
          Do the Right Thing.  Do the Right Thing.  Spike
Lee.
          By Suitts, SteveSteve Suitts
          Vol. 11, No. 4, 1989, p. 26
          
          A scene late in Spike Lee's movie, Do Thc Right
Thing, depicts white firefighters trying to hose down the
blazes at Sal's Pizzeria, torched earlier in a small riot in the
Bedford-Stuyvesant part of Brooklyn. While the firefighters are trying
to save the building and the neighborhood, its black residents are
throwing things at and fighting with the white firemen.
          When I came out of the movie house last Saturday afternoon, I
thought about another firefighter I had seen on television earlier, a
member of the Birmingham Fire Department who was one of the white
plaintiffs in the recent U. S. Supreme_Court case that now gives white
firefighters a belated opportunity to challenge that city's
affirmative_action plan. When asked why he opposed the plan to remedy
past discrimination against blacks, the white firefighter said, "I
feel I'm paying the price for something I had nothing to do
with."
          It's a line that Spike Lee should have used, and one his film
acknowledges as fundamental in the attitude of many whites on issues
of race_relations today. A couple of whites in the film are clear
bigots, but the only white who really suffers is Sal, the Italian
owner of the pizza parlour who, over 25 years, has grown to care
deeply about the neighborhood and some of its people. His store gets
burnt, not for anything he does directly, but because a white
policeman kills the black youth with whom Sal had had a fight
earlier.
          Like the firefighters, perhaps--in the film and in Birmingham--Sal
thinks of himself as a victim of something he had nothing to do
with. He has provided respectful service to the black_community for
decades; he didn't trespass on someone else's property and cause a
disturbance as did the slain black youth; he didn't call the police;
he didn't kill the youngster.
          Yet it was his store that was trashed by rioters.
          In this dramatic setup, Lee captures accurately the current
standoff of race_relations in every major urban area on both sides of
the Mason-Dixon. Today, the underclass of blacks continues to grow,
usually within unnoticed isolated areas of our central cities. Some
places have become literally no middle-aged man's land; all are
populated by many who are virtually helpless to improve greatly their
own circumstances through their own efforts. On the other hand, many
whites--near and far from the ghettos--don't see why we should pay the
price for fundamentally helping the underclass. After all, as
individuals we go to work and pay our taxes; we didn't create the
ghettos; we, don't discriminate against blacks in our own personal
lives' Some of us even try to help blacks whom we consider
particularly deserving.
          In the film, as in urban life, older blacks who have lived through
the terror of white violence demonstrate genuine remorse after the
burning. The opinions of most younger residents are embodied in the
voice of Mookie, Sal's black deliveryman (played by Spike Lee) who
explains the burning essentially as a justifiable reaction to the
white policeman's killing. It's a perspective that probably seems
grossly unfair, if not outrageous, to many whites who cannot believe
that we should be held responsible for the bigotry of other whites. To
be sure, it is a dangerous equation for people to reach on the streets
of any peaceful society. Yet, Mookie knows how fairness in Bed-Stuy
works: Sal has insurance; most of his damages will be recovered. His
pride and selfworth, more than his pocketbook or person, have been
hurt while, in fact, a black youth has died.
          The white mayor will have a blue ribbon panel investigate the
disturbance, not the killing.
          Admittedly oversimple, the film's conclusion is too much a
reflection on our society in places like Bed-Stuy for comfort or
condemnation: It is usually the white majority who elects presidents,
senators, governors, legislators, and, in most cities, mayors whose
policies and appointments allow racism and racial discrimination to
continue in places like our police and fire departments, and it is
primarily white indifference in our society that permits a new
generation of blacks to be born into the deadend and hopelessness of
an underclass. For that, Spike Lee bluntly suggests we must all pay
the price, one way or the other, one time or another. And, God help
us, he is right.
          
            Steve Suitts is publisher of Southern
Changes and the executive director of the Southern Regional
Council.
          
        
