What is “The Right Thing?”
Throughout time racist America has used “cultural symbols, tendencies, values, beliefs, patterned ways of thinking and feeling” to deal with the prejudices toward African Americans. Spike Lee’s film, “Do The Right Thing” makes obvious the reality and consequences of the intolerance different ethnic groups experience while still cohabitating within one borough of a city. The film brilliantly illustrates the struggles of each character to identify with music, clothing, and community institutions such as the Italian owned pizzeria, the Korean food market and the African American radio station, and also through language and cultural slang.
Historically, minorities have been discriminated against in American society in every generation. Each new immigrant group can become a target for the established majority to pass judgment on; however, African Americans have often maintained the brunt of these prejudices. African Americans have a legacy of slavery in their forced migration to America, and this makes them different from other groups. The oppression African Americans endured has resulted in an African diaspora where people can identify with each other but not with a locality, as African Americans, with rare exceptions, do not know where they came from in Africa. Spike Lee’s film, “Do The Right Thing” graphically illustrates the diasporic struggle of African Americans, their need for cultural identity, and compares two differing approaches, that of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, to solving the problem of African American cultural, and political, identity.
The cultural psychology of African Americans has generated a multidimensional cultural structure in America. This structure incorporates the progression of behaviors, feelings and thoughts of African Americans as they have experienced racism in the United States. TRIOS is a phrase representing the “cultural foundation of an African legacy for African-Americans and provides a means of coping with slavery and various forms of racism over time” (Jones, TRIOS: A Psychological Theory of the African Legacy in American Culture,” 2003). TRIOS is an acronym for Time, Rhythm, Improvisation, Orality, and Spirituality. Evidence for the components of TRIOS can be seen through many African and Caribbean cultural elements. These elements include oral traditions within a familial context, clothing, music, the art of improvisation and a unique Afro-centric perception of time. Similar to their ancestors, African Americans have a skill in story telling, a need for attire representing their foundation and roots in Africa, and the talents to craft the musical genres of jazz, hip hop and rap. These are all elements of culture that have been produced predominantly by African Americans.
Typically, African Americans do not view time as linear. They “live in the moment” seeing time as a circular evolution, using seasonal annual religious beliefs to support a lifestyle, which comes out of this sense of time. The cultural interaction for African Americans within this circular time sense provides an organizing framework for their cultural psychology and has helped developed their identity in America (Jones, “Toward a cultural psychology of African Americans” 2002).
Examples of African Americans being proud of their synthetic culture can be seen through the film industry. Two African American characters in “Do The Right Thing,” Buggin’ Out and Radio Raheem wear African emblems around their necks identifying Africa in the continents colors; red, yellow and green. Buggin’ Out’s shoe laces are also woven with red, yellow and green threading. These are examples of symbolism for the characters to further develop a cultural identity amongst each other. The cultural psychology of African Americans is to unite as one group using the tools they encompass from their African roots without actually having experienced the continent of Africa and witnessing the various African cultures firsthand. Even something as simple as the colors of a pair of shoelaces, as represented in the Spike Lee film, can show how African Americans have established their own culture in America emulating African influences.
African Americans can be characterized by their diversity in experiences around other cultural belief and symbols. An undersized example of this is how Sal’s famous pizzeria has been in the neighborhood for many years. Sal makes comments to his eldest son on how he has witnessed kids grow up in the neighborhood and how they have grown up eating his pizza. The Italian culture represented in the pizzeria could be the most amount of Italian culture some of the African American customers will ever be exposed to allowing them the opportunity to absorb the symbols established by the pizzeria owner and his sons. There is evidence the Africans who came to America had a more coherent cultural system than many believe (Jones, “Toward a cultural psychology of African Americans” 2002). Dr. Festus Eribo, a professor for the School of Communication at East Carolina University commented on this phenomenon by stating: “It doesn’t matter which country they come from because they are all black Africans.” This synthetic commonality had led to a durable cultural identity amongst African Americans due to the historical subjugation the race as a whole has endured. They have had to master the white man’s culture, and religion, but they have maintained their own roots and connections to their African cultural identity.
The diasporic struggles African Americans have suffered and the need for solid unity are reflected in the film. An African American community is represented within the cauldron of racism and economic deprivation in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn. The summer’s heat further illuminates the highly contentious and “heated” discussion by African Americans among themselves and of the suffering African Americans have tolerated as a result of racism in American society.
