 Speaking Tuesday night in Brooklyn, blocks away from his company headquarters and his father’s apartment, Spike Lee went off on how the neighborhood has changed. The filmmaker, wearing a Knicks beanie, orange socks, blue Nikes, and “Defend Brooklyn” hoodie, was at Pratt Institute for a lecture in honor of African American History Month, surrounded by locals, when he was nearly asked a question about “the other side” of the gentrification debate. “Let me just kill you right now,” Lee interrupted, “because there was some bullshit article in the New York Times saying ‘the good of gentrification.’” (See: “Argument Over a Brownstone Neighborhood” and New York’s “Is Gentrification All Bad?”) 
 
 
 
 “I don’t believe that,” said Lee. But it's not the same neighborhood he grew up in, and his feelings about newcomers now inhabiting once-blighted parts of America's most-populous city like Fort Greene slapped many people in the face after the famed director went into an expletive-laced rant during an African-American History Month lecture on Tuesday.  Story highlights Filmmaker Spike Lee rips into questioner during speech 
 
 Lee riled about New York gentrification and hipsters 
 
 Urban policy professor asks: Does Lee want New York to be Detroit? Smith told Lee on Tuesday that he didn't dispute his point that services in the neighborhoods had changed after the new people -- most of whom are white -- moved in. "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 … The police weren’t around. P.S. 20 was not good. 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." The new neighbors complain 
 
 "Let me just kill you right now," Lee, the "Do The Right Thing" director, told D.K. We been here," he said to applause from the audience. Then comes the motherfuckin’ Christopher Columbus Syndrome. You can’t discover this! 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. Lee said his father, "a great jazz musician," bought a brownstone 46 years ago. 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?" As he says, "Get the fuck outta here." You can’t do that. He rather dramatically announces 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." "My problem is that when you move into a neighborhood, have some respect for the history, for the culture," Lee said. Lee lamented that Fort Greene Park in the morning resembled the Westminster Dog Show with hip dogs and that real estate brokers and "mother******* hipsters" conspired to change the names of neighborhoods like the South Bronx to SoBro or Bushwick to East Williamsburg. "Whoa, whoa, whoa..." said Lee. They also require more than just being pissed off. But though Lee is very much a mixed bag on the subject of gentrification, where he is correct is in his assertion that whoever you are, "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?" If we lose half of the African-American population, in my neighborhood, Fort Greene, and the schools become better, what happened to half the people that left?" Today, Bushwick, which was an area that people were afraid to go to, now has some of the best restaurants in the city." Smith couldn't get a word in during Lee's speech Tuesday night. We're still New Yorkers." There is another side, resident says 
 
 But Smith said there was a definite lack of balance in Lee's rant. And some things are bigger than Bed Stuy or Fort Greene or being black in Brooklyn. And though Lee can rightly question why it takes an influx of newcomers for the public schools to improve and the police presence to increase and the garbage to get picked up, there's also no denying that most of us – of all races and classes -- prefer to live in places with better public schools and lower crime and regular garbage pickup. He added: "Brooklyn has become more attractive to more people. "I just find it interesting you have to have an influx of white New Yorkers to move into these neighborhoods for the services to go up, for the schools to be better," he told CNN. "Why's there more police protection in Bed Stuy and Harlem now? Why’s the garbage getting picked up more regularly?
– A Spike Lee tirade earlier this week on gentrification in New York City's black neighborhoods continues to resonate, with Lee going on CNN last night to explain his expletive-laden rant. He's fine with new people moving into neighborhoods that were once mostly black and mostly poor, he says. "My problem is that when you move into a neighborhood, have some respect for the history, for the culture." This all started Tuesday night at an African-American History Month event in his native Brooklyn. As New York recounts, Lee vented about the "Christopher Columbus syndrome" of rich white people moving in. "You can't discover this! We been here. You can't just come and bogart." He also told the story of his jazz-musician dad who bought the family home in 1968, "and the mother******* 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 mother******* house in nineteen-sixty-mother*******-eight and now you call the cops? In 2013? Get the f--- outta here!" And that's just a small sample. In response, self-described white "gentrifier" Joshua Greenman called Lee's remarks racially offensive in the Daily News. "The phenomenon he decries is mostly innocuous, inevitable and, in a diverse and economically dynamic city, healthy," writes Greenman. At Salon, Mary Elizabeth Williams thinks Lee's argument is complicated by his own vast wealth, and she also thinks he's simplifying a complicated issue. But, she adds, he's spot-on "in his assertion that whoever you are, 'You can’t just come in when people have a culture that’s been laid down for generations, and you come in and now s--- gotta change because you’re here?'" (Click the New York link to hear the full audio of Lee's remarks.)