By Walter L. Hilliard III –
You can always bet on the plantation master’s “Willie Lynch mentality” rearing its ugly head whenever Black people gain fame and fortune and the media begins to pit one Black person against another, similar to what they did stirring up the East Coast-West Coast rivalries of the 1990s that led to the deaths of Biggie and Tupac.
Continuing the aforementioned Black-on-Black divisiveness tradition, “She Hate Me,” a Spike Lee Joint, actor Anthony Mackie enthusiastically dissed and back-stabbed Spike Lee, who had gone into a rant about gentrification, responding to an audience member while doing a Black History Month presentation at the Pratt Institute. Lee’s response was an appropriate emotional, expletive-filled rant that started with him saying, “Let me just kill you right now.”
He then continued on:
“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.”
[Audience member: And I don’t dispute that … ]
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. And even more. Let me kill you some more.”
[Audience member: Can I talk about something?]
“Not yet.
“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 Park for 40 years and now they can’t do it anymore because the new inhabitants said the drums are loud. My father’s a great jazz musician. He bought a house in nineteen-motherfuckin’-sixty-eight, and the motherfuckin’ people moved in last year and called the cops on my father. He’s not — he doesn’t even play electric bass! It’s acoustic! We bought the motherfuckin’ house in nineteen-sixty-motherfuckin’-eight and now you call the cops? In 2013? Get the fuck outta here!
“Nah. You can’t do that. You can’t just come in the neighborhood and start bogarting and say, like you’re motherfuckin’ Columbus and kill off the Native Americans. Or what they do in Brazil, what they did to the indigenous people. You have to come with respect. There’s a code. There’s people.
“You can’t just — here’s another thing: When Michael Jackson died they wanted to have a party for him in motherfuckin’ Fort Greene Park and all of a sudden the white people in Fort Greene said, “Wait a minute! We can’t have black people having a party for Michael Jackson to celebrate his life. Who’s coming to the neighborhood? They’re gonna leave lots of garbage.” Garbage? Have you seen Fort Greene Park in the morning? It’s like the motherfuckin’ Westminster Dog Show. There’s 20,000 dogs running around. Whoa. So we had to move it to Prospect Park!
“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!
“And then! [to audience member] Whoa whoa whoa. And then! So you’re talking about the people’s property change? But what about the people who are renting? They can’t afford it anymore! You can’t afford it. People want live in Fort Greene. People wanna live in Clinton Hill. The Lower East Side, they move to Williamsburg, they can’t even afford fuckin’, motherfuckin’ Williamsburg now because of motherfuckin’ hipsters. What do they call Bushwick now? What’s the word? [Audience: East Williamsburg]
“That’s another thing: Motherfuckin’… These real estate motherfuckers are changing names! Stuyvestant Heights? 110th to 125th, there’s another name for Harlem. What is it? What? What is it? No, no, not Morningside Heights. There’s a new one. [Audience: SpaHa] What the fuck is that? How you changin’ names?
“And we had the crystal ball, motherfuckin’ Do the Right Thing with John Savage’s character, when he rolled his bike over Buggin’ Out’s sneaker. I wrote that script in 1988. He was the first one. How you walking around Brooklyn with a Larry Bird jersey on? You can’t do that. Not in Bed Stuy.
“So, look, you might say, “Well, there’s more police protection. The public schools are better.” Why are the public schools better? First of all, everybody can’t afford — even if you have money it’s still hard to get your kids into private school. Everybody wants to go to Saint Ann’s — you can’t get into Saint Ann’s. You can’t get into Friends. What’s the other one? In Brooklyn Heights. Packer. If you can’t get your child into there … It’s crazy. There’s a business now where people — you pay — people don’t even have kids yet and they’re taking this course about how to get your kid into private school. I’m not lying! If you can’t get your kid into private school and you’re white here, what’s the next best thing? All right, now we’re gonna go to public schools.
“So, why did it take this great influx of white people to get the schools better? Why’s there more police protection in Bed Stuy and Harlem now? Why’s the garbage getting picked up more regularly? We been here!
“All right, go ahead. Let’s see you come back to that.”
So what does Mackie have to say about all this? “Spike don’t live in Brooklyn . . . why did he leave Brooklyn? . . . I don’t have a problem with gentrification,” as if Lee doesn’t have a right to rant about gentrification. Mackie rambled on for quite sometime about his love for gentrification and acted like Lee must have not chosen him for a couple of othe roles he really wanted – and it was now payback time.
But tell me this, how can a Black man not have a problem with gentrification? This a perfect example of why Black people don’t get a long, an example of a lack of Black Social Consciousness. One Black person mistreated anywhere is another Black person mistreated somewhere else because it could be you or me, anytime, anyplace.
During his rant, Lee made it clear that his father still lives in Brooklyn, and he of course grew up there. It’s also a shame that as a result of his rant, someone desecrated the door and broke the window of an old White lady – apparently believing it was Lee’s or his father’s house – who also wasn’t happy about what Lee said (surprise? I don’t think so). The vandals also painted “Do the Right Thing” on a street-level stoop by the house. But what’s really funny is Lee’s half-brother, Arnold, lives in the house, I suppose with their dad? Arnold complained that Lee can say what he wants but he ought to “stop talking about the house,” so it won’t be vandalized.
Well, maybe Arnold should move his lazy behind out of the house that I’m sure Lee is paying for and get his own house, then he won’t have to worry about what his brother says about his father living there.
I’m also sure the vandals were White and/or they paid some Black kids to vandalize the property. And if the vandals were White, they were probably the White “hipsters” Lee and others accuse of gentrifying their neighborhood, and I bet they got high on ecstasy, slid on their penny loafers, painted their faces Black, and then went and vandalized the houses – after they stopped and sipped cappuccinos to build up their super powers, but of course. I’m sure the hipster vandals were also giggling like little girls as they ran back around the corner to their brownstone, tripped while running up the steps, got inside and slapped high-fives with their girlfriends, Buffy and Becky.
Yeah, that’s it.
Lee’s rant was really about the fact that the Whites who’ve moved in don’t respect the neighborhood and have dogs running around everywhere in the park, and I’m sure crapping on the ground. However, Blacks in the neighborhood couldn’t even have a concert at the same park because the Whites complained that they didn’t know who or how many people (uhhh, they meant Black people) would descend on “their” neighborhood. Spike also complained that when the neighborhood was predominantly Black, the trash services and police weren’t responsive. But now, since Whites live there, everything’s great.
So as Mr. Mackie “The Ungrateful” kept yapping, it turns out he has two restaurants in Brooklyn, but I’m not sure if Whites frequent them or not (I suspect they do, and they love him because he’s a famous Black person, and not like “other” Black people)? The point is that whenever you put Black people in front of a camera and/or microphone and White people are watching they always go into Uncle Tom mode, afraid to speak truth to power or criticize Whites for anything.
I just hope his career is going well and he never needs Lee to hire him for another movie. I haven’t seen him in much of anything. In fact, I can’t name anything he’s done other than “She Hate Me.”
A UNIVERSAL SOUL POWER MUZAK BREAK
