Director Spike Lee, a backer of Barack Obama, called Harlem leaders "fuddy duddies" for supporting Hillary Clinton.
"We're not having it no more!" he said, in comments reported by NPR.
The
legend-in-his-own-time filmmaker - and native Brooklynite - said that
"these old fuddy duddies" may have endorsed Clinton, but Harlem is no
longer the capital of black power that it once was.
Brooklyn, which has more blacks than any other place in New York - or the country, for that matter - is increasingly important, he said.
Among the Harlem leaders pushing Hillary Clinton are Congressman Charlie Rangel and former Mayor David Dinkins, though one of the biggest Obama boosters and campaign leaders has been Harlemite State Sen. Bill Perkins.
Apparently accepting, in theory at least, Lee's notion that Brooklyn is replacing Harlem as the Black capital, NPR pointed out that Central Brooklyn is made up of hundreds of thousands of Black people from the Caribbean and Africa; and they are among the strongest of Obama's supporters.
NPR
quotes Brookklyn State Asseblyman Hakeemn Jeffries, who says Obama
represents a new way of being and thinking that reflects what is
happening in Brooklyn.
"When
I first ran for office, some people suggested that someone with the
name 'Hakeem Jeffries' could never get elected and when I saw someone
with the name 'Barack Obama' get elected to the U.S. Senate, it
certainly inspired me."
[Click here to hear Lee dicussing race and politics with NPR.]