Often times, when African Americans visit Africa they are idolized by African citizens because they believe the African Americans come from a more “sophisticated, knowledgeable country.” Professor Eribo stated “Black Americans are worshiped” in Africa. The obvious divide in most African countries involves the economic status of the individual, not the color of their skin, as opposed to the United States where many people are prejudiced against those who do not appear Caucasian. It is much easier to identify someone as being a minority in the United States because of their skin color rather because they hold a lower economic status.
Americans strive for identity and individualism but by doing so they often ignore the inequalities between race and economic status. Diversity fails to offer true social justice when there are inherent and structural inequalities between ethnicities. Categorizing a group of people by pigeonholing them as lower in the socioeconomic classifications benefits those who embrace a multiculturalism, which does not hinder their own status in society (Michaels, 2006). The store owners in “Do the Right Thing,” for example, are both Korean and Italian in a predominantly African American community. “What makes the notion of economic diversity look ridiculous is also what makes it look so attractive; it reassures us that the problem of poverty is like the problem of race and that the way to solve it is by appreciating rather than minimizing our differences” (Michaels, 2006).
The divide between the socioeconomic echelons are illustrated in the film, by one group who prospers and lives off another. The Italian family trio comprised of Sal, Pino, and Vito drive up to Sal’s Famous Pizzeria in the beginning of the film. In another scene a Caucasian man drives through the community in an apparent “antique” vehicle. Throughout the film the only characters who drive are Caucasian. The African American characters walk and run to wherever they need to go during the film.
An African American character who is further oppressed in the film, and seems to always be under pressure, social and economic, is Mookie, the main African American character who in many ways ties the film together. Pino, the eldest Italian son derides Mookie, accuses him of not working hard and tells his younger brother, Vito, not to trust Mookie because he’s not like them. Pino tells Vito to “remember who you are” when he notices Vito becoming too friendly with Mookie. Despite the obvious discords between Mookie and the Italian family trio there is a sense of intimate domesticity in the pizzeria. Although there are scenes with “Pino’s racist outbursts or Sal’s insinuations….Mookie nevertheless always challenges and always argues with them, always asserting himself as an equal partner in a dialogue. This is the foundation of his rapport with Sal, and of their mutual in-your-face candor, a candor that extends to Vito, even Pino” (Bartley 2006).
“Do The Right Thing” exhibits cultural identity not only through color, rhythm, music and portrayals of economic disparity, but also through the language of the Italian, Korean and Hispanic characters in the film. Their uses of American slang and the languages of their culture reflect their origin. The diction used by the African American characters is more nonchalant but equally valued within their cultural identity (Lee, 2007). The Italian characters use Italian lingo whenever they are irritated or are insulting another character. The Korean storeowner also speaks Korean to his wife when he becomes upset with a customer. The insulting speech sputtered during the montage of racial slurs and the intense scenes demonstrate how severe “verbal” racism can lead to violence. Pino shouts to the viewers, “You gold-teeth-gold-chain-wearin’, fried-chicken-and-biscuit-eatin’, monkey, ape, baboon, big thigh, fast-runnin’, three-hundred-sixty-degree-basketball-dunkin’ spade Moulan Yan.” These stereotypes he addresses are not all negative but they are labels African Americans have been battling to erase because they can be perceived as offensive (Perry, 2007). The medley of racial slurs is the “point of maximum racial tension” (Bartley, 2006) in a community where dialogue is the core foundation of social life.
“Do the Right Thing” exemplifies the challenges to conform to a culture while maintaining a sense of individualism in America. At the end of the film, Mookie provokes the riot outside of Sal’s Famous Pizzeria by throwing a trash can through the window. He had a calm sense of decorum throughout the film, which boiled down to that one distinctive moment of deciding what the “right thing” to do is at that moment. Should he conform to his fellow African Americans and participate in the violent backlash? Or should he step over the invisible line of race and protect the facility providing him with financial means to survive another day in Brooklyn? This conundrum goes hand in hand with the contradictory philosophies of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X cited at the end of the film.
Martin Luther King Jr. encouraged dialogue and nonviolent alternatives to physical altercations. His empathetic and virtuous nature is seen in Mookie. Mookie becomes a peace keeper when Sal kicks Buggin’ Out, a self-righteous black man, from his pizzeria for causing a scene about having “brothas up on the wall.” Mookie encourages Buggin’ Out to walk away from the situation in order to “squash” the quarrel. Mookie is also the common link between most of the ethnic groups in the Brooklyn community of the film. He has a baby with a Hispanic woman, works for the Italian pizzeria and is racially a part of the African American group. Although there are a multitude of racist remarks and themes in the film, some characters desire a unity between the groups who share the same street in Brooklyn. Sal and Vito normally attempt to ignore the blatant racial atmosphere by treating all customers in the same humanitarian manner, giving leniency to Da Mayor, who has little monetary funds, and being fond of Mookie’s sister, Jade. “Normally” is said in reference to Sal because Sal’s racist impatience come out in the confrontation with Buggin’ Out. So for much of the film, between a number of the main characters, Martin Luther King’s philosophy prevails.
