After watching an hour so of Do the Right Thing, I got the notion that cultural identities and cultural clashes were things the director really wanted to bash into your head. The multitude of racial stereotyping and discrimination sit as proof: every ten minutes either Koreans speak with heavy accents, blacks prance around as loud-talking hoodlums with scarcely the money for pizza, or white people drive by in vintage automobiles as mean, holier-than-thou beings.
Not only that, I found the “black power” sentiments and self pity absolutely annoying. Especially infuriating are the three old black men, one of which blames a Korean family’s successful business as the sole reason that his own do not succeed. Perhaps his failure spawns from too much time placing blame on others and not enough effort spent actively pursuing his goal. Furthermore, Mookie’s friend who got kicked out of the pizzeria really had it coming. He was rude and arrogant and spiteful, spouting racist language and prancing about like a self-proclaimed celebrity. His statements about a lack of black star athletes on the pizzeria’s wall of fame had a understandable point, yet the way in which he tried to get his point across was unnecessary and ridiculous.
-Megan Low
The three elderly African-American men bothered me as well. They never had anything nice to say and just sat around doing nothing. I do agree that in the time they spent complaining and trying to justify their situations, they could have already found jobs. No one is to blame but themselves. It is not an issue of race, but rather of pure laziness. Take Mookie, for example. He is an African-American too, yet he has a job and makes a fairly decent salary. If he can support himself (especially him of all people because he has a child to support as well), then others can too.