The first time I had heard about Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing was about two weeks ago in my Sociology class. I didn’t have any idea of what the film would be about and I was anxious to find out. Now having watched part of it, it is obvious that the film explores the issue of bigotry in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. Unfortunately, bigotry and discrimination don’t only exist in one area of Brooklyn, but all over the world today. This would explain why seeing the different ethnic groups in Do The Right Thing treat each other in a manner that is unacceptable came as no surprise to me. Sad but true, it is almost as if we expect to see the African-Americans, Italian-Americans, Asian-Americans, and Latin-Americans not getting along with each other. In the scene after Mookie talks to Pino about all of his idols being African-Americans, one individual from each racial community utters racial slurs about members of another community. While it is an eye-opening and excellent scene, I find it hard to believe that anyone who has watched the film has never heard any of those slurs before. Personally, I think the movie would have been far more interesting if the different communities did the exact opposite of fighting and actually did learn to live in peace with each other. More often than not, we watch films and read books about race tearing us apart, instead of bringing us together. What the characters in Do The Right Thing as well as people around the world fail to realize is that although we come from different places, we are all American. But for all I know, Mookie could “do the right thing” and the racial communities will come together in the end. I guess I’ll have to watch the end of the movie to find out!