'Do the Right Thing' Revisited
Spike Lee’s 1989 classic Do the Right Thing is known for having sparked debates over conflicting methods of addressing racial oppression, namely, Martin Luther King Jr.’s non-violent, integrationist approach and Malcom X’s separatist and–when necessary–violent one. But those more focused on the film’s moral conflict are quick to overlook its cultural, and perhaps even aesthetic, tableau of multiethnic urban enclaves, and the political implications they hold.
Indeed, the musings of pro-ethnic, pro-urbanist pundits like Michael Novak and Jane Jacobs have largely disappeared from mainstream discourse on identity and social justice more broadly. But I’d argue that our current ideological deadlocks, with their void of nuance and legitimate progress, merit revisiting the vivid picture Lee ingeniously painted 35 years ago.
We are met with Sal Frangione, the owner of Sal’s Famous Pizzeria, and his sons Pino and Vito. Sal’s Famous is a staple of the Bedford Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn that was once home to Italian-Americans, who by then had largely uprooted en masse and moved south to Bensonhurst, as the community became predominantly black, with smatterings of Puerto Ricans, Koreans, and gentrifying WASPs.
Disillusioned by the “white flight” of his Italian compatriots, Sal was determined to stay put in Bed Stuy, driven by his attachment to the business he built from scratch with “his own two hands.” Sure, some of his new black neighbors may not like him, but “most of them do.” Further, he’s fiercely proud of the fact that many of them “grew up on” his pizzas. Thus, to give up on them because of something as menial as racial tension would be an affront to the neighborhood, to which he owes his loyalty.
The racial tension in late 1980s Brooklyn ran deep, as New York City’s zoning and economic policies had worked rapidly to ravage once thriving black neighborhoods, leading to mass unemployment and the exacerbation of crime and drug abuse. The same policies were not exactly kind to working class ethnic whites who–whether due to personal choice or circumstantial limitations–had not worked their way up the socioeconomic ladder and fled to the city’s higher scale neighborhoods.
But despite economic issues, the locals in the film maintained their neighborhood’s vibrancy and conviviality. Life on the street embodied Jacobs’s vision of the “great city,” where neighbors felt a sense of responsibility to each other, largely due to the presence of numerous “eyes on the street” (think of Mother Sister who “is always watching” from her apartment window, and Da Mayor who, despite his perpetual state of intoxication, is always ready to make conversation and when necessary, save a kid from getting hit by a car), as well as residents working in the same neighborhood where they live. Even with its issues, the people care about the neighborhood–they are deeply invested in it as it is their home.
The constant social friction gives way both to moments of conflict and spontaneous joy. The streetlife is infused with an ever-present soundtrack: salsa blasting from Steve’s boombox, Public Enemy from Radio Raheem’s, Sinatra from the pizzeria’s speakers, or the mix of classic R&B from Mister Señor Love Daddy’s (Samuel L. Jackson) radio booth down the block. The residents break out in song and dance on the street, or on hot days will prance through the water bursting forth from an opened fire hydrant.
The mix of strongly rooted ethnic groups plays a crucial role in the neighborhood's tension–which is pregnant with both causticity and vivacity, weaving a social fabric whose diversity is rich and multifaceted…unlike the rootless, elitist version of “diversity” championed by the “social justice warriors” of our day. The irons within this burning oven of proletarian diversity can forge either weapons for violence or tools for building a meaningful community–which distinguishes itself from the dull coals of identitarian diversity discourse which only forges monolithic and barren forms of community.
By today’s progressive standards of moral righteousness, Sal doesn’t exactly measure up. He holds to an old-school “bootstrapping” work ethic, and has little regard for “troublemaking” radicals like Buggin Out who want to stir up rebellion against “the White Man.” Sal was quick to shoot down Buggin Out’s “demand” for representation in the form of putting pictures of famous blacks next to those of famous Italians on the pizzeria’s Wall of Fame. And after Buggin Out’s boycott of his pizzeria turned ugly, Sal’s “true colors” came out as he slung racial epithets at him and his comrades, eventually leading (*spoiler alert) to the brawl that resulted in the (white) police officers strangling Radio Raheem.
Sal’s (as well as Buggin Out’s) moral track record is certainly far from pure. But his shortcomings aside, his respect and loyalty to (most in) the black community won him credibility from his neighbors. His commitment to remain on the block after his compatriots abandoned ship was evidence alone of his “realness,” in addition to going out of his way to take care of a number of the neighbors, who in his eyes are “people like you and me” at the end of the day.
In his 1975 tome The Rise of the Unmeltable Ethnics, Michael Novak accuses “Enlightened” elite whites who push for liberal policies in favor of “diversity” of functionally being the same as racist whites–including both the ethnic whites who abandoned their neighborhoods after their population of non-whites surged, and Anglos (WASPs) who pushed for policies to keep minorities “in their place.” White liberals may advocate for policies that favor the progress of minority communities, but it more often than not is on their terms.