Malcolm X was the alternative to Martin Luther King Jr. promoting violence as a method to defend oneself when necessary. The Black Panther party was also founded on similar beliefs in the 1960’s. Buggin’ Out’s entourage references the Black Panthers during a dispute between the group of African-Americans and the Caucasian bicyclist. One of Buggin’ Out’s friends says, “A black panther would whoop his ass.” That statement was followed by Buggin’ Out saying, “You’re lucky the Black man has a loving heart…If I wasn’t a righteous Black man you’d be in serious trouble, serious!” The attitudes of Malcolm X and the Black Panthers influence these characters to be aggressive towards the Caucasian bicyclist.
In the beginning of the film, Smiley, a mentally handicapped African-American man who is hawking photographs of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, holds up a photo of the two men saying they are dead and proclaiming “We still have to fight against hate.” His introduction leads the way for thematic portrayals of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X’s philosophies interlaced throughout the film.
At the end of the film two quotes scroll up on the screen. One was by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, who said:
“Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral. It is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction of all. The law of an eye for an eye leaves everyone blind. It is immoral because it seeks to annihilate the opponent rather than win his understanding; it seeks to annihilate rather than to convert. Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love. It destroys community and makes brotherhood impossible. It leaves society in monologue rather than dialogue. Violence ends by defeating itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers.”
The second quote by Malcolm X read:
“I think there are plenty of good people in America, but there are also plenty of bad people in America and the bad ones are the ones who seem to have all the power and be in these positions to block things that you and 1 need. Because this is the situation, you and I have to preserve the right to do what is necessary to bring an end to that situation, and it doesn’t mean that I advocate violence, but at the same time I am not against using violence in self-defense. I don’t even call it violence when it’s self-defense. I call it intelligence.”
These quotes are polar opposites; however, there is no way of determining which is ”right” because the right thing to do is decided by the individual making the decision. Subsequently following the death of Radio Raheem chaos erupts in the street of the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn. Bartley argues, “The nonwhite community, now spontaneously conscious of its need to defend itself, redefines itself according to a communal recollection of its historical relationship to white authority, as represented by the tableau of neighborhood men who publicly and ritualistically reiterate, each in turn, a litany of police crimes: ‘Murder, they did it again, just like Michael Stewart; Murder, Eleanor Bumpers, Murder!’ Whether or not Mookie’s actions in initiating the riot against Sal’s Famous Pizzeria were the right thing to do, his actions symbolize the distrust between the white and nonwhite communities. The racial differences in this community embody the melting pot America has become — which in this case becomes a “boiling” pot. The film leaves the question “what is the right thing?” deliberately unanswered because it is the growth of the community and the cultures the characters belong to—and the conflict and complementarity between these two approaches– that perseveres in the daily ongoing, social reality of the community as Sal’s Famous Pizzeria goes up in flames.
References:
- Bartley, William. “Mookie as “Wavering Hero”: Do the Right Thing and the American Historical Romance” Literature Film Quarterly, 2006 .
- Cooper, Brenda. Utah State University. ‘‘The White-Black Fault Line’’: Relevancy of Race and Racism in Spectators’ Experiences of Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing.”
- Eribo, Festus, PhD. Mass Communication. Professor for the School of Communication at East Carolina University. Interview.
- Jones, J. M. (2002). “Toward a cultural psychology of African Americans.” Online Readings in Psychology and Culture (Unit 3, Chapter 1), (http://www.wwu.edu/~culture), Center for Cross-Cultural Research, Western Washington University, Bellingham, Washington USA
- Jones, James M. “TRIOS: A Psychological Theory of the African Legacy in American Culture.” Journal of Social Issues, Volume 59, Number 1, April 2003 , pp. 217-242(26)
- Lee, Felicia R. The New York Times. “Exploring the ‘Imprint’ of black Americans.” April 16, 2007.
- Michaels, Walter Benn. The Trouble with Diversity: How we Learned to Love the Identity and Ignore the Inequality. Metropolitan Books; Henry Holt and Company, LLC. 2006.
- Perry, Imani. The Georgetown Journal of Gender and the Law. “Let me Holler at You: African-American Culture,
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i thought it was great and good and very strong