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posted by LaminatorX on Thursday February 27 2014, @03:30AM   Printer-friendly
from the Xenophobia:-the-Universal-Language dept.

fx_68 writes:

"A sharp rise in the foreign population has ratcheted up racial tensions. Does Singapore have a problem with xenophobia? It seems that barely a month goes by these days without news reports highlighting friction between Singaporeans and foreign workers in the tiny multi-ethnic city-state."

 
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  • (Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday February 27 2014, @06:59PM

    by frojack (1554) on Thursday February 27 2014, @06:59PM (#8083) Journal

    That may be how you interpret it, but when an angry black man uses the term
    he does not mean what you think he means. He means "white gentrification" and he's being
    as polite as he can stomach when he leaves of the "white" part.

    http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2014 /02/27/spike-lee-gentrification-expletives/5859995 / [usatoday.com]
    http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Fear-white-i nflux-will-erase-West-Oakland-history-4874291.php [sfgate.com]

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  • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday February 27 2014, @09:09PM

    by Grishnakh (2831) on Thursday February 27 2014, @09:09PM (#8119)

    Um, I think it's somewhat obvious, given the demographics in this country, that gentrification is frequently going to result in poor minorities getting pushed out and richer (usually) white people moving in.

    Spike Lee's rant basically echoes the complaints natives have when immigrants move in in large numbers. "They don't respect the culture" (which is true), they're changing things too much, etc. In the case of gentrification, it's even worse, because the "natives" end up getting pushed out because they can't afford the jacked-up rents that result from higher demand.

    Personally, I don't have an answer for it. This is what happens when a bunch of people move into a new area and start asserting themselves around the natives. The natives' culture is cast aside or ignored, things are changed, since the newcomers have voting rights, they change the local government and laws more to their liking, etc. The only way to stop it is to not allow new people to move into a certain area, or to place limits on how many new people can move in, or limits on what kind of people can move in. But when you do these things, you're usually labeled a "xenophobe", "racist", etc. So is Spike Lee a racist xenophobe? Or are his concerns for the preservation of the local (black) culture valid? Usually, this argument is about (mostly white) culture vs. immigrants (either Latin American, in the US, or Muslim, in Europe), and the natives are always called "xenophobic" and "racist". So are the black people complaining about gentrification also xenophobic racists?