time | Surely what bothers Lee is not that Fort Greene is now a cushy
neighborhood. He just wishes it had gotten that way with all black
faces. He’s yearning for the multi-class black communities that people
of his generation regret the dissolutions of after the end of
institutionalized segregation (when black people like my parents, for
example, moved out to mixed or white neighborhoods).
But let’s face it: The reason there were black communities like that
was because of segregation. If there still were black communities like
that, no matter how beautiful they would look when shot lovingly in
films like Lee’s, it would signify racial barriers. The neighborhood
would be prime fodder for people like Lee to intone with smug
indignation about how non-post-racial America is. “You barely see a
white face on the streets. What’s that about? What are they afraid of?”
