opinion counts about as much as the checkout girl at my grocery store. Or the average CD poster for that matter.
Personally, the entire gentrification debate is damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don't. People use the term "white flight" a lot to disparage the diaspora from the inner city, conveniently forgetting that a lot of non-whites made the pilgrimage themselves. Then when the next generation moves back into the city and revitalizes what had been approaching wasteland status, they get criticized again. It's not really criticism grounded in substance, but rather criticism of People Who Aren't Like Us. It's a bigotry of a sort.
To hell with nitwit critics like Spike Lee. Anything that injects new vitality into the inner city is a good thing.
This is why I think it's important to make a distinction between gentrification and revitalization. If the only people left living in a mostly vacant neighborhood are transient, living there from month to month, with no roots, then it's (IMO) revitalization. If it's a stable--if poor--neighborhood with people who have lived there for years, who are forced to leave due to rising rents or taxes, then that's (again, IMO) gentrification.
Schools that fail are this way because the students that go the school make it that way. These children are like this because their parents fail. It has little to do with funding. Kids don't get jumped in the bathroom and beaten half to death because of something the government didn't do. It's what parents didn't do. You can put some kind of guilty liberal spin on it all you want.
In the meantime, make sure your child has a good night's sleep, clean clothes and a decent breakfast before you send them to school. Make sure the homework is done. After all, it's your responsibility.
Schools that fail are this way because the students that go the school make it that way. These children are like this because their parents fail. It has little to do with funding. Kids don't get jumped in the bathroom and beaten half to death because of something the government didn't do. It's what parents didn't do. You can put some kind of guilty liberal spin on it all you want.
In the meantime, make sure your child has a good night's sleep, clean clothes and a decent breakfast before you send them to school. Make sure the homework is done. After all, it's your responsibility.
Homework is not the parents' responsibility, especially in the later grades.
Whoa, whoa, whoa. I've written about 246 posts on this topic already. How on earth did you conclude that I don't really believe that "historical reasons" really matter that much?
"We" -- white people -- didn't simply decide to divest. "We" were chased out. Literally burned out, in many cases (as in Lee's "Do The Right Thing").
Right.
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To get to the point, this is a theory that is tenable only because we have decided to eliminate all other forms of racialized violence from our collective history. When we talk about “the riots,†context is unnecessary: it is understood that we are talking about blacks, in the 1960s (or, maybe, the early 90s in LA), burning and looting the neighborhoods where they lived. As a result, we don’t even have a word for the things that we don’t talk about. We don’t have a word to talk about white mobs burning buildings in Northern cities, or beating or killing innocent people, who wanted to move into their neighborhoods. We don’t really have a word for this
A friend of mine said his grandparents left their city neighborhood (somewhere in SE Queens) to just over the city border because the neighborhood was changing. Hmm… I wonder what changed?
His mother's boyfriend [parents are divorced] used to live in Bensonhurst, which umm, rather succesfully kept minorities out.
However, many neighborhoods that had white flight and became poor and minority had rather high violent crime and other social issues. Even if it were from racism initially, eventually it would have made sense for the non-racists to leave.
Bensonhurst had its own crime issues. Same guy witnessed a mafia killing outside his window.
Location: Formerly NYC by week; ATL by weekend...now Rio bi annually and ATL bi annually
1,522 posts, read 2,243,761 times
Reputation: 1041
Quote:
Originally Posted by jade408
Spike Lee makes some really valid posts, and they'll get lost because people don't like him.
For example, in most cities in the US, "we" decided to divest in our cities and their downtowns, and ignored it for 30, 40, 50 years. And then suddenly the "white people" came in, it was more important to actually provide the promised city services.
Now some people might say it was mostly a class thing. But it really isn't. Let's look at PG County in DC. It is a largely black county with an average income of like $80k. Generally speaking, cities with an average income of $80k have no problems attracting "high-end" retail. Why has PG County been having problems of decades? [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...53101334.html]. $80k is $80k.
He makes a point around of not trying to "change" the neighborhood values because their is stuff you don't like. Obviously there is obvious stuff like you don't want drug dealers on the corner. But complaining about the neighborhood block party or the local band practicing in the garage, the ethnic grocery etc is pretty ridiculous. It was there when you moved in.
Most people want their neighborhood to improve from a Quality of Life perspective. But are not happy when the only way their voices are heard is when the "white people" move in. You might have been looking for improved lighting, or better street quality or trash pickup forever. All the while you paid your city taxes for services without getting reciprocation. Then suddenly, problems you have been complaining about for months or years get fixed in a week..... You start to think, do I not matter?
What about stuff like working on education quality? As a country, we don't care about poor people. We don't want them in our neighborhoods. We don't want to be associated with them. So we find ways to price them out, push them out, and isolate them into places with no economic opportunity. And then suddenly we are surprised there are problems. And then the problem becomes...oh crap, they are located where we want our next development. We need to get rid of these people.
I live in a place that has pockets of gentrification (Oakland). Other parts of town that have been nice forever, or are inching up from affluent to super affluent. And parts that have been completely divested in for half a century that won't be on the gentrification path for another 20-30 years. There is a lot of tension around this.
Everyone, regardless of income, deserves a safe place to live, but our values, policies and actions do not match.
Great post! I also believe that peoples blind hatred or dislike for Spike clouds the message that he is trying to get across...especially as it pertains to Gentrification. I purchased a Co-Op in Harlem and had been renting for some years. I have seen the inching up of non Black-non Latino's Uptown and the difference it made in public service and private sector retail investment. And Harlem is by no means the most gutter place in NYC. And to reiterate your statement above, $80K is $80K...no matter what the person looks like that cashes the check. So to Spikes point, why would the city governments and private retailers wait until a demographic shift to provide services and amenities?
That is THE question and a very valid one at that.....
I dare him to go up to the South Bronx and talk to some of the people there. It's a littered mess that looks rather like the streets he's speaking about in India, yet when I've spoken to students about throwing things on the ground (we've had these conversations very explicitly) the answer is, "well yea, it looks like ****, we live in a place that looks like ****, it's not like this is going to hurt it any more." "Don't you want your home to look nice?" "Well yea, but only the white people in the suburbs have clean homes."
in response to this:
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You don't even have to grow up in a poor area of a big city. This particular passage from this article resonated with me.
I did not grow up in the suburbs. I grew up in Detroit, albeit in a solidly stable, black middle class environment. As a child, I never saw the suburbs as a place of stultifying soullessness or oppressive homogeneity. I guess you have to grow up in them to view them that way. I always viewed the suburbs as the other side of the new Wall, an escape from the messiness of the city. I grew up a half mile from Eight Mile Road, Detroit’s northern boundary, and in the ’70s the differences between my side and the other side were pretty stark. They still are.
In that context, a movement whose premise – whose ticket to membership – is the embrace of all things “urban,” and a corresponding disdain for suburbia, doesn’t make a ton of sense.
Location: Formerly NYC by week; ATL by weekend...now Rio bi annually and ATL bi annually
1,522 posts, read 2,243,761 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by drive carephilly
urban divestment was a series of federal policy decisions and that's really the long and short of it. things didn't turn around until a lot of the most egregious anti-urban stuff was nixed during the Clinton administration.
If you work in municipal planning or know much about city politics you know that where city money and city services go is about politics and campaign cash. First and foremost, neighborhoods in decline see their services decline. If your entire city is in decline then the neighborhoods losing the population the fastest are going to see services cut the fastest. On the other hand, your city councilperson isn't doing his or her job if s/he isn't bringing home an outsized portion of city money.
It also matters a great deal which party is running your state and/or county government and which one is running your city.