Their track records are pristine compared to those of politically incorrect urban ethnic whites whose actions and motivations are at times “problematic.” But not everyone has the luxury of advocating for the oppressed from afar in the comfort of their bourgeois suburban neighborhoods. Those living in the trenches may have their moral blemishes, but at least they stuck around. Their cohabitation with people of color may have given way to moments of prejudice and intolerance, but it also allowed them to live a form of concrete solidarity that bourgeois liberals are incapable of doing from a distance, no matter how “righteous” their intentions may be.
Their moralistic posturing and insistence on purifying the discourse (PC language policing) were, to Novak, a mask for their disdain for working class POCs and (ethnic) whites, alike, and their gruff, “earthy” proletarian cultural sensibility. Of course, it is much easier to be tolerant of a faceless automaton than of someone who is genuinely different–“diverse”–from you.
Jane Jacobs argues in her seminal The Life and Death of Great American Cities against city planners whose point of departure is theories that are, as much as they may be well-intentioned, abstract in nature. Instead, she insists that good city planning must begin with observing what actually works, which is to say the best city planners know what life in the city looks like from the ground rather than observing from a detached and distant bird’s eye view. The ideal of a city, after all, is not comfort and autonomy but convivium–a dynamic sharing of life that she likens to that of a ballet, each of the residents playing a particular role and harmonizing with each other in order to bring the show to life.
Jacobs’ warnings about forgoing ties to a given locale in order to pursue a rootless life of upward mobility sheds light on the existential despair that comes along with cultural assimilation. The life of an automaton–uprooted from their neighborhood and ethnic background–is a shallow and depressing one. Many ethnic whites failed to consider what was at stake when they bought into what James Baldwin called the American “myth of whiteness.” So much of anti-black racism, he argued, was rooted not so much in a disdain for black people, but a projection of self-hatred on the part of the generic “white” person, who is resentful for having lost his identity in his pursuit of the mystifying allure of success, equated with the concept of “whiteness.”
This drama is especially poignant for Southern Europeans who were once excluded from the category of whiteness as it had once been defined by Anglos and other Northern Europeans. As Brent Staples documented, ethnic whites, especially Italian, were once considered “as good as” (which is to say “as bad as”) blacks. Their swarthy complexion and raucous Mediterranean temperaments distinguished them from the genteel, “respectable” Anglo ideal. Toward the end of the 19th century, Italians were faced with a challenging conundrum: either forge solidarity with blacks and fight together against the Anglo hegemony, or “buy” their credibility in the eyes of Anglos by distinguishing themselves from blacks and proving their whiteness (often by means of publicly displaying anti-black racism).
At this point, most ethnic white communities have “made it,” moving their way up from the urban enclave to the upper-middle class suburbs, but with a cost. Few have emerged with their distinct cultural identity intact. We can see the drama of resisting the uprooting effect that is part and parcel of the American Dream, and the juxtaposition between the conflicting worldviews of ethnics and Anglos, unfolding in a number of films. Take My Big Fat Greek Wedding, when the second-generation Greek protagonist marries a WASP with a “toast family” (upon whom her father tries to “put a little marmalade…oh no! They don’t want marmalade!”), or other films like Good Will Hunting and Bend It Like Beckham–which grandly succeed, or About My Father–which massively fails–at depicting said tension.
The choice to maintain one’s roots is fraught with risks, especially when one is brought into contact with other rooted-selves whose backgrounds are different from one’s own. Without the friction borne of roots and commitments to factors greater than our individual selves, which is to say without any “skin in the game,” it’s easy for assimilated elites to be open to diversity…to embrace other monolithic automatons. The multiethnic urban enclave is a ground fertile for division and hatred, but also for forging deep and meaningful social bonds. To do so requires work, a willingness to sacrifice our individual comfort and risk embracing our own complex legacies as well as those of our neighbor.
Spike Lee’s film offers a nuanced and complex view of the opportunities and dangers that urban multiethnic enclaves pose. Its ending is a precautionary tale warning us what happens when everyday people give up on the hope of a vibrant communal life, and when government officials deprive said communities of the tools and resources to sustain their vivacity.
Though a much less realistic and perhaps more romanticized example, I often think back to the fictional multiethnic enclave featured in the late 1990s animated Nickelodeon series Hey Arnold! As a child, I failed to understand the powerful sociological implications of the show, whose mix of characters–Italian, Jewish, Black, Korean, Swiss, French, Puerto Rican, Czechoslovakian, Polish, Hungarian, Vietnamese–were firmly rooted in their cultural identities, and learned–at times, with difficulty–to live together, sharing in life’s joys and pains and everything in between.
The life of the streets taught the characters to deal with the messiness of the human condition, while also fostering in them a zest for life and community. Their ethnic identities gave them a solid foundation upon which to make sense of the difficulties they faced, and joined with each other to weave a truly diverse social fabric. Surely, this is only a children’s show, a form of fictional entertainment. But unless we “change and become like little children,” can we ever know the greatness of what American city life could be?
Stephen G. Adubato is a writer and professor of philosophy based in New York. He is also the curator of the Cracks in Postmodernity blog, podcast, and magazine. Follow him on Twitter @stephengadubato.
