Anthony Mackie Accuses Spike Lee Of “Reverse Gentrification” After Moving On Up To The Upper East Side!
Spike Lee doesn’t even live in Brooklyn anymore!
Anthony Mackie Accuses Spike Lee Of Reverse Gentrification
Via NewsOne reports:
Actor Anthony Mackie questioned the sincerity of renowned
filmmaker Spike Lee‘s concern over gentrification in Brooklyn, pointing
out that the Red Hook director no longer even lives in the borough.
In a sit-down interview with The Grio’s Chris Witherspoon, Mackie
said that Lee’s escape to Manhattan’s Upper East Side is a form of
“reverse gentrification” and ”as your tax brackets changes, I guess
your zip code changes.”
Mackie then goes on to suggest that he’s more Brooklyn than Lee:
“I live in Brooklyn. My address is in Brooklyn. I have two
restaurants in Brooklyn. I don’t have a problem with gentrification. The
people [who] want to live in Brooklyn, move to Brooklyn.”
Mackie starred in two Spike Lee joints early in his career, She Hate Me (2004), and Sucker Free City.
Spike Lee, a long-time, outspoken critic of the whitewashing of his beloved Brooklyn, went on an epic, expletive-laden rant.
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 motherf*ckin’ 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.
For Spike Lee to be guilty of reverse Gentrification would require
him to somehow force the white people in Manhattan to move out, police
allow drugs and crime to take over, drop the property value, then black
people purchase said properties, move in, police drives the crime out,
and the property value would go back up. That would be REVERSE
Gentrification.
Do you think Mackie has a point?
Edited by Alias_Avi - Mar 03 2014 at 1:07pm