The groundwork for the economic and population boom Oakland is now experiencing was laid after the 1998 election of now-Gov. Jerry Brown as the city’s mayor.

What began as a trickle with the construction of the Oakland City Center on 12th Street, the city’s first privately funded downtown office building in 30 years, is now a flood of investment pouring into Oakland.

These days it’s hard to keep pace with the width and breadth of Oakland’s newfound popularity among investors, developers and new residents.

It’s official. Oakland has been rediscovered. It’s a bona fide destination for displaced San Francisco residents and new arrivals from outside the region.

The only question that remains is how Oakland’s government and people will handle its 21st century growing pains. Will the city be welcoming, gracious and magnanimous or hostile, guarded and, dare I say it, conservative in its response to the changing times?

Because for a city that sees itself as a culturally diverse, racially tolerant place with room for people of all ilks and from all walks of life, few if any of those attributes are reflected in the words and actions of some citizens on this issue.

A small sampling of those attitudes was on display at last week’s Oakland City Council meeting, called to lay the foundation for a housing equity road map, a long-term plan to provide tenant protections and affordable and low-income housing.

One speaker told the council that some of the people moving to the city “don’t look like you.”

And it should be noted that this fella described himself as an employee of the Ella Baker Center, a human rights organization.

An encounter between a white Lake Merritt resident and a group of black drummers and dancers last week devolved into race-motivated name-calling. He was called a “gentrifier” and told to “go back to Boston!” after he asked them to stop playing at night.

The same group then accused the Oakland Police Department of heavy-handedness for ordering them to shut it down.

Openness toward visitors and new arrivals has been replaced with open hostility, and xenophobia is sweeping through some sectors of the city.

I don’t understand how some people in Oakland’s activist community can reconcile defense of the Black Lives Matter movement, tenant rights and police reform while hurling racial insults and displaying the same kind of exclusionary attitudes that have defined wealthy, white enclaves for decades.

Narrow-minded, class-based bias is ugly to see from any part of the economic spectrum.

To borrow a phrase from the younger crowd, activists in Oakland are acting like “haters,” and it’s embarrassing.

Change is hard, and Oakland is in the throes of a complete makeover, one that will eventually change city neighborhoods, its commercial and retail base, and ultimately the makeup of the city itself.

Oakland isn’t the only Bay Area city with rising housing prices and a critical shortage of housing for middle-class and low-income residents. It isn’t the only city whose residents are flat-out afraid they will be forced to move. It is an economic issue facing residents in cities all over the area.

The question that remains is the one that always arises in Oakland, a city well known for not doing anything the easy way.

Is the city going to be able to handle growth and gentrification in stride and adequately address it through public policy goals, or is it going to turn into another slugfest played out on city streets?