I've lived in mostly white neighborhoods, mostly black neighborhoods and diverse neighborhoods in my city
and I've been around long enough to know that nothing changed in any of those neighborhoods until the fortunes of the city changed as a whole . . . the one white neighborhood that I lived in that got better services wasn't getting those services from the city. It was from a BID that local property owners were paying through the nose for.
$80k household income is decent money . . . but it's not that great for DC. PG County is significantly less wealthy than all of the counties around it - including the District itself. Still, I think your 9 year old article is well past its expiration date, even through the mortgage/foreclosure crisis (which wasn't particularly kind to PG) there's been quite a bit of development there since then.
Of course. But the mistake is in assuming that this stuff only happens to black people and is only 'perpetrated' by white people. As if all white people are the same and that the socio-economics of white neighborhoods don't change dramatically just because a neighborhood remains majority white. That the white working class residents of Fishtown and East Passyunk don't groan about 'the yuppies and hipsters' and how "now all of the sudden the city cares."
Not knowing about those things and/or not caring to find out isn't evidence of racism - it's a complete lack of perspective.
Or that entitled black and asian people don't move into a neighborhood and expect everything to change to their standards, don't call the police on the white kids playing music in their basement or the guy selling satay on the corner without a license . . . I know they do. I've met them.
On the other hand, when my drunken block party goes past 11 (when it's legally required to be over by 9) is when fights happen and guns get drawn so when it gets to be 11 I go inside and call the police to come break it up. 12 hours of socializing and boozing is enough. When you know your neighbors you know when stuff is about to go down and I don't need to pull any more bullet frags out of my brickwork.
When people put their garbage in front of my house the day after the pick up because they forgot that trash gets picked up the same day every week for the last 20 years and they don't want to deal with it at their house for another week . . .and I get a ticket for it on top of having to deal with the flies and the smell . . . damn straight I'm reporting them to sanitation. And when you call them out on it you get "I lived on this block for 20 years." When the store across the street puts in an illegal grill and starts a fire that almost takes down half the block . . . damn straight I'm calling L&I every time they change a light bulb.
My neighborhood is about 55% owner occupied. The average annual property tax bill is <$400. People like it that way, people want it to stay that way, then they complain about the crap municipal services. Old ladies complain about "those boys on the corner" but won't call the cops. In a neighborhood of 13,000 people 7 old ladies show up to the monthly police meeting. They complain about that streetlight being out and say "I told my committee man" so they think they don't have to call 311. Wanting things to change and looking for things to change are something completely different from doing something to make them change and different from being socially and/or politically and/or tech savvy enough to make stuff happen. That has nothing to do with being white and everything to do with being under 50 with a decent education.
The problem in my neighborhood and in cities like Camden and neighborhoods like Ft. Greene wasn't a lack of well-intentioned people. It was a brain drain. The people who were best equipped to lead the neighborhood/city abandoned it. That's why you have inept leadership all the way down to the ward level. Spike Lee didn't stick around to lead the renaissance in Ft. Greene - he left for Manhattan. More importantly, people don't vote for the best person to lead them, they vote for the person most like them. You only need to follow national politics for a minute to see how that plays out on a bigger stage - when poorly educated, paranoid white people vote for people just like them.
And here I agree for the most part . . . but these aren't problems cities can solve on their own. Cities don't have the resources to solve the schools problem. They might be able to pull off the housing problem in cities like Philly where houses are still cheap but in a place like NYC or SF that's not really possible . . . besides, housing is regional (especially when you can have neighbors across the street who live in a different municipality) and needs to be solved on a regional level.
Your rebuttal basks in bias it seems. You must admit that the poster whose "9 year old article" you tried to dissect does have valid points; just as Spike did. Spikes delivery was wrong, but that does not negate the message. Case in point: I earn 6 figures and own a place in Harlem. I am a person of color. I know and have met tons of professionals whom are non-white and high earners that live in Uptown Manhattan. Yet the services rendered by the past two Mayoral administrations and also the public sector amenities have skipped over Uptown for the most part. That is until people who could no longer afford the Upper East/West Sides inched up to Harlem. That was a demographic change; not a dramatic shift in income...as there was high income earners in Harlem already. That is the issue with "Gentrification", it is synonymous with the investment of an area due to a shift in demographics. Which I whole-heartedly disagree. And my personal example proves it......
Last edited by SLIMMACKEY; 03-19-2014 at 12:58 PM..
Your rebuttal basks in bias it seems. You must admit that the poster whose "9 year old article" you tried to dissect does have valid points; just as Spike did. Spikes delivery was wrong, but that does not negate the message. Case in point: I earn 6 figures and own a place in Harlem. I am a person of color. I know and have met tons of professionals whom are non-white and high earners that live in Uptown Manhattan. Yet the services rendered by the past two Mayoral administrations and also the public sector amenities have skipped over Uptown for the most part. That is until people who could no longer afford the Upper East/West Sides inched up to Harlem. That was a demographic change; not a dramatic shift in income...as there was high income earners in Harlem already. That is the issue with "Gentrification", it is synonymous with the investment of an area due to a shift in demographics. Which I whole-heartedly disagree. And my personal example proves it......
Your personal example is an anecdote. All it "proves" is your personal observations.
But calling me biased because you disagree with me is a cop-out. If I'm wrong, if I said something that wasn't true, proving it would go a lot further than name calling.
From your narrative here, what I hear is entitlement. "I'm baller so wherever I live the amenities should follow and if they don't then it must be because I'm not white." But that's not how it works. I've worked for towns that have tried to attract retail and grocery for your run-of-the-mill suburban strip mall and the developers and financiers are all too happy to dump reams of spreadsheets on your desk showing you why the numbers don't work . . . especially in the era of online shopping and a real estate bubble that saw retail space particularly hard hit - because demand for it has been shrinking.
If you live in a neighborhood where the median household income is $100k but 12 blocks south the median household income is $160k guess where the new Whole Foods is going? Guess where the new H&M is going? It's not about your 6 figures when all of your neighbors are making mid-5's - it's about relative income.
FWIW - I don't begrudge Spike Lee and I don't have a problem with his delivery - that's just him. What I take issue with is that he has his facts and history completely wrong.
So here are some facts on Harlem, just looking at what's south of about 134th St. in 2000 you had 1,996 (2.8%) non-hispanic whites and 49,968 (69.7%) non-hispanic blacks. Household incomes for whites averaged $26k (1999 $) and for blacks it was $19k. The number of households bringing in more than $75k in 2000 was 2,538.
In 2010 you have 9,254 (12.1%) non-hispanic whites and 42,409 (55.4%) non-hispanic blacks. Per the 2012 Census ACS the median income for white households is $72k and for black households it's $31k. The number of households bringing in more than $75k in 2012 was 7,902. The number of households bringing in more than $150k is 2,513.
It's clear that the white population increased dramatically over that decade but it's also clear that the white people moving in were earning far more money than the people (both white and black) who were already living there . . . but then it's also clear that there's a demographic shift going on amongst the black people in Harlem as well with a much higher number of middle class and wealthy black households than what existed just 10 to 15 years ago.
So yes, the new retail in Harlem is every bit about the green - a 300% increase in the number of +middle class households - not about black or white.
Last edited by drive carephilly; 03-20-2014 at 07:56 AM..
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I also believe that peoples blind hatred or dislike for Spike clouds the message that he is trying to get across...especially as it pertains to Gentrification. I purchased a Co-Op in Harlem and had been renting for some years. I have seen the inching up of non Black-non Latino's Uptown and the difference it made in public service and private sector retail investment. And Harlem is by no means the most gutter place in NYC. And to reiterate your statement above, $80K is $80K...no matter what the person looks like that cashes the check. So to Spikes point, why would the city governments and private retailers wait until a demographic shift to provide services and amenities?
