Spike Lee is just playing for the cameras. His parents paid $40,000 for their townhouse in Fort Greene back in 1968. My parents paid $20,000 for our home in Boston in 1970. We were solid middle class and Brooklyn had far cheaper neighborhoods with comparable prices to Boston. Fort Greene next to Brooklyn Heights as always been a fairly good neighborhood even during the 1970’s.
You touched on something there.
I think blacks who were born into a middle/upper class upbringing feel guilt about that, and they have a strong need to show the world that they are “down with the shtruggle”.