“@SpikeLee doesn’t ‘rant’, he tells the truth about white folks gentrifying Afrikan neighborhoods” – @rwinbush

“Spike doesn’t ‘rant’, he tells the truth about white folks gentrifying Afrikan neighborhoods all over the nation because crime, drugs and long commutes plague the ‘burbs. ” – Dr. Ray Winbush, Director of The Warrior Institute (TWI) at Morgan State University

Here’s the thing: I grew up here in Fort Greene. I grew up here in New York. It’s changed. 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? The garbage wasn’t picked up every motherfuckin’ day when I was living in 165 Washington Park. P.S. 20 was not good. P.S. 11. Rothschild 294. The police weren’t around. When you see white mothers pushing their babies in strollers, three o’clock in the morning on 125th Street, that must tell you something.

Have you seen Fort Greene Park in the morning. It’s like the motherf—ing Westminster Dog Show. There’s 20,000 dogs running around.

…I mean, they just move in the neighborhood. You just can’t come in the neighborhood. I’m for democracy and letting everybody live but you gotta have some respect. 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? Get the fuck outta here. Can’t do that!

 

Head to New York Magazine for the complete transcript. 

      

Tags: african, African American, Afrikkan, Afro, afro-latina, afro-latino, black, black history month, black history., black neighborhoods, brooklyn, Conscious, gentrification, new york, nyc, pratt institute, spike lee