360 dunkin'....

                Sals from Do the Right Thing and the Chief from In the Heat of the Night have somewhat similar racial views yet they do differ. Both Sal and the Chief get along with African Americans better than most other whites around them. For example Sal’s son hates being around African Americans but Sal himself do not mind. The Chief is in a similar situation where he himself does not mind black people but the deputies around him are racist towards them. The two are different because in the end of each movie they are on different sides. Chief in the end respects Virgil where in the end of Do the Right Thing Sal becomes begins to dislike them. Mookie fights racism in Do the Right Thing by fighting back with violence where Virgil fights back by being hardworking and making an example of himself showing that blacks can do anything just as well if not better than whites.

                There were multiple acts of racism in Do the Right Thing. There were multiple racial slurs thrown around including the scene where the entire scene was racist stereotypes and insults. Both of these films were accurate in there depiction of racism because in 1989 they where countless riots like the one that occurred in the movie and in 1967 there were successful African Americans and there were white people trying to kill them.

                A major question that comes up when watching the movie Do the Right Thing is if Mookie did the right thing. The answer depends a lot on your race. As an all white class most people thought that Mookie did not do the right thing. The main consensus was that he did not solve anything by doing what he did. My opinion was that it depends who is viewing the movie. Me as a white kid who say no he didn’t do the right thing by harming other white people. But if I were black I feel that my opinion would be opposite and I would say that he did do the right thing by standing up for his race and fighting racism and intolerance. When asked if Mookie did the right thing Spike Lee had this to say “No person of color has ever asked me that.” Lee is saying African Americans know the answer. Yes he did